Chapter II.
Parents' affection and children's gratitude should be equal. However, Jacob is excused because he preferred Joseph, who was adorned with many virtues, over others. Moreover, he was already endowed with the grace of prophecy, as his dreams, which are related here, demonstrate.
5. Therefore, we are taught what kind of affection parents should have, for the sake of their children. To love one's children is sweet, and to love them more intensely is even sweeter. But often, the very fatherly love, unless it maintains moderation, harms the children. If excessive indulgence loosens the bond of love, or if preference for one child turns others away from the affection of kinship. One gains more for the son when love is gained from his siblings. This is the greater generosity of parents, this is the wealthier inheritance of children. Equal grace binds children whom equal nature has joined. Piety knows not the profit of money, in which lies the expense of piety. Why are you surprised if disputes arise among brothers over land or a house, when envy arose among the holy sons of Jacob over a tunic?
So what then? Should Jacob be criticized because he preferred one over the others? But we cannot take away freedom from parents; let them love those more whom they believe deserve more: nor should we cut off the desire to please from our children. Finally, Jacob loved him more, in whom he foresaw greater signs of virtues; so that the father seems to have preferred not so much a son, as the mystery of a prophet: and he made for him with good reason a varied coat, by which he signified that he should be preferred to his brothers in the dress of diverse virtues.
Finally, the divine grace shone forth in the boy while he was still alive. For he dreamed that while he was binding sheaves, as it seemed to him in a vision, his sheaf stood up and remained upright; then his brothers' sheaves turned toward his sheaf and bowed down to it (Genesis 37:6-7). In this, the future resurrection of the Lord Jesus was revealed, whom the eleven disciples also adored when they saw Him in Jerusalem, and all the saints will adore Him when they are resurrected, offering the fruits of good works, as it is written: "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Psalm 126:6). Wherefore, brethren, though they diminished the faith of his dream by envy, still expressing the interpretation thereof in their own words, they answered him: Shalt thou indeed reign over us, or shalt thou have dominion over us? (Gen. XXXVII, 8) For by his visions it was signified that a king should come, whom all the flesh of mankind should adore, bending the knee.
But he saw another dream, and he told it to his father and his brothers, because the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to him. So his father rebuked him, saying: What is this dream that you have dreamt? Shall I, your mother, and your brothers come and bow down to you upon the earth? Who is this whom parents and brothers worshiped upon the earth, if not Christ Jesus, when Joseph and his mother, along with the disciples, worshiped him, confessing him as the true God in that body, of whom alone it was said: Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light? But the rebuke of the father signifies the hardness of the people of Israel, from whom Christ according to the flesh, whom they do not believe to be God even today, nor do they want to worship him as the Lord, because they recognize him as born of themselves. Therefore, they hear his responses, but they do not understand; they read that the sun and the moon praise him, and they do not want to believe that it has been said about Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jacob is deceived by a foreign figure, but he is not deceived by his own love. Filial piety in him does not err: but the desires of the people are expressed as being in error.