וישב

This, then, is the line of Jacob: At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper to the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father.

את דבתם רעה THEIR EVIL REPORT — Whatever he saw wrong in his brothers, the sons of Leah, he reported to his father: that they used to eat flesh cut off from a living animal, that they treated the sons of the handmaids with contempt, calling them slaves, and that they were suspected of living in an immoral manner. With three such similar matters he was therefore punished. In consequence of his having stated that they used to eat flesh cut off from a living animal Scripture states, (Genesis 37:31) “And they slew a he-goat" after they had sold him and they did not eat its flesh whilst the animal was still living. And because of the slander which he related about them that they called their brothers slaves — (Psalms 105:17) “Joseph was sold for a slave.” And because he charged them with immorality (Genesis 39:7) “his master’s wife cast her eyes upon him etc.” (Genesis Rabbah 84:7).

(3) Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons—he was his “child of old age”; and he had made him an ornamented tunic.

בן זקנים THE SON OF HIS OLD AGE — because he was a wise son to him” — all that he had learnt from Shem and Eber he taught him (Genesis Rabbah 84:8). Another explanation of בן זקנים— his facial features were similar to his (Jacob’s) (Genesis Rabbah 84:8).

And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him.

ולא יכלו דברו לשלום AND THEY COULD NOT SPEAK PEACEABLY TO HIM — from what is stated to their discredit we may infer something to their credit: they did not speak one thing with their mouth having another thing quite different in their hearts (Genesis Rabbah 84:9).

דברו means TO SPEAK TO HIM.

And when he told it to his father and brothers, his father berated him. “What,” he said to him, “is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?”

הבוא נבוא SHALL WE INDEED COME — “Is not your mother long since dead?” He did not, however, understand that the statement really alluded to Bilhah who had brought him up as though she were his own mother (Genesis Rabbah 84:11). Our Rabbis inferred from here that there is no dream but has some absurd incidents (Berakhot 55). Jacob’s intention in pointing out the absurdity of Joseph’s mother, who was dead, bowing down to him was to make his sons forget the whole matter so that they should not envy him, and on this account he said to him, “Shall we indeed come etc.” — meaning, just as it (the fulfillment of the dream) is impossible in the case of your mother so the remainder of the dream is absurd.