Footnote

a Some researchers suggest that Joseph’s brothers interpreted their father’s gift to Joseph as evidence that he intended to confer the right of the firstborn on this boy. They knew that Joseph was the first son of Jacob’s favored wife​—the one he had intended to marry first. Further, Jacob’s firstborn, Reuben, had lain down with his father’s concubine, disgracing his father and effectively forfeiting his own birthright.​—Genesis 35:22; 49:3, 4.