What Does Genesis 37:20 Mean?

"Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams." The brothers' plan is spoken openly among the group before Joseph arrives: kill him, dispose of the body in a cistern, fabricate a story involving an animal. The plan is practical and premeditated. The brothers are not speaking in the heat of the moment: they are watching him approach and deliberately constructing the murder and its cover story in the same breath.

The taunt at the end of the plan: "we will see what will become of his dreams": is the key to understanding the brothers' motive. They are not simply acting from generalized hatred; they are specifically attacking the dreams. The sheaves bowing, the stars bowing: they understood the dreams as Joseph's claim to rule over them, and they are proposing to kill the dreamer as the way to destroy the dream's possibility. Their murder plot is an attempt to kill a prophecy by killing the prophet. It will fail in the most complete way possible: the plan to end the dream will become the mechanism of the dream's fulfillment.

The cover story: "a fierce animal has devoured him": is chosen because it is unverifiable and plausible. Canaan's rural landscape had wild animals; the story is sad, believable, and leaves no body to find. The brothers have thought through not just the crime but the concealment. They are planning parricide of their father's grief alongside fratricide: the story they will tell Jacob will require him to grieve an imagined death. They are designing the lie in the same moment they are designing the murder.