REVISIT: Becoming Israel – When Fathers don’t know best . . .

[This was first posted in 2012,  timed for Father’s Day celebration every year.  This reflects a simple reading and discussion by Sinaites of the problems within families that practice favoritism.  To this original perspective are now added commentary from the three sources we have chosen to feature:  Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; RA/Robert Alter; and EF/Everett Fox whose translation we have chosen for this website: The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1.]

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Jacob, Jacob, did you not learn from your father Isaac?

Favoritism creates problems not only for a favored child but also for their siblings; did you not learn from your personal experience? And now you’re doing exactly what your father had done, except you face a more complicated family situation, what with 12 sons with 4 mothers desiring your favor upon their sons.  

You’ve always loved Rachel most, except she was barren for so long but when God enabled her to conceive, how could you not resist favoring her miraculously-brought-about firstborn Joseph? 

How difficult is it for a parent to be perfectly fair, enough to give each child equal treatment and opportunity? Not difficult, not impossible, for it is a matter of choice and wisdom.  There are parents who succeed to the great benefit of their children; though usually the first-born and the last-born get special attention simply from being bookends in the procreation process, no wonder the in-between sometimes feel neglected. It is a balancing act, pops and moms!

This family dynamics is universal, so Jacob and Isaac are no exceptions.  It is one thing to have a favorite, it is another to show it to the point of demoralizing other children just as deserving of parental attention.  Abraham comes through as equally loving of Ishmael and Isaac despite the behavior of the mothers; the succeeding patriarchs failed in that respect and caused problems for the next generation. 

Here are a few preliminaries which always help understand the biblical text, (we thank YHWH for timing our existence in this modern age of information technology, where encyclopedic help is available at the click of a computer key, and unless we have some further insights to contribute, we simply select and reorganize already available material when it is relevant):

From:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_(son_of_Jacob)

• Hebrew: יוֹסֵף ‎, Standard Yosef Tiberian Yôsēp̄;
• “May Yahweh add”;^[1] Arabic: يوسف‎, Yūsuf ) i
• an important person in the Hebrew Bible, where he connects the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan to the subsequent story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

The Joseph story has been told and retold so much that there is almost nothing left to be added, so it is best to read through the Hebrew rendering if only to correct wrong perceptions you might have picked up from hearing the same story retold in different media, particularly through stage and film productions that pick up the basic plot and embellish for entertainment, such as: 

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber, “a humourously musical retelling of the Biblical story” with perfectly cast clean-living Mormon entertainer Donny Osmond playing Joseph (one of the no-bad-record figures like Joshua, Caleb, Daniel).

And of course, avoid it as we’d like to, here is a sample of the Christian retelling and its reinterpretation for New Testament prophetic fulfillment —

[Source; gracethrufaith.com/childrens-stories-for-adults/joseph-and-his-coat-of-many-colors/]

Tell Me A Story, Daddy —  Parables are heavenly truths put into earthly context and the Bible abounds with them. The ones Jesus told are mostly stories He devised for the purpose, but the Lord told Paul that He often orchestrated real life events in Israel to help teach us about Him (Rom 15:4 & 1 Cor: 10:11). Put the Heavenly Players in place of the earthly ones to gain the lesson and see the Old Testament come alive as never before.

• Jacob and his family represent Israel, 
• Joseph the Messiah, 
• and Pharoah the Father. 
• Joseph’s gentile bride is the church 
• and Egypt the world. 
• The seven good years are the Age of Grace 
• during which the Gentile Bride is taken, 
• the 7 bad years the Tribulation period 
• where the Messiah is revealed to Israel. 
• The land of Goshen is the Kingdom Age. 

We’ve just scratched the surface here; there are over 100 clear truths being modeled. The rest is up to you.  And now you know the adult version.

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Oh well . . . . nevertheless, thanks to such popularization of ancient biblical narratives, people who normally would not read the TNK nevertheless get exposed to the tribal saga of the divinely set-apart people of Israel.  

It was a surprise to discover that a familiar name in the list of literary masters, the German writer Thomas Mann whose must-read book is The Magic Mountain had written what he considered his greatest work:

• Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder) is a four-part novel by Thomas Mann, written over the course of 16 years. Mann retells the familiar stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph (chapters 27–50), setting it in the historical context of the Amarna Period.  

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Deception has plagued Jacob the deceiver throughout his life from the time—

• he deceived his father; 
• he was deceived by Laban, 
• and now his sons will deceive him. 

Was he ever aware that the brothers resented his favored son?  Could Joseph, knowing he’s favored, have been more secretive about his dreams, since even his father reacted negatively to the one about the sun and moon and 11 stars (hint, hint).  Yes, he could have, but then we readers would never have known he did have such prophetic dreams and the Divine Hand orchestrating these events for the fulfillment of the prophecy given to Abraham as early as Genesis/Bereshith 15:11-16—

Too much familiarity with the text sometimes makes us, readers, miss important details such as this:  Abraham’s seed will find themselves in bondage in a foreign land but the foreign power that has subjugated them will face divine judgment.  

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Here is Everett Fox’s introduction to the chapters that focus on Joseph:

YOSEF (37-50)

THE STORIES ABOUT THE LAST PATRIARCH FORM A COHERENT WHOLE, leading some to dub it a “novella.”  It stands well on its own, although it has been consciously and artfully woven together into both the Yaakov cycle and the entire book.

Initially, the tale is one of family emotions, and it is, in fact, extreme emotions which give it a distinctive flavor.  All the major characters are painfully expressive of their feelings, from the doting father to the spoiled son, from the malicious brothers to the lustful wife of Potifar, from the nostalgic adult Yosef to the grief-stricken old Yaakov.  It is only through the subconscious medium of dreams, in three sets, that we are made to realize that a higher plan is at work which will supersede the destructive force of these emotions.

For this is a story of how “ill”—with all its connotations of fate, evil, and disaster—is changed to good. Despite the constant threat of death to Yosef, to the Egyptians, and to Binyamin, the hidden, optimistic thrust of the story is “life,” a word that appears in various guises throughout.  Even “face,” the key word of the Yaakov cycle which often meant something negative, is here given a kinder meaning, as the resolution to Yaakov’s life.

A major subtheme of the plot is the struggle for power between Re’uven and Yehuda.  Its resolution has implications that are as much tribal as personal, for the tribe of Yehuda later became the historical force in ancient Israel as the seat of the monarchy.

Although many details of the narrative confirm Egyptian practices, those practices actually reflect an Egypt considerably later than the period of the Patriarchs (Redford).  Of interest also is the prominence of the number five in the story, a detail that is unexplained but that gives some unity to the various sections of text.

In many ways, the Yosef material repeats elements in the Yaakov traditions.  A long list could be compiled, but let us at least mention here sibling hatred,  exile of the hero, foreign names, love and hate, dreams, and deception—even so, detailed as to duplicate the use of a goat-kid. But its focusing on a classic rags-to-riches plot, with the addition of a moralistic theme, make the Yosef story a distinctive and always popular tale, accessible in a way that the more difficult stories of the first three parts of Genesis are not.

Young Yosef: Love and Hate (37):   As has been the pattern with the Avraham and Yaakov cycles, the opening chapter here introduces the key themes of the entire story.  These include the father’s love, the power of words, dreams, “ill” as a keyword (here denoting evil intent but eventually encompassing misfortune, among other concepts), and of course, the brothers’ hatred, which at first glance is the motivating force behind the action.

But the initial blame for what happens clearly lies with the father (vv.3-4) and is made unbearable by Yosef’s own behavior.  In point of fact, he is largely responsible for his own downfall, bearing tales about his brother  (v. 2) even before Yaakov’s preference for him is noted.  His insistence on telling his dreams to his brothers must be galling, particularly the second time (v. 9), coming as it does after the report that “they hated him still more for his dreams” (v.8).

The key word of the chapter, not surprisingly, is “brother,” culminating in Yehuda’s ironic words (v. 27): “let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother . . . .” Shortly afterward Yosef, their (own) flesh, “is sold into slavery and probable death.”