When Yosef told Yaakov Avinu of the things that the brothers did wrong, in every case, he was mistaken. He had misjudged the situation and come to the wrong conclusion.
For example, he saw them cut the tail off of a sheep, and assumed they planned to eat it, thus violating the prohibition of aiver min hachai, taking a limb from a live animal. He didn’t realize that it was a healing technique used by Arab shepherds.
Rashi says that in each case, he suffered for his false accusations. When the brothers dipped the coat in blood, they properly slaughtered the goat. This went against Yosef’s assumption that they would eat from a live animal and was used to disguise what really happened to him.
On Chanuka, one would rightly have assumed that the Maccabees would be unsuccessful, or that the oil would run out after one day. Yet, these things did not occur because Hashem had a different thought on the matter.
We should always remain open to the possibility that there is an alternative we haven’t considered and, in that way, we will avoid suffering the consequences of our narrowed minds and fields of view.
