Zebulun, sixth son of Jacob and Leah, was dying in his hundred and fourteenth year, two years after Joseph. He gathered his sons and said: "I am not conscious that I have sinned all my days, save in thought. Except the sin of ignorance which I committed against Joseph, for I covenanted with my brethren not to tell my father what had been done."
He wept in secret many days. He feared his brothers, because they had all agreed that whoever revealed the secret would be killed. But when they wanted to murder Joseph outright, Zebulun adjured them with tears not to be guilty of this sin.
He described the scene. Simeon and Gad came against Joseph to kill him. Joseph spoke through tears: "Pity me, my brethren. Have mercy upon the bowels of Jacob our father. Lay not upon me your hands to shed innocent blood, for I have not sinned against you. If I have sinned, chastise me, but lay not your hand upon me for the sake of Jacob our father" (Genesis 37:21-28).
Zebulun broke. "I was unable to bear his lamentations," he said, "and I began to weep, and my liver was poured out, and all the substance of my bowels was loosened. I wept with Joseph, and my heart sounded, and the joints of my body trembled, and I was not able to stand." Joseph saw Zebulun weeping and fled behind him for protection.
Reuben intervened: "Let us not slay him, but cast him into one of these dry pits which our fathers dug and found no water." The Lord had forbidden water to rise in those pits so that Joseph might be preserved. They did so, until they sold him to the Ishmaelites.
Zebulun took no share of the price. But Simeon, Gad, and six others bought sandals with Joseph's blood money, saying: "We will not eat of it, for it is the price of our brother's blood, but we will tread it underfoot, because he said he would be king over us." Later, in Egypt, when they stood barefoot before the viceroy and prostrated themselves, those sandals were stripped from them in fulfillment of the law.
While the others sat to eat and drink after selling Joseph, Zebulun could not eat. He watched the pit. Judah feared that Simeon, Dan, and Gad would rush back and kill Joseph. When Reuben returned and found Joseph gone, he rent his garments and mourned: "How shall I look on the face of my father Jacob?" He took the money and ran after the merchants but could not find them.
Then Dan proposed the deception: "Let us slay a kid of the goats, dip Joseph's coat in its blood, and send it to Jacob, saying: Know, is this the coat of your son?" (Genesis 37:31-32). They did it. Simeon wanted to keep the coat to destroy it with his sword, furious that Joseph still lived. The others forced him to surrender it.
From this nightmare, Zebulun drew one teaching: compassion.
"Keep the commands of the Lord," he urged, "and show mercy to your neighbors, and have compassion towards all, not towards men only, but also towards beasts." He told how he was the first to make a boat and sail upon the sea, catching fish for his father's house. For five years he fished and gave to every stranger, every sick person, every aged person he found.
He saw a man naked in winter and stole a garment from his father's house to give him. "From that which God bestows upon you, show compassion and mercy without hesitation to all men," he said. "If you have not the means to give, have compassion in your bowels of mercy."
He prophesied that his sons would depart from the Lord and be scattered. But after repentance, the Lord Himself would come as the light of righteousness, redeeming all captives from Beliar, and every spirit of deceit would be trodden down. Israel would return to the land and see Him in Jerusalem.
"I shall rise again in the midst of you," Zebulun said, "as a ruler in the midst of his sons, and I shall rejoice in my tribe." He fell asleep at a good old age, and his sons laid him in a wooden coffin and buried him in Hebron with his fathers.