at that time.  An indefinite phrase used sometimes of events which occurred several years earlier or later.  In this instance, the marriage took place prior to the sale of Joseph (Ibn Ezra).

went down. From the rocky hills around Hebron to Adullam, in the Lowland, 17 miles S.W. of Jerusalem.

[EF] away from his brothers. More than geography seems to be meant “Yehuda begins to change as a person here, in preparation for Chap. 44.  Note that the place Adullam assonates with Arabic (‘adula) “to turn aside.”

[RA] And it happened at this time. The formulaic indication of time is deliberately vague.  The entire story of Judah and the sons he begets spans more than twenty years.  It reads as though it began after the moment Joseph is sold down to Egypt, but the larger chronology of the Joseph story and the descent into Egypt suggests that the first phase of this story about Judah may considerably antedate Joseph’s enslavement.  Many readers have sensed this tale of Judah and Tamar as an “interruption” of the Joseph story, or, at best, as a means of building suspense about Josephs fate in Egypt.  In fact, there is an intricate network of connections with what precedes and what follows, as close attention to the details of the text will reveal.

went down. The verb is justified by topography because Judah is coming down from the hill country to the eastern edge of the coastal plain inhabited by the Canaanites.  But “going down” is also the verb used to travel to Egypt (compare the end of verse 25 in the preceding chapter), and the next episode, which returns to the Joseph story, will begin with the words, “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt.”

Canaanite. Following Esau’s evil example (cf. XXVI,34f), and reaping an abundant harvest of sin and shame.  Many commentators, however, take the word in the sense used in Zech. XIV,21, and translate ‘merchant’ (Targum, Rashi, Mendelssohn).

[RA] she…called.  The Masoretic Text has “he called,” but the more likely naming of the child by the mother, as in verse 4, is supported by several manuscript traditions.

[EF] Cesiv: The Hebrew root connotes “lying.”

6 Yehuda took a wife for Er, his firstborn-her name was Tamar. 

Judah took. Such was the custom, for the parent to select the son’s bride.

Tamar. lit. ‘a date palm’.  The name occurs later in the family of David.

[EF] Tamar: The name means “date palm” 6-7 firstborn: Perhaps parallel to the ineffectual first-born, Re’uven, of the previous chapter.

slew him. lit. ’caused him to die’.

[EF] (did) ill: I.e. he was evil, although we are not told specifically how.

[RA] And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the LORD.  The nature of his moral failing remains unspecified, but given the insistent pattern of reversal of primogeniture in all these stories, it seems almost sufficient merely to be firstborn in order to incur God’s displeasure: though the firstborn is not necessarily evil, he usually turns out to be obtuse, rash, wild, or otherwise disqualified from carrying on the heritage.  It is noteworthy that Judah, who invented the lie that triggered his own father’s mourning for a dead son, is bereaved of two sons in rapid sequence.  In contrast to Jacob’s extravagant grief, nothing is said about Judah’s emotional response to the losses.

perform the duty of a husband’s brother.  This refers to the custom of the levirate marriage, by which a surviving brother-in-law (in Latin, levir) marries the childless widow, see Deut. XXV,5 and cf Ruth IV,5 f. The eldest son of such a marriage inherited the name and property of the deceased.

[EF] a brother-in-law’s duty:  It was a well-known practice in biblical times that if a man died without leaving an heir, it was the obligation of his nearest of kin (usually his brother) to marry the widow and sire a son—who would then bear the name of the deceased man (Deut. 25:5-10).

[RA] do your duty as brother-in-law.  In the Hebrew, this is a single verb, yabem, referring to the so-called Levirate marriage.  The legal obligation of yibum, which was a widespread practice in the ancient Near East, was incurred when a man died leaving his wife childless.  His closest brother in order of birth was obliged to become his proxy, “raising up seed” for him by impregnating his widow.  The dead brother would thus be provided a kind of biological continuity and the widow would be able to produce progeny, which was a woman’s chief avenue of fulfillment in this culture.

would not be his. i.e. would not hear his name.

[RA] the seed would not be his. Evidently, Onan is troubled by the role of sexual proxy, which creates a situation in which the child he begets will be legally considered his dead brother’s offspring.

he would waste his seed on the ground. Despite the confusion engendered by the English term “onanism” that derives from this text, the activity referred to is almost certainly coitus interruptus—as Rashi vividly puts it, “threshing within, winnowing without.”

[EF] What he did was ill: Onan dies because he does not fulfill his legal obligation to continue his brother’s line.  The later interpretation, that his crime was masturbation (“onanism”), has no basis in this text.

daughter-in-law. Tamar. The childless widow went back to her father’s house. Judah believed that the deaths of Er and Onan were due to Tamar.  He, therefore, fears to have Shelah perform the levirate duty.

[EF] Otherwise he will die: Folk belief often regarded a woman who had outlived two husbands as a bad risk in marriage.  The emotion here—a father’s fear of losing a young son—will return as central in 42:36.

[RA] Stay a widow in your father’s house. The childless Tamar is not only neglected but must submit to a form of social disgrace in having to return to her father’s house after having been twice married.  Since enough time elapses for Shelah to grow from prepuberty to at least late adolescence (see verse 14), this period of enforced return to the status of an unmarried daughter proves to be a very long one.  Amos Funkenstein has observed to me that Tamar remains silent in the face of her father-in-law’s condemnation, saying nothing of Onan’s sexual aberration and leaving Judah to suppose that the death of both sons is somehow her fault.  And though he banishes her to her father’s house, she evidently remains under his legal jurisdiction, as his issuing of a death sentence against her (verse 24) indicates.

Shua’s daughter. Her own name is not known.  Some time after the death, Judah found it becoming to attend the Canaanite festivities in connection with the sheep-shearing.

Timnah. A few miles S. of Hebron.

[RA] after the mourning period.  The Hebrew says literally, “and Judah was consoled,” a verb that may refer to actual feelings or to the simple end of the prescribed period of mourning.  Either way, we pick up the antithetical echo of Jacob’s refusal of consolation at the end of the previous chapter.  The death of Judah’s wife and the ensuing mourning set up the condition of sexual neediness that motivates his encounter with Tamar.

sheepshearers. As we know from elsewhere in the Bible, sheepshearing was the occasion for elaborate festivities, with abundant food and drink.  In this way, Judah’s going up to join his sheepshearers is itself an indication that he is done with the rites of mourning and is perhaps in a holiday mood.  The verb twice used for this journey is to “go up,” the complementary opposite of the going down with which the chapter begins.

garments of her widowhood. To prevent detection by Judah.  She resorts to a disguise and stratagem that must have appeared quite honourable in her Canaanite eyes.  She assumes the veil of a votary of Astarte.  Her intention was to force Judah himself to perform the levirate duty.  In pre-Mosaic times, it seems, every member of the late husband’s family was under that obligation.

[RA] sat by the entrance to Enaim.  If, as is quite likely, this place-name means “Twin Wells,” we probably have here a kind of wry allusion to the betrothal type-scene: the bridegroom encountering his future spouse by a well in a foreign land.  One wonders whether the two wells might resonate with her two marriages, or with the twins she will bear.  In any case, instead of a feast and the conclusion of a betrothal agreement, here we have a brusque goods-for-services business dialogue, followed by sex.

harlot. In v. 21 she is described as a kedashah; that is, a woman dedicated to impure heathen worship.  This repulsive custom was common in ancient Phoenicia and Babylonia and survives in many forms of Hindu worship.  No kedashah was permitted in Israel; see Deut. XXIII,18.

16 So he turned aside to her by the road and said:
Come-now, pray let me come in to you—
for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
She said:
What will you give me for coming in to me? 

and he turned unto her. He left his path to go to her (Rashi).

[RA] Here, pray, let me come to bed with you.  Despite the particle of entreaty na’, “pray,” this is brutally direct: there is no preface of polite greeting to the woman, and the Hebrew idiom, repeatedly used in this story, says literally, “let me come into you.”  Judah’s sexual importunacy becomes a background of contrast for Joseph’s sexual restraint in the next chapter.

What will you give me for coming to bed with me?  Tamar is careful to speak in character with her role as a roadside whore, but as the events unfold, it becomes clear that she also has an ulterior consideration in mind.

[RA] a kid from the flock. Though this is plausible enough payment coming from a prosperous pastoralist in a barter culture, it also picks up the motif of the slaughtered kid whose blood was used by Judah and his brothers to deceive Jacob (as Jacob before them used a kid to deceive his father).  This connection was aptly perceived a millennium and a half ago in the Midrash Bereishit Rabba.  The other material element in the brothers’ deception of their father was a garment; Tamar uses a garment—the whore’s dress and veil—to deceive her father-in-law.

Only if you give a pledge.  Tamar is not only bold and enterprising in getting for herself the justice Judah has denied her but also very shrewd: she realizes it is crucial for her to retain evidence of the paternity of the child she may conceive.

Tamar thus secured a pledge which rendered the identification of the owner absolutely certain. Signet, cord and staff were the insignia of a sheik in Canaan, as of a man of rank among the Babylonians and Egyptians.

cord. Used to suspend the seal.

[EF] seal…cord…staff:  Individual objects of identification in the ancient Near East, particularly the seal, which served to sign documents. See Speiser.

[RA] Your seal-and-cord, and the staff in your hand.  The seal was a cylinder seal attached to a cord and usually worn around the neck.  Rolled over documents incised in clay, it would be the means of affixing a kind of self-notarized signature.  It is less clear that the staff had a legal function, though of course in political contexts it is a symbol of authority.  Tamar’s stipulated pledge, then, is an extravagant one: taking the instruments of Judah’s legal identity and social standing is something like taking a person’s driver’s license and credit cards in modern society.

he gave them to her and he came to bed with her and she conceived by him. The rapid chain of verbs suggests the pragmatically focused nature of the transaction for both participants. The last of the three verbs reveals that Tamar gets exactly what she has aimed for.

[RA] by the hand…the woman’s hand. As elsewhere, the physical concreteness of the terms of the narrative is salient: Hirah brings in his hand a kid in order to take back the pledge from the hand of the roadside whore.  Since she remains anonymous for Judah, the narrator is careful to refer to her here as “the woman” rather than by name.

[EF] prostitute: Hebrew kedesha, which in cognate languages may indicate a “holy” official, here seems to describe a woman who is similarly outside the usual constraints of family.

[RA] the place.  The Masoretic Text has “her place” but the more plausible “the place,” as in the next verse, is supported by several of the ancient versions.

the cult-harlot.  Hirah substitutes the more decorous term qedeshah, a woman who practices ritual prostitution in a fertility cult, for the narrator’s frank zonah, ‘whore.

let her take it. Let her keep the pledges, lest, if they search further, he be exposed to shame.  Even before, the revelation of a higher ideal of personal conduct at Sinai and the promulgation of the Holiness code (Lev. XIX), some moral turpitude attached to such conduct.

sent this kid. He feels he could do no more.

[RA] Let her take them, lest he be a laughingstock. Let her keep the pledge, and we will keep our mouths shut, lest it become known that I have given such valuable objects for a fleeting pleasure.  Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly observes:  “In his great lust, he gave three [precious] things for a trivial thing.”

let her be burnt.  Judah, as head of the family, has power of life and death; cf. XXXI,32.  Tamar was the betrothed of Shelah, and betrothal was considered to be as binding as marriage.

[RA]  played the whore . . . conceived by her whoring.  The very term that Hirah fastidiously avoided is twice thrust into Judah’s attention, zantah (played the whore) and zenunim (whoring).

And Judah said, “Take her out to be burned.”  The precipitous speed of Judah’s judgment, without the slightest reflection or call for evidence, is breathtaking.  The peremptory character of the death sentence—and burning was reserved in biblical law only for the most atrocious crimes—is even more evident in the Hebrew, where Judah’s decree consists of only two words, a verb in the imperative (“take-her-out”) followed by “that-she-be-burned,” hotsi’uha wetisaref.

by the man. Tamar acts nobly in witholding the name of the betrayer.  Judah also shows his better side by confessing his sin.  The Rabbis dwell on this act of contrition.

[RA] Out she was taken. There is no pause between the enunciation of the death sentence and the beginning of its interpretation. This speed is highlighted grammatically in the Hebrew by the unusual use of a passive present participle (cognate with “take her out”)–hi muts’eit, literally, “she is-being-taken-out.”

when she sent . . . “Recognize, pray.” Like a trap suddenly springing closed, the connection with the preceding story of the deception of Jacob is now fully realized.  In precise correspondence to Judah and his brothers, Tamar “sends” evidence—in this case, true evidence—to argue her case.  Like them, she confronts the father figure with the imperative, “Recognize, pray” (haker-na’)—this echo, too, was picked up by the Midrash—and, like his father, Judah is compelled to acknowledge that he recognizes what has been brought to him.

26 Yehuda recognized them
and said:

Scripture does not hide the sins of its heroes and heroines.

[RA]  She is more in the right than I. The verb used, tsadaq, is a legal term:  it is she who has presented the convincing evidence.  But in the next clause Judah also concedes that he has behaved unjustly toward Tamar, so that in a sense her taking the law into her own hands, however unconventional the act, is vindicated by his words.

a scarlet thread.  To secure his right as the first-born.

[RA]27-30.  The twins of course recall Jacob and Esau and the whole chain of paired brothers struggling over the right of the firstborn.  Zerah, sticking his hand out first, seems to be the firstborn, but he is overtaken by Perez, who makes a “breach” or “bursts forth” (the meaning of the Hebrew Perets).  Tamar seems to address the energetic newborn in a tone of wondering affection in the exclamation she pronounces as preface to naming him.  Again, the Masoretic Text has “he called his name,” but the reading of several of the ancient versions, “she called,” makes much better sense.  Perez will become the progenitor of the kings of Judah.  The name Zerah means “shining,” as in the dawning of the sun, and so is linked with the scarlet thread on his hand.  The scarlet in turn associates Zerah with Esau-the-Red, another twin displaced from his initial position as firstborn.

29 But it was, as he pulled back his hand, here, his brother came out! So she said:
What a breach you have breached for yourself!

They called his name: Zerah.

• Here is yet another switching of the younger for the older son in the bestowal of blessing upon the firstborn.  
  • As dim as the eyes of Jacob were and even with Joseph’s guidance on which grandson to place his right hand, still he knew which grandson would fulfill the tribal destiny for greatness and switches his hands upon the grandsons. 
  • Then he claims these two sons of Joseph—that adds up to 14, with Joseph getting additional portions besides his own. 
    •  as his own, 
    • with rights equal to the 12,  
• ArtScroll Note: The blessing included a major change in the composition of the Jewish people, in that Jacob elevated Manasseh and Ephraim to the status of his own sons — in effect adopting them as his own — thereby removing the firstborn status from the tribe of Reuben and giving it to Joseph’s offspring. . . [prayer of blessing] Jewish parents will always remember that Joseph’s sons were elevated to the status of full-fledged tribal fathers.  
• • Wouldn’t that make his brothers even more jealous now, And what about all the other grandchildren listed among the 66, what effect would this have on their thinking if any?
  • except that they’re still in grateful-mode 
  • plus they have their past evil deeds to make up to Joseph, 
  • and they’re now the beggars, who are they to complain?
  • Plus the children yet to be born from Joseph?

• They are on foreign soil, Whatever possessions they did have would go to buying food during the famine.
  • and the land they had just left behind —Canaan—was not yet theirs, 
  • while Ur and Haran were 2-3 generations ago and there’s no returning to scheming grand-uncle Laban. 
• If you were in Ephraim and Manasseh’s situation—-
  • half-breeds, 
  • Egypt-born,
  • brought up in relative comfort and prosperity 
  • by a honcho Hebrew father and Egyptian mother
  • exposed to Egyptian culture and way of life, 
  • what would you be thinking? 
  • Your father looks more Egyptian than Hebrew in your eyes, 
  • that is why your uncles didn’t even recognize him. 
  • And now, since Goshen is where all your father’s people will live as shepherds, 
  • are you going to live there too?

took with him his two sons. That Jacob might bless them before his death.

[RA] And he took his two sons with him. Joseph, even before he receives any word from his father in this regard, anticipates that Jacob will confer some sort of special eminence on his own two sons in a deathbed blessing, and so he brings them with him.

Israel strengthened himself.  He exerted himself and sat up, with his feet on the ground.

God Almighty. Heb. ‘El Shaddai’.

Luz. i.e. Beth-el, see XXVIII,19.

[RA] Luz.  This is the older name for Beth-El, where Jacob was vouchsafed his dream-vision of divine messengers ascending and descending the ramp to heaven.

an everlasting possession. In spite of temporary loss, the children of Israel have an inalienable right tot he Land of promise.

and now. Jacob adopts the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, born before he came to Egypt, thus making them equal to any of his other sons.  By giving him  a double portion of his inheritance, he transferred to Joseph the rights of the true firstborn.

[EF] they are mine:  As it were, adopted.  Efrayim and Menashe:  Note how Yaakov reverses the order of birth, see. vv14:17-19.

[RA] your two sons . . . shall be mine—Ephraim and Manasseh, like Reuben and Simeon, shall be mine.  These words are equally fraught with thematic and legal implications.  Jacob explicitly equates Joseph’s two sons with his own firstborn and second-born, intimating that the former are to have as good an inheritance, or better, as the latter, and hus once more invokes the great Genesis theme of the reversal of primogeniture.  (Note that he already places Ephraim, the younger, before Manasseh when he names Joseph’s sons.)  The fact that Reuben has violated Jacob’s concubine and Simeon (with Levi) has initiated the massacre at Shechem may suggest that they are deemed unworthy to be undisputed first and second in line among Jacob’s inheritors.  The language Jacob uses, moreover, is a formula of legal adoption, just as the gesture of placing the boys on the old man’s knees (see verse 12) is a ritual gesture of adoption.  The adoption is dictated by the fact that Ephraim and Manasseh will become tribes, just as if they were sons of Jacob.

called after the name of their brethren.  They will be included in the tribe of Ephraim or in the tribe of Manasseh.

[RA]  And those you begot after them.  It is difficult to square this phrase with the narrative as we have it, which indicates that Joseph has only two sons.  The efforts of some commentators to make the verb a future is not at all warranted by the Hebrew grammar, and, in any case, Joseph has been married more than twenty-five years.

by their brothers’ names they shall be called in their inheritance.  Although the idiom is familiar, the meaning is not entirely transparent.  What Jacob probably is saying is that it is Ephraim and Manasseh who will have tribal status in the future nation, and thus any other sons of Joseph would be “called by their name,” would have claim to land that was part of the tribal inheritance of Ephraim and Manasseh and so designated.

Rachel.  These words, it seems, Jacob spoke to himslef; otherwise he would have said, ‘thy mother.’  It is to honour Rachel, the sorrow of whose loss haunts him all his life, that Jacob adopts her grandchildren as his own sons.  Instead of being the mother of only two tribes, she will now be accounted the ancestress of three, her honour and esteem increasing accordingly (Herxheimer, S.R. Hirsch).

unto me. Or, ‘to my sorrow’ (RV); cf. XXXIII,13.

[EF] Rahel died on me:  The memory is still painful to Yaakov, even after many years.

[RA] As for me, when I was coming from Paddan, Rachel died.  This verse is one of several elements in this chapter that have been seized on by textual critics as evidence of its highly composite nature and of what is claimed to be a concomitant incoherence in its articulations.  But such conclusions seriously underestimate the degree of integrative narrative logic that the writer—or perhaps one must say, the redactor—exhibits.  At first glance Jacob’s comment about the death of his beloved Rachel in the midst of blessing his grandsons seems a non sequitur.  It is, however, a loss to which he has never been reconciled (witness his extravagant favoritism toward Rachel’s firstborn). His vivid sense of anguish, after all these decades, is registered in the single word ‘alai (“to my grief,” but literally, “on me,” the same word he uses in 42:36, when he says in 42:36, when he says that all the burden of bereavement is on him), and this loss is surely uppermost in his mind when he tells Pharaoh that his days have been few and evil.  On this deathbed, then, Jacob reverts obsessively to the loss of Rachel, who perished in childbirth leaving behind only two sons, and his impulse to adopt Rachel’s two grandsons by her firstborn expresses a desire to compensate, symbolically and legally, for the additional sons she did not live to bear.

beheld.  He is on his deathbed with eyes dimmed by the mist that would soon close them forever.  He does not know his grandchildren who accompany their father.  He discerned faintly the figures of the young men but could not distinguish their features; see v. 10.

[RA]  Who are these? Perhaps as several commentators have proposed, he could barely make out their features because he was virtually blind (see verse 10).  “And Israel saw,” then, would mean something like “he dimly perceived,” and it need not be an out-and-out contradiction of the indication of blindness in verse 10.  But the question he asks might also be the opening formula in the ceremony of adoption.

could not see. Clearly; hence his question when seeing Joseph’s sons, ‘Who are these?’

[EF] your face: The final and more powerful occurrence of the term.

from between his knees. To place a child upon the knees was the symbol of adoption.  Joseph’s sons had thus been placed upon or between the knees of Jacob.  This having been done, Joseph removes them.

fell down on his face.  In gratitude to his father.

Jacob was now to bless the lads.  Joseph places Manasseh, the first-born, opposite to Jacob’s right hand. This position was the station of honour.

guiding his hands wittingly.  Jacob against Joseph’s wish, places the younger above the elder.  This is the first instance in Scripture of the laying on of the hands in blessing.

[RA] he crossed his hands. This image, extended in the exchange with Joseph in which the old man says he knows what he is doing, is a kind of summarizing thematic idiogram of the Book of Genesis:  the right hand of the father conferring the blessing reaches across to embrace the head of the younger brother, and the elder, his head covered by the old man’s left hand, receives a lesser blessing.

blessed Joseph. By blessing his children (Rashbam).

[EF] tended: Or “shepherded.”

[RA] the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac,’let them teem multitudinous. Jacob after recapitulating the story of his personal providence in the first line of the blessing-poem, invokes the benediction of the patriarchal line, and then, going back still further in the biblical history, the promise or injunction, of fertility from the Creation story.

the angel. This verse is connected with the preceding verse.  The Jonathan Targum paraphrases:  “The God whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac worshipped, the God who hath nourished me all my life long unto this day—may it be Thy will that the angel whom Thou didst appoint to redeem me from all evil, bless the lads.’

let mhy name be named in them. i.e., ‘may they be worthy of having their names coupled with my own, and those of my ancestors Abraham and Isaac’ (Sforno).

[EF] redeemed me from all ill-fortune: Despite his words in 47:9, perhaps Yaakov achieves a measure of peace in the end.  my name continue to be called through them:  My line continue through them.  teem-like-fish: Others use “become teeming (multitudes).”

it displeased him. Seeing his father place the younger son above the elder.  What is narrated in v. 17-19 happened before the blessing was given (Rashbam).

he held up. He grasped.

I know it. ‘That Manasseh is the firstborn’ (Rashi).

his younger brother shall be greater.  Just as if he had been endowed with his birthright.  The younger brother in Scripture is at times preferred to the elder.  Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and DAvid afford striking instances of this fact.

a multitude. lit. ‘fullness’,

[EF] I know:  Though blind, Yaakov knows exactly what he is doing, unlike his father in Chap. 27.

By thee shall Israel bless. To this day, every pious Jewish father on Sabbath eve places his hands on the head of his son, and blesses him in the words: ‘God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh’ (Authorised Prayer Book, p. 122).  Ephraim and Manasseh would not barter away their ‘Jewishness’ for the most exalted social position, or the most enviable political career, in the Egyptian state.  They volunterily gave up their place in the higher Egyptian aristocracy, and openly identified themselves with their ‘alien’ kinsmen, the despised shepherd-immigrants.  Every Jewish parent may well pray that his children show the same loyalty to their father and their father’s God as did Ephraim and Manasseh.

[RA] And he blessed them that day. The introduction of a second blessing is hardly evidence of a glitch in textual transmission.  After the exchange with Joseph, which follows the full-scale blessing and also explains its implications, Jacob reaffirms his giving precedence to Ephraim over Manasseh (a real datum of later tribal history) by stating a kind of summary blessing in which the name of the younger precedes the name of the elder.  “By you shall Israel bless” is meant quite literally: when the future people of Israel want to invoke a blessing, they will do it by reciting the words, “May God set you as Ephraim and Manasseh.”

This verse is the blessing addressed to Joseph personally.

portion. Heb. shechem. The reference is to the plot of ground purchased by Jacob from Hamor at Shechem; see XXXIII,19.  It seems from the context that this plot of land had fallen into the hands of the Amorites, and had been retaken from them by force of arms.  Jacob’s military exploit is not elsewhere mentioned.

above thy brethren.  i.e. more than thy brethren.  Some commentators explain the exgtra portion bestowed upon Joseph as referring to the privilege accorded to his two sons in being accounted equals of the other tribes.

[EF] one portion over and above:  Hebrew unclear.  We do not know to what event Yaakov is referring in this entire verse.  took away:  Others use “will take,” “must take.”

[RA] I have given you with single intent over your brothers what I took from the hand of the Emorite. The phrase represented here by “with single intent” is a notorious crux, but previous interpreters may have been misled by assuming it must be the object of the verb “have given.”  The Hebrew shekhem ‘aad means literally “one shoulder.”  Many commentators and translators, with an eye to the immediate context of inheritance, have construed this as “one portion,” but the evidence elsewhere in the Bible that shekhem means “portion” is weak.  Others have proposed, without much more warrant than the shape of the shoulder, that the word here means “mountain slope.”  A substantial number of scholars, medieval and modern, read this as a proper noun, the city of Shechem, encouraged by the fact that the Joseph tribes settled in the vicinity of Shechem. That construction, however, entails two difficulties:  if the city were referred to, a feminine form of the word for “one” (not ‘aad but ‘aat) would be required; and at least according to the preceding narrative, Jacob, far from having conquered Shechem with his own sword, was horrified by the massacre his sons perpetrated there.  But the very phrase used here, shekhem ‘aad, occurs at one other place in the Bible, Zephaniah 3:9, where it is used adverbially in an idiomatic sense made clar by the immediate context:  “for all of them to invoke the name of the LORD,/to serve Him shekhem ead [King James Version, with one consent; Revised English Bible and New Jewish Publication Society Bible, with one accord].”  This is then, an expression that indicates concerted unswerving intention and execution, and as such is perfectly appropriate to the legal pronouncement of legacy by Jacob in which it appears.  Once the phrase is seen as adverbial, the relative clause, “what I took . . .,” falls into place with grammatical preciseness as the object of the verb “have given,” and in this reading, no particular city or region need be specified.

13 And he said to Avram: You must know, yes,

know that your seed will be sojourners in a land not theirs; 

they will put them in servitude and afflict them for four hundred years.

1 Yisrael traveled with all that was his 

and came to Be’er-sheva, 

and he slaughtered slaughter-offerings to the God of his father Yitzhak.

came to Beer-sheba. From Hebron, to offer sacrifice where God had appeared to Abraham.  Jacob desired God’s sanction, prior to his leaving the land of Promise.

his father Isaac. Who had built the altar and fixed his home at Beer-sheba.

[RA] And Israel journeyed onward.  The choice of the verb is a little surprising, as one might have expected something like “he arose and set out” or “he went forth.”  It seems likely that this particular verb, with its etymological background of pulling up tent pegs and moving from one encampment to another, is intended to signal that the beginning of the sojourn in Egypt is to be construed as a resumption of the nomadic existence that characterized the lives of Abraham and Isaac.  Thus the clan of Jacob does not head down to Egypt as a permanent place of emigration but as a way station in its continued wanderings.

2 And God said to Yisrael in visions of the night,

he said: 

Yaakov! Yaakov! 

He said: 

Here I am.

in the visions of the night.  In a dream.

[EF] Yaakov! Yaakov! Doubled as in 22;11 and other moments of dramatic revelations in the Bible (e.g., Ex. 3-4).

[RA] Jacob, Jacob. . . Here I am.  This is an exact verbal parallel, as Amos Funkenstein has observed to me, to the exchange between God and Abraham at the beginning of the story of the binding of Isaac.  Perhaps there is a suggestion that the sojourn in Egypt is also an ordeal, with an ultimately happy ending.

3 Now he said:

I am El/God, 

the God of your father.

Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, 

for a great nation will I make of you there.

fear not to go down.  Isaac had intended to migrate to Egypt, but God had forbidden it.  Now permission is granted to Jacob.  ‘It was a sleepless night in which God brought the peace of certainty to the aged man whose being had been stirred to its foundations.  We should feel with the Patriarch that we are at the turning-point of his story, which we today may well call a turning-point in the history of mankind.  It was in Egypt that Israel’s greatest religious genius was to arise’ (Procksch).

[RA] Fear not . . . for a great nation I will make you.  Both the language and the action of this whole scene are framed as an emphatic recapitulation of the earlier Patriarchal Tales now that they are coming to an end as the last of the patriarchs with his offspring leaves Canaan for the long stay in Egypt.  Jacob, traveling south from Hebron, stops at Beersheba, where his father built an altar, and offers sacrifice just as both Isaac and Abraham did.  God appears to him and speaks to him, as He did to Abraham and Isaac.  The language of the dream-vision strongly echoes the language of the covenantal promises to Jacob’s father and grandfather.

4 I myself 

will go down with you to Egypt, 

and I myself 

will bring you up, yes, up again. 

And Yosef will lay his hand on your eyes.

I will go down with thee.  God’s words here imply His promise to protect Jacob in Egypt and to achieve the Divine will concerning him and his offspring (cf. XXVIII,15).

bring thee up again.  i.e. thy descendants.  Some commentators explain the phrase as referring to the burial of Jacob, L,13 9Rashi and Kimchi).

put his and upon thine eyes.  At thy death; it is customary that the living do this to the dead (Ibn Ezra).

[EF] lay his hand on your eyes: I.e., be present at your death.

[RA]  I myself will go down with you.  The first-person pronoun is emphatic because God uses the pronoun ‘anokhi, which is not strictly necessary, followed as it is by the imperfect tense of the verb conjugated in the first-person singular.  The reassurance God offers—which is already the kernel of a theological concept that will play an important role in national consciousness both in the Babylonian exile and after the defeat by the romans in 70 C.E.—is necessary because in the polytheistic view the theater of activity of a deity was typically imagined to be limited to the territorial borders of the deity’s worshippers.  By contract, this God seolemnly promises to go down with His people to Egypt and to bring them back up.

Joseph shall lay his hand on your eyes.  The reference is to closing the eyes at the moment of death.

5 Yaakov departed from Be’er-sheva. 

Yisrael’s sons carried Yaakov their father, their little-ones and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent for carrying him,

Image from newsyoucanbelieve.com

Pharaoh had sent to carry him.  This is repeated with a view of showing how Pharaoh had invited the family of Jacob to come to Egypt.

[RA] and the sons of Israel conveyed Jacob their father.  The repeated stress, in the previous chapter and in this one, on “conveying” or carrying Jacob, together with the women and children, reminds us that he is very old and infirm, no longer an active participant in the journey.

6 and they took their acquired-livestock and their property that they had gained in the land of Canaan 

and came to Egypt, 

Yaakov and all his seed with him,

7 his sons and the sons of his sons with him, his daughters and the daughters of his sons; 

all his seed he brought with him to Egypt.

his daughters. Includes the daughters-i-law.

all his seed. i.e. his great-grandchildren.

[RA]  His sons, and the sons of his sons.  This last verse of the narrative report of the departure for Egypt becomes an apt transition to the genealogy, purposefully inserted at this point from what scholarly consensus deems a different literary source.

8 Now these are the names of the Sons of Israel who came to Egypt: 

Yaakov and his sons: 

Yaakov’s firstborn was Re’uven.

8-27.  The list of Jacob’s descendants who came into Egypt.  Compare the lists in Num. XXVI and I Chron. II-VIII, which show slight variations in the forms of the names.

[EF] Now these are the names . . .”  This phrase opens the book of Exodus, making that book a resumption of the Genesis narrative.

[RA]8-27.  Once again, the genealogical list is used to effect closure at the end of a large narrative unit.  The tales of the patriarchs in the land of Canaan are now concluded, and as Jacob and his clan journey southward for the sojourn in Egypt, we are given an inventory of his offspring, a large family already exhibiting in embryo the configuration of the future tribes of Israel.

9 Re’uven’s sons: Hanokh, Pallu, Hetzron, and Carmi.

10 Shim’on’s sons: Yemuel, Yamin, Ohad, Yakhin, and Tzohar, and Sha’ul the son of the Canaanite-woman.

Jachin. For this name in Solomon’s Temple, see I Kings, VII,21.

a Canaanitish woman. Luzzatto explains that she was the daughter of dinah, and because of her father, Shechem, she is called a ‘Canaanite woman’.

11 Levi’s sons: Gershon, Kehat, and Merari.

12 Yehuda’s sons: Er, Onan, Shela, Peretz, and Zerah, 

but Er and Onan had died in the land of Canaan.

And Peretz’s sons were Hetzron and Hamul.

13 Yissakhar’s sons: Tola, Puvva, Yov, and Shimron.

14 Zevulun’s sons: Sered, Elon, and Yahl’el.

15 These are the sons of Lea, whom she bore to Yaakov in the country of Aram, and also Dina his daughter; 

all the persons among his sons and daughters were thirty-three.

thirty and three.  This number included Jacob, see v. 8.  The actual number of the descendants of Jacob in v. 9-14 is thirty-two.  The Rabbis add Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born exactly at the time of the entrance into Egypt.

16 Gad’s sons: Tzifyon and Haggi, Shuni and Etzbon, Eri, Arodi, and Ar’eli.

17 Asher’s sons: Yimna, Yishva, Yishvi, and Beri’a, and Serah their sister. 

And Beri’a’s sons: Hever and Malkiel.

18 These are the sons of Zilpa, whom Lavan had given to Lea his daughter,

she bore these to Yaakov: sixteen persons.

19 The sons of Rahel, Yaakov’s wife: Yosef and Binyamin.

20 To Yosef there were born in the land of Egypt-whom Asenat, daughter of Poti Fera, priest of

On, bore to him: Menashe and Efrayim.

21 Binyamin’s sons: Bela, Bekher and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ahi and Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard.

Naaman.  Is here one of the sons of Benjamin, but in Num. XXVI,40, the same name occurs as that of a grandson.  Ibn Ezra suggests that the same name is applied to two different persons.  The supposed difficulty of Benjamin having sons and grandsons when coming to Egypt, and at the same time being referred to as ‘a little one’ (XLIV,20), is to be explained by comparing Jacob’s age with that of Benjamin, his youngest son.

22 These are the sons of Rahel, who were born to Yaakov, 

all the persons were fourteen.

23 Dan’s sons: Hushim.

[RA] The sons of Dan, Hushim. Only one son is mentioned, but this need not reflect a contradiction in the text as “the sons of” may be a fixed formula for each new item in the list.

24 Naftali’s sons: Yahtze’el, Guni, Yetzer, and Shillem.

25 These are the sons of Bilha, whom Lavan had given to Rahel his daughter, 

she bore these to Yaakov: all the persons were seven.

26 All the persons who came with Yaakov to Egypt, those going out from his loins, aside from the wives of Yaakov’s sons: 

threescore and six.  The descendants of Leah numbered 33, of Zilpa 16, of Rachel 14, and of Bilhah 7.  The sum of these figures gives a total of 70; but if Jacob, Joseph, and his two sons be excluded, the result is 66.

27 Now Yosef’s sons, who had been born to him in Egypt: the persons were two. 

(Thus) all the persons of Yaakov’s household who came to Egypt were seventy.

28 Now Yehuda he had sent on ahead of him, to Yosef, 

to give directions ahead of him to Goshen. 

to show the way.  For Joseph to direct Judah to the place where Jacob should dwell.  The Midrash explains the Heb. phrase literally, ‘to establish a house of teahcing.’ Such has remained the first care of Jews whenever migrating to a new land—to provide for the religious teaching of their children.

[EF] seventy: Once again, the “perfect” number.

[RA] All the persons of the household of Jacob coming to Egypt were seventy. The traditional commentators resort to interpretive acrobatics in order to make the list come out to exactly seventy—debating as to whether Jacob himself should be included in the count, whether Joseph and his two sons are part of the sum, and so forth.  In fact, the insistence on seventy at the end of the list vividly illustrates the biblical use of numbers as symbolic approximations rather than as arithmetically precise measures.  Seventy is a fullness, a large round number, ten times sacred seven, and its use here indicates that Jacob, once a solitary fugitive, has grown to a grand family, the nucleus of a nation.

29 Yosef had his chariot harnessed and went up to meet Yisrael his father, to Goshen. 

When he caught sight of him 

he flung himself upon his neck 

and wept upon his neck continually.

a good while. i.e. at first neither of them can speak, being overpowered by emotion.

[RA] And Joseph harnessed his chariot.  The specification of the vehicle is another strategic reminder of the Egyptian accoutrements Joseph employs as a matter of course, even as he hurries to meet his father, who comes from a world where there are neither chariots nor wagons.  Realistically, “harnessed,” as Abraham ibn Ezra and many others have noted, would mean, “he gave orders to harness.”  Nevertheless, there is thematic point in the sense of immediacy conveyed by the transitive verb with Joseph as subject, and Rashi registers this point, even if his reading is too literal, when he says:  “He himself harnessed the horses to the chariot in order to make haste in honor of his father.”

and appeared before him. This is a slightly odd phrase, since it is more typically used fo the appearance of God before a human.  Perhaps the sight of the long-lost Joseph, in Egyptian royal raiment, riding in his chariot, is a kind of epiphany for Jacob.  In any case, “appearing before” accords with Jacob’s own emphasis on seeing Joseph’s face.

and fell on his neck, and he wept on his neck a long while. The absence of reciprocal weeping on the part of Jacob can scarcely be attributed to ellipsis or inadvertent narrative omission, for in the identically worded report of Joseph’s falling on Benjamin’s neck and weeping,  we are told, “and Benjamin wept on his neck” (45;14).  We are invited to imagine, then, a sobbing Joseph who embraces his father while the old man stands dry-eyed, perhaps even rigid, too overcome with feeling to know how to respond, or to be able to respond spontaneously, until finally he speaks, once more invoking his own death, but now with a sense of contentment:  “I may die now, after seeing your face, for you are still alive.”

30 Yisrael said to Yosef: 

Now I can die, 

now let me die. Having once more seen Joseph, there was nothing more for him to live for.  He had attained the highest joy in life.

31 Yosef said to his brothers and to his father’s household:

I will go up, so that I may tell Pharaoh and say to him: 

My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me.

32 The men are shepherds of flocks, 

indeed, they have always been livestock men, 

and their sheep and their oxen, all that is theirs, they have brought along.

[RA] handlers of livestock. The Hebrew phrase, ‘anshei miqneh, which occurs only here and in verse 34, literally means “men of livestock.”  It is perhaps influenced by the designation of the brothers as “the men” at the beginning of this verse.

[EF] What is it that you do: What is your occupation?

34 Then say: Your servants have always been livestock men, from our youth until now, so we, so our fathers- 

in order that you may settle in the region of Goshen. 

every shepherd.  The Hyksos, or alien Shepherd-kings, thus seem to have acquired the native Egyptian dislike of foreigners in general and herdsmen in particular.

[EF] every shepherd . . . is an abomination to the Egyptians: Speiser understands this as a reference to the Hyksos “shepherd kings,” who as foreigners ruled Egypt in the mid-Second Millennium (until they were driven out).

[RA] that you may dwell in the land of Goshen.  For every shepherd is abhorrent to Egypt.  This claim is puzzling because there is an indication in the next chapter that Pharaoh had his own flocks (see 47:6b), and there is no extrabiblical evidence that shepherding was a taboo profession among the Egyptians, as the categorical language of the last sentence here appears to suggest.  The least convoluted explanation is that the Egyptians who were by and large sedentary agriculturists and who had large urban centers, considered the seminomadic herdsmen from the north as inferiors (an attitude actually reflected in Egyptian sources) and so preferred to keep them segregated in the pasture region of the Nile Delta not far from the Sinai border.

Genesis/Bereshith 44

The chapter sets forth Joseph’s device to test still further the sincerity and loyalty of his brethren.

1-17. THE DIVINING CUP

 as much as they can carry.  More than they were entitled to by their purchase.  This act of kindness on Joseph’s part was intentional, so as to increase the apparent baseness of their conduct; see v. 4.

put every man’s money.  This was done to prevent the brethren from suspecting Benjamin of having really stolen the goblet.  When they again found their money returned, they could not but believe that the goblet had in the selfsame unaccountable manner come into Benjamin’s sack (Abarbanel).

[RA] put each man’s silver in the mouth of his bag. This detail is a small puzzle because nothing is made of the discovery of silver when the majordomo searches through the bags.  This seeming indiscrepancy has led critics to write off the return of the silver as a later addition to harmonize this episode with the one in Chapter 42, but that is by no means a necessary conclusion.  Joseph’s scheme after all, is to make the brothers feel they are trapped in a network of uncanny circumstances they can neither control nor explain.  A repetition of the device of returning the silver would nicely serve this purpose.  The majordomo, however, is exclusively focused on the retrieval of a particular silver object, the divining goblet, and so does not even deign to mention the weights of silver in the bags, as though their appearance there were a matter of course, whatever consternation it might cause the brothers.  Meanwhile, as in dream logic–or perhaps one should say, guilt logic–the brothers, who once took silver when they sold Joseph down into Egypt, seem helpless to “return” the silver to Egypt, as much as they try.  the returned silve, moreover, makes the purported stealing of the silver goblet look all the more heinous.

He did according to Yosef’s word which he had spoken.

the silver goblet.  Divining goblets were much used in Egypt.  Pieces of gold or silver were thrown into the water or liquid in the goblet and caused movements, which were supposed to represent coming events.

[EF] my goblet: The ensuing scene is somewhat parallel to Rahel’s theft of the terafim (compare v. 9 with 31;32).

[RA]  And my goblet, the silver goblet.  The double formulation highlights both the fact that the goblet is Joseph’s special possession and that it is made of silver.

[RA]  they and their donkeys. Again the donkeys are tacked onto the end of the sentence, perhaps because the donkeys are carrying the packs, which will have to be set down on the ground and then reloaded (verses 11 and 12), in one of which the goblet has been secreted.

rewarded evil for good. Joseph’s steward assumes that they are aware of the theft of this valuable and wonderful goblet.

whereby he indeed divineth. The cup os a sacred one, by which their host obtains oracles.

EF] divines: Cups were used in predicting the future in the ancient Near Eat; see note to 40:11.  The diviner would examine the shapes made by insoluble liquids, such as oil in water.  You have wrought ill:  Resembling Laban’s accusation against Yaakov, “You have done foolishly” (31:28).

[RA]  Is not this the one from which my lord drinks, and in which he always divines?  The fact that the goblet is referred to only by a demonstrative pronoun (“the one from which”) may reflect a flaunting of the assumption that, as all concerned should recognize, the only thing at issue here is the goblet.  The brothers may well have seen Joseph drinking from the goblet at the dinner the day before, whereas its use for divination would have been news to them.  The probably mechanism of divination in a goblet would be to interpret patterns on the surface of the liquid it contained or in drops running down its sides.  Divination would have been a plausible activity on the part of a member of the high Egyptian bureaucracy, with its technology of soothsaying, but the emphasis it is given here is also linked with Joseph’s demonstrated ability to predict the future and his superiority of knowledge in relation to his brothers.

how then should we steal? Their argument is sound.  They had brought back from Canaan the money which they had found in their sacks.  Would they then think of robbing the Egyptian lord, who had treated them with so much consideration?

let him die.  Convinced of their absolute innocence, they propose the penalty of death as the punishment to be inflicted on the thief.  They add to this, slavery for all the other brothers.

[RA]  He of your servants with whom it be found shall die.  This pronouncement of a death sentence for stealing may be excessive in relation to the standards of ancient Near Eastern law, though Gerhard von Rad has proposed that stealing a sacred object would have been deemed a capital crime.  The brothers’ words are quite similar to those spoken by their father to Laban (31:32) before he rummaged through the belongings of Jacob’s wives in search of his missing household gods.  It is a teasing parallel with crucial differences: Laban does not find what he is looking for, but the death sentence pronounced on the actually guilty party—Benjamin’s mother, Rachel—appears to be carried out later when she dies bearing him.

and . . . we shall become slaves to our lord.  This gratuitous additional condition, a reflex of their perfect confidence in their innocence of the theft, carries forward the great theme of moral restitution:  the brothers who sold Joseph into slavery now offer themselves as slaves.  The term ‘eved means both servant and slave, and the speeches in this episode pointedly play the two meanings against each other.  When the brothers refer to themselves as “your servants,” they are clearly using courtly language of self-abasement; when they, or Judah, offer to be slaves, they are proposing to surrender their freedom and enter into a condition of actual servitude.

The steward asks only for hte guilty one to be his bondman.  According to Rashi the verse means; ‘Verily it should be as ye have said (for ye are all accessories, and, therefore, al guilty; but I will be more lenient) he alone with whom it is found shall be my bondman.’

[EF] clear: Of punishment.

[RA] Even so, as by your words, let it be.  These first words of response by the majordomo modifies the sentence to make it more reasonable—the guilty brother will be made a slave and the others allowed to go free.

Then they hastened. This agitated zeal wonderfully depicts their confident innocence (Procksch).

beginning at the eldest.  To prevent suspicion of his knowledge of the affair.  It is also a dramatic touch adding to the excitement of the scene described.

then they rent their clothes. In their grief at the thought of the loss of Benjamin, molurning him as if he were dead.

and Judah. Who assumes the leadership, having undertaken the responsibility of bringing Benjamin home again.

and they fell. The Heb. word denotes a prostration in utter despair.

[RA] And Judah with his brothers came.  The Hebrew says, “Judah and his brothers” but uses a characteristic grammatical device, a verb conjugated in the singular instead of the plural, to indicate that the first-stated noun (Judah) is the principal agent, the thematically focused subject of the verb.  In a moment, Judah will step forward and become the spokesman for all the brothers, the ringing voice of their collective conscience.

will indeed divine.  And thereby discover the thief.

[RA]  Did you not know that a man like me would surely divine?  Like much else in this story, Joseph’s words are contrived to yield a double meaning.  He is saying they should have known that a person of his standing would practice divination and so the goblet they purloined was no mere silver cup but a dedicated instrument of divination.  But, in keeping with the sustained theme of his knowledge and his brothers’ ignorance, he is also suggesting that a man of his powers would be able to divine such a theft, and its perpetrator.

or how shall we clear ourselves? i.e. prove our innocence; the goblet condemns us.

God hath found out the iniquity.  The exclamation does not imply admission of that particular sin: it is the wrong done to their father and to Joseph in the olden days which is behind Judah’s confession.  the work of the moral regeneration of the brothers is complete.

[EF] your servant’s crime: Of seeing Yosef?

[RA] God has found out your servants’ crime. In this case, the double meaning expresses a buried psychological dimentsion in Judah’s plea to Joseph.  On the surface, he is simply conceding guilt as his only recourse because one of his brothers had been caught with the evidence and he has no counterarguments to offer.  But he speaks out of the consciousness of a real guilt incurred by him and his brothers more than two decades earlier—compare their response at their first detention, 42:21—and thus expresses a real sense that God has at last exacted retribution for that act of fraternal betrayal.  He of course cannot guess that the man whom he is addressing perfectly understands both references.  One should note that guilt is assumed by Judah in the first-person plural and is not restricted to “the one in whose hand the goblet was found.”

Here we are, slaves to my lord.  Again, an unconscious principle of retribution asserts itself:  the ten who condemned Joseph to slavery offer themselves as slaves to him, together with Benjamin.

in whose hand the goblet was found. In fact, it was found in the mouth of his bag.  But the reiterated image of the hand holding the goblet links up with all the previous focusing on hands in the story and stresses the idea of agency and responsibility.

[EF] But he said:  “He” is Yosef.  this: Enslaving all of the brothers.

[RA] he shall become my slave.  This is, of course, the last turn of the screw in Joseph’s testing of his brothers:  will they allow Rachel’s other son to be enslaved, as they did with her elder son?

18-34.  The pathos and beauty of Judah’s plea on behalf of Benjamin have retained their appeal to man’s heart throughout the ages.  Sir Walter Scott called it ‘the almost complete pattern of genuine natural eloquence extant in any language.  When we read this generous speech, we forgive Judah all the past, and cannot refuse to say “Thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise”.  The spirit of self-sacrifice which Judah’s speech reveals, offering to remain as a slave in Benjamin’s place, has its parallel in the life-story of Moses, who besought God to blot out his name from the Book of Life, unless his people, Israel, is saved with him (Exod. XXXII,32).

come near.  Not in fear but conscious of the vital issues at stake.  Benjamin’s servitude would involve the death of Jacob and the shame of Judah.

speak a word. He asks pardon for venturing to continue the conversation after Joseph had decided their case.  Just because Joseph is like Pharaoh in authority, it behoves him to listen to the appeal which Judah is about to make.

[EF] Now Yehuda . . . said. . . .”  Yehuda’s great speech, masterful in its rhetoric, is chiefly aimed at stirring up sympathy for the fahter; it contains the word “father” fourteen times.Binyamin, whose appearance  actually causes Yosef great anguish, is hardly treated as a personality at all.  you are like Pharaoh: Lit. “like you is like Pharaoh.”

my lord asked. See XLIII,7.  Judah wishes to divert the sympathy of Joseph towards the unhappy position of the old father bereft of his youngest son, whom Judah refers to as a ‘child of his old age, a little one’.

whose brother is dead, 

his brother is dead. Joseph is now spoken of before his eleven brethren as dead.  Dead, but stilil remembered by their father and brothers.

[RA] an aged father and a young child of his old age.  The phrase suggests the intimate connection between father and child (“aged,” “old age”) as well as Benjamin’s vulnerability as youngest (the Hebrew for “young” also means “little).

his brother being dead, he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him. Either Judah assumes that after more than twenty years of slavery in a foreign land Joseph is likely to be dead or he states Joseph’s absence as death for the sake of rhetorical simplicity, to make clear that the son is irrevocably lost to his doting father.  What is remarkable is that now Judah can bring himself, out of concern for his old father, to accept the painful fact of paternal favoritism  (“and his father loves him”) that was the root of the brothers’ hostility to Joseph.

[RA] that I may set my eyes on him. This phrase, which in other contexts can mean something like showing royal favor toward someone, and which for Joseph has the personal meaning of wanting to behold his full brother, momentarily seems to have been given a sinister twist by the course of events

[EF]  he would die:  “He” refers to Yaakov, although the Hebrew is somewhat ambiguous.

[RA] The lad cannot leave his father.  Although Benjamin is considerably beyond adolescence, “lad” (na’ar), as in a number of other notable occurrences, is a designation that suggests tenderness, and perhaps the vulnerability of the person so designated, and Judah also uses it here because Benjamin is the youngest.  Joseph, it should be noted, had coldly referred to the purportedly guilty Benjamin as “the man” (verse 17).

Should he leave his father, he would die. The translation reflects the ambiguity of the Hebrew, and one may be skeptical of the often-made claim that the second “he” must refer to Jacob.  It seems more likely that this is a studied ambiguity on Judah’s part:  he leaves it to Joseph to decide whether the old man would die if he were separated from Benjamin, or whether Benjamin could not survive without his father, or whether both dire posibilities might be probable.

[RA] Go back, buy us some food.  Judah quotes Jacob’s words to his sons (43:2) verbatim.  The report of their response in the next verse is a more approximate quotation.

26 But we said: We cannot go down;

if our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down, 

[RA] two did my wife bear me. In Judah’s report, Jacob speaks characteristically as though Rachel were his only wife.  Judah appears now to accept this outrageous favoritism as part of what his father is, part of the father he must still love.

torn in pieces; and I have not seen him since.  Joseph now learns the manner of his supposed death.  Do these last words imply a lurking disbelief in Jacob’s mind as to the story of Joseph’s death?  Perhaps they give expression to Jacob’s unquenchable longing for his beloved Joseph. The words must have touched the very core of Joseph’s heart.

[EF] thus far:  A hint that Yosef is still alive, or perhaps a tiny expression of hope.

[RA] he’s been torn to shreds, and I have not seen him since. In the first clause, Jacob is represented as quoting verbatim his actual response to Joseph’s supposed death, yet the second clause has the look of clinging to the hope that Jacob has merely disappeared but has not been killed.

his soul is bound up with the lad’s soul. The same phrase is used of the intertwine souls of David and Jonathan. I Sam. XVIII,1.  The beauty and conciseness of the three Hebrew words cannot be reproduced in translation.

[EF] life:  Heb. nefesh, also “emotions” or “feelings.”

with sorrow to the grave. The skillful repetition of the phrase by Judah is poignantly pathetic.

[EF] our father:  Is Yehuda unknowingly including Yosef?

[RA]  when he saw the lad was not with us.  The Masoretic Text lacks “with us,” though it is reflected in the Septuagint and in one version of the Samaritan Bible.

[RA] For your servant became pledge.  Judah then proceeds to quote the actual formula of his pledge of surety to Jacob.  As many commentators have noted, his invocation of his pledge is a way of explaining why he should have put himself forward as spokesman for the brothers.

abide instead of the lad a bondman. Judah became surety (v.32) and now offers himself as a substitute.  He prefers bondage to freedom, so as to save his brother.  He once saw the anguish of his old father when Joseph was gone.; he cannot endure to see a repetition.

[RA] let your servant, pray, stay instead of the lad as a slave.  Judah, who conceived the plan of selling Joseph into slavery, now comes around 180 degrees by offering himself as a slave in place of Benjamin.

[RA] Let me see not the evil that would find out my father!  This of course stands in stark contrast to his willingness years before to watch his father writhe in anguish over Joseph’s supposed death.  The entire speech, as these concluding words suggest, is at once a moving piece of rhetoric and the expression of a profound inner change. Joseph’s “testing” of his brothers is thus also a process that induces the recognition of guilt and leads to psychological transformation.  

• Deception would follow the life-journey of this 3rd patriarch throughout his life since he first resorted to deception himself in securing Esau’s birthright and blessing from Isaac;
  • His own sons lie to him about Joseph;
  • Joseph resorts to deception in dealing with his brothers though he does it not for revenge but to save his family;
• Did Joseph not love his father Jacob enough to send word that he was alive?
  • After all it was his brothers who obviously hated him enough to cause him harm; 
  • Had he not thought, being a favored son, how his disappearance would break his father’s heart?
  • Had he not wondered how long his father waited for him to come back from the errand Jacob had sent him which gave his siblings the opportunity to eliminate him?
  • Wasn’t he curious what story his brothers concocted to convince Jacob he was gone permanently?
  • At the very first opportunity when he could have (when he was out of prison and occupying a trusted position in Pharaoh’s court) why did Joseph not do so?
  • The Pharaoh seemed grateful enough of him to trust him if he should ask to make a journey home and then return.
  • Or, if he was still afraid of his brothers, he could have sent a message.
• Drought and its feared consequence (lack of food, famine) occurs repeatedly in the story of the formation of the chosen people; 
  • Egypt as the land of plenty is the choice destination of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:
  • Canaan is the future land of milk and honey, promised to the seed of Abraham;
  • But the blessings upon the land appear to be withheld under the Canaanites who have yet to be eliminated from the land;
  • And when the Israelites do occupy it 4 centuries later as prophesied, the land’s abundance or its opposite is conditional upon obedience and disobedience of God’s chosen people.

The geography involved in these patriarchal stories cover the area called “The Fertile Crescent.” When you look at the map, it does have the shape of the curved sickle shape of a waning quarter moon.  Another description of this area is “cradle of civilization” because all these people we do read about in the biblical narratives occupy this geographical area.  It is significant that after almost six millennia, the focus of the world today is still in the modern countries that occupy this part of the world.  In fact, the “hot spots” of what they call the “Arab spring” are here and best of all, Israel is back in the Land.  

Image from www.mrdowling.com

Image from www.pbase.com

GENESIS 42