What Does Genesis 37:6 Mean?

Joseph had yet another dream. "Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me." The second dream expands the first: now not just eleven sheaves but eleven stars, plus the sun and moon (representing the father and mother: or, since Rachel is dead, likely Leah or Bilhah as the maternal figure). The scope of the dream's vision of Joseph's future elevation has widened from his brothers to his entire family. Even the parents will bow.

When Joseph tells this dream to his father and brothers, Jacob rebukes him explicitly: "What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?" The rebuke is notable: it is the first time Jacob has said anything critical to his beloved son. The dream of universal family obeisance is too much even for the fond father. Yet immediately after the rebuke, the narrator notes that Jacob "kept the saying in mind." He rebuked the dream publicly, but he did not dismiss it. Something in the father recognized the possibility that the dream was true.

The two-dream structure follows the pattern of confirmation in biblical prophecy: what is dreamed twice is fixed and certain (as Joseph will later tell Pharaoh about his own double dream in Genesis 41). The double dream of Joseph is the divine declaration, in the language of his unconscious, that a reversal of the family hierarchy is coming. The brothers who hate him and the father who rebukes him will both bow. The God who drives the covenant forward does not ask the covenant family's permission before announcing where it is going.