This story chronicles the tumultuous life of Joseph, beginning with his status as the favored son of his father, Jacob, who gifts him a magnificent coat of many colors. This coat, shimmering with deep blues, brilliant scarlets, rich purples, and threads of real gold, was a beautiful story told in thread but also served as a flag of favoritism that ignited a bitter and ugly jealousy in his ten older brothers. Their hatred was further fueled by Joseph's dreams of the future, in which he saw his family's sheaves of grain and even the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him.

Driven by this deep-seated resentment, the brothers conspired against him, and in the fields of Dothan, they plotted his death. They stripped him of his ornate robe, tore it, and threw him into a deep, dry cistern, a dark, gaping mouth in the earth smelling of decay. Instead of leaving him for dead, they sold him into slavery for twenty pieces of silver to a caravan of Ishmaelite traders, who took him on a suffocating journey across the Sinai desert to Egypt.

In Egypt, Joseph became the property of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's personal guard. In Potiphar's house, a sprawling villa of cool, white limestone, Joseph prospered, and because of his integrity and competence, he was soon put in charge of his master's entire household. This period of success was shattered by a test of his honesty when Potiphar’s wife made advances toward him. After Joseph repeatedly refused her, she falsely accused him of assault, using his abandoned garment as proof.

This lie led Joseph from the comfort of Potiphar's house to the despair of the royal prison. In the dungeon, a place thick with the foul, putrid air of human waste and rot, he once again found favor, and the chief jailer put him in charge of the other prisoners.