Next day they killed a kid and dabbled Joseph’s coat in its blood, then turned homewards with their flocks, and came at length to their own place and to their father’s tent, and, with the pretence of grief on their faces, stood before him. His first thought was for Joseph, but he looked in vain for him.

Jacob questioned them anxiously. And when he told them how Joseph had been sent out to seek them in the valley of Shechem, they stared one at another, as though in horror and dismay. Then one of them named Simeon took out the torn and blood-be-dabbled coat and spread it out before him.

‘We knew nothing of what thou sayest until now,’ he said. ‘But on our way back from Dothan where we lay, we passed by a thicket of thorn trees in a wild and solitary place, and we found this. It is so be- draggled and drenched with blood that we cannot be sure if it be the coat you gave Joseph. See now, is this thy son’s coat, or no?’

Jacob looked and trembled and turned away. ‘It is my son’s coat,’ he said. ‘My son, Joseph! An evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. I shall never see his face again!’

He bowed himself in his grief and wept. He rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth like one who goes in mourning for the dead, and withdrew himself from them all, and remained in solitude for many days. His daughters and his sons, grown sick of their own treachery, came to him in hope to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.

‘Beyond the grave,’ he said, ‘but not until then, we two shall meet again. And my son Joseph will see how I have mourned for him.’ And he continued to grieve for Joseph, so great was the love he bore him. Only in Benjamin, who was his youngest son, did Jacob find solace as time went by. He loved and treasured him not only for his own sake but because, now that Joseph was gone, he was the only child left of his mother Rachel, for she had died when he was born.