And Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was son of his old age; and he made him a vest of many colours.
One sentence sets up all that follows in Joseph's story. Jacob loves one son more than the rest, and he puts that love on public display in a garment. Commentators read this in two ways: as a real family failure with real damage, and as one of Scripture's clearest pictures of the Father's delight in His Son.
The favouritism is not excused. One writer names it, then turns from Jacob's household to a love no one could call unfair:
Verse 3 tells us that Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons. This was Jacob's failure. Love in a family should be completely impartial and concerned about the true welfare of every child. Above all this, though, this history reminds us that God's love for His Son must be unique.
Scripture guards that uniqueness. God brings many into His family, yet one place is never shared:
In His great grace God has brought His saints into relationship with Him as children and as His sons. He has given us "the Spirit of His Son…crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). But we must never forget that the Son has His own special place at the Father's side, and it is His alone.
Love can stay hidden in a father's heart. This garment made it visible to everyone:
Israel bears witness to this place of distinction by clothing Joseph with a coat of many colours — a public testimony to the delight of the father in his son… The same chapter that tells us, "God so loved the world," also tells us that "the Father loves the Son." A measure is given of the love of God for the world, infinite though it is. But no measure is, or can be, given of the Father's love for the Son… Joseph's coat of many colours, the public testimony of his father's love, has its bright counterpart in the opened heavens of the New Testament. The heavens never open apart from Christ. When they open, they always bear some fresh witness to the Father's delight in the all-varied graces of the Son.
Other places in Scripture show how such garments were used. One writer follows the clue:
They were worn as marks of distinction — "for the neck as spoil," as Sisera's mother says. She thought he should wear this "spoil of dyed materials" as a special honour, fitting such a mighty conqueror as he was.
The word behind the garment names an ordinary piece of clothing:
The inner garment is the kethoneth, a long tunic worn by men and women, made of wool, cotton, or linen. This was the garment God made of skins for Adam and Eve, and what Jacob made of many colours for Joseph.
Why would Scripture record a father's gift of a coat? One writer answers by reading the colours as glories:
God calls the Lord Jesus His well-beloved Son, and has given Him many glories. A robe of many colours is His, but they are the colours of His glories. Not one greater, or more brilliant, than the glory of His humiliation. He laid aside His riches, and became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich.
Later in the story the brothers tear that coat off him. The stripping carries its own meaning:
The many-coloured coat, as we saw earlier, was a mark of renown, or of superior dignity or excellence… The persecutors of the Son of God were not content until they had stripped Him of everything the many-coloured coat of Joseph stood for — His dignity, His moral excellence, His honour. They did this as far as it lay in their power.
His father's love changed the boy. It also cost him:
Loved and marked out by his father in this way, his heart grew large. He tasted the sweetness of his father's affection, and his own affection came out in return. Nothing produces affection in us so much as the assurance that it exists for us. As it is written, "We love because He first loved us."… But at the same time this exposed him to the envy of those who had proved themselves unworthy of it.
The brothers' problem was not Joseph himself. It was what they did not share:
He was the object of his father's love, and the subject of very high destinies. His brothers' hearts were not in communion with these things, so they hated him. They had no fellowship in the father's love… In all this they represent the Jews in Christ's day. "He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him."
- Loved — Jacob's favouritism was a real failure at home. Yet it points past itself to the Father's love for His Son, which is unique and needs no apology.
- Clothed — the coat made the father's love public. Its New Testament counterpart is the opened heaven, which never opens apart from Christ and always shows the Father's delight afresh.
- Marked — such garments were badges of honour, so the coat spoke of dignity, not decoration.
- Hated — the brothers had no share in the father's love, and that lack, not any wrong from Joseph, bred the hatred.
- Stripped — his brothers later tore that coat off him. He pictures the One robbed of every mark of honour before God exalted Him.
And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, and they hated him, and could not greet him with friendliness.
The chapter opens on a household where affection has become evidence. The brothers do not react to anything Joseph does; they react to what they see in their father's face, and the sight breeds a hatred that even ordinary conversation cannot survive.
One writer traces the root of the trouble to what the brothers had no share in:
He was the object of his father's love, and he was marked out for very high destinies. His brothers' hearts had no share in these things, so they hated him. They had no fellowship in the father's love. They would not accept the thought of Joseph's exaltation.
Another writer puts the fault on the father, not on the son:
The love of Jacob for Joseph drew out the bitter animosity of his brothers. Jacob was to blame for this, of course, not Joseph, but the same thing has happened in many families. In the case of the Lord Jesus, Israel hated both Him and His Father (John 15:24). They did not have the slightest excuse for this, though Jacob's brothers might have had some excuse for hating Joseph.
Their hatred took away even a friendly greeting. One writer follows it from that first sign to where it ended:
The clearer it became that his father loved him in a special way, the more they hated him. Their hatred first showed in their speech — they "could not speak peacefully to him." Later it broke out in wicked action. But we see at once a type of the One of whom Psalm 69 speaks prophetically: "They ... hate Me without cause"; and again, "I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons."
Joseph had served his brothers and done them no injury. One writer answers the puzzle of why such a person should be hated at all:
Why was Joseph hated by his brothers? Was he not in their company as one who served? He was. But they were evil. However welcome his service might be, his presence exposed their evil and called out their hatred. For the same reason, and far more deeply, the world hated Christ. He could say, "It hates Me because I testify about it that its works are evil."
The verse says nothing about what this cost Joseph himself. One writer pictures it:
Joseph had done them no harm — no, he loved them, so very much: yet he lived among his brothers as one alone. He "was separate from his brothers." How it must have hurt poor Joseph — out "feeding the flock with his brothers," or at home with them, and never hearing a kind word from any of them.
The love that drew the hatred was also what had to carry Joseph through it:
On one side he learned the tenderness and the resources of his father's affection. On the other he suffered reproach and persecution for being so favoured. So early in life, and in his own family, Joseph learned — as all God's servants do — the basic truth that had to sustain him in the highest service later on: that the one loved by God is the one hated by man. His father's love, marked out by the coat of many colours, had to make up to him for the hatred of his brothers. It had to strengthen him and prepare him for all their opposition and envy.
One writer turns the verse on the reader:
In verse 4 of our chapter we read that Joseph's brothers "hated him and could not speak peacefully to him." It was the same with Jesus here on earth. People hated Him without a cause. And this is every sinner's attitude toward Christ until he comes to Him by faith and learns His love. You may not want to believe this of yourself, but it is true all the same. You may not know this enmity to Christ is in your heart, but it is there just the same.
- Loved — the whole trouble starts with a father's love his brothers had no share in. They wanted no part in what the father valued.
- Hated — the clearer the love, the deeper the hatred. It showed first in their speech, long before they raised a hand.
- Exposed — the deeper cause was moral. His service was welcome, but his presence showed up their evil, and that is why the world hated Christ too.
- Alone — the loved son lived among his own family as a stranger, never hearing a kind word from any of them.
- Sustained — every servant of God learns this early. The one loved by God is hated by man, and the Father's love must make up for it.