What Does Genesis 37:19 Mean?

They said to one another, "Here comes this dreamer." The brothers see Joseph approaching from a distance: far enough away that they can identify the distinctive robe before they can see his face: and they give him a name. "This dreamer": in the Hebrew, literally "this master of dreams," a derisive title. They are mocking what they most resent: his claim to a future in which they bow to him. The nickname reduces the man and his dreams to a single target of contempt.

The distance at which the brothers see Joseph coming is a detail of dramatic irony. Joseph is walking toward them cheerfully, carrying out his father's errand, expecting the ordinary reception of a brother arriving with welfare news. The brothers see a dreamer walking into range. The gap between what Joseph knows and what his brothers have already decided in his absence is the chapter's central moral horror. He closes the distance between them not knowing that the conversation about his death is already finished.

The corporate voice: "they said to one another": implicates all the brothers in the identification and the contempt. No single brother is singled out for the nickname "dreamer." The hatred is collective, the taunt is collective, and the plot that immediately follows will be collective. The group of brothers who could not speak peacefully to Joseph at home has now become the group of men plotting his death before he arrives. The journey from resentment to murder-plot requires no additional provocation.