JOSEPH, in the Old Testament, the son of the patriarch Jacob by Rachel; the name of a tribe of Israel. Unlike the other "sons" of Jacob, Joseph is usually reckoned as two tribes (viz. his "sons" Ephraim and Manasseh), and closely associated with them is the small tribe of Benjamin (q.v.), which lay immediately to the south. These three constituted the "sons" of Rachel (the ewe), and with the "sons" of Leah (the antelope?) are thus on a higher level than the "sons" of Jacob's concubines. The "house of Joseph" and its offshoots occupied the centre of Palestine from the plain of Esdraelon to the mountain country of Benjamin, with dependencies in Bashan and northern Gilead (see MANASSEH ). Practically it comprised the northern kingdom, and the name is used ,in this sense in 2 Sam. xix. 20 ; Amos v. 6; vi. 6; the exten sion of the term being parallel to the development of the name Jacob. The story of the tribal ancestor is recounted in Gen.
xxxvii.-1. (see GENESIS) . Joseph, the younger and envied son, is seized by his brothers at Dothan and is sold to a party of Ish maelites or Midianites, who carry him down to Egypt. After various vicissitudes he gains the favour of the king of Egypt by the interpretation of a dream, and obtains a high place in the king dom. Forced by a famine his brothers come to buy food, and in the incidents that follow Joseph shop's his preference for his young brother Benjamin (cf. the tribal data above). His father Jacob is invited to come to Goshen, where a settlement is pro vided for the family and their flocks. This is followed many years later by the exodus, the conquest of Palestine, and the burial of Joseph's body in the grave at Shechem which his father had bought. (T. H. R.)