Shepherds drive their herds across the central ridge route toward the northern pastures. The land dries out in summer, forcing herders to walk 60 miles from the Hebron valley to find green fodder near Shechem and Dothan. Sibling resentment festers during these long migrations. A favored son wearing an expensive tunic arrives to check on his older brothers. They see him from a distance and plot a permanent solution to their family hierarchy problem.
The brothers strip the tunic and throw the boy into a pit in the Dothan region. Dothan sits in a fertile valley about 13 miles north of Shechem and borders a major merchant highway. This highway connects the eastern highlands of Gilead directly to markets in Egypt. Around 1750 b.c. Ishmaelite traders regularly traverse this road with camels carrying gum, balm, and myrrh. The pit holds no water, which gives the brothers time to eat a meal and consider a more profitable disposal method.
The empty pit acts as a temporary holding cell until the spice traders arrive. The brothers pull the boy from the hole and sell him to the merchants for 20 shekels of silver. This price matches the average market rate for a young male slave during this specific era. The caravan absorbs the new slave and continues the long journey south toward the Egyptian border. The transaction turns a familial dispute into a brutal commercial exchange.
Brothers calculate the price of betrayal when a dry pit offers no profit.
The merchants calculate their own margins as they lead their new acquisition toward the Nile Delta. Back in the hills of Canaan, the remaining brothers slaughter a goat and dip the tunic in its blood. They carry the ruined garment south across 60 miles of rough terrain to Hebron. They present the bloodstained evidence to their father and watch him tear his clothes in grief. The father mourns an animal attack while his actual son marches into foreign servitude.