When Joseph told his father the dream of the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, Jacob rebuked him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:10) reports the rebuke: What dream is this that thou hast dreamed? Shall I, and thy mother, and thy brethren, really come and bow before thee to the ground?
On the surface, Jacob is scolding. But the sages heard something else underneath. Jacob's question is not this is nonsense. His question is thy mother — and Rachel is already dead. The moon has no living referent. Jacob, the sharpest dreamer in the book of Genesis, the man who wrestled an angel and saw a ladder, cannot simply dismiss a dream. He is trying to find the flaw in it to calm his other sons, who are listening with hatred in their eyes.
Rashi, the great eleventh-century commentator from Troyes, will later note that Jacob rebuked Joseph in order to remove envy from his brothers' hearts — but the Torah itself admits, two verses later, that his father kept the matter in mind (Genesis 37:11). Jacob was not disbelieving. He was filing the dream away. He was waiting to see.
The rebuke was a kindness to the ten brothers, a protection for Joseph, and a quiet acknowledgment to himself: this dream is true, and I am afraid.
A father can see what is coming and still not be able to stop it. That, perhaps, is the deepest grief of Jacob's life. He watches the prophecy arrive in his own tent, and all he can do is pretend he doesn't believe it.