[Unbracketed commentary from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; additional commentary by RA/Robert Alter, and the translator of The Five Books of Moses, EF/Everett Fox.]

Genesis/Bereshith 45

[RA] Reconciliation: In revealing his true identity at last, Yosef makes two points:  first, that it was all part of God’s plan; and second, that the family must immediately prepare for migration to Egypt.  Thus the personal story is intertwined with the national one, and the text therefore gives limited time and space to psychological details.  The motif of God’s plan is stressed by the repetition of “God sent me” (vv. 5,7,8), while the anticipated bounties of settling in Egypt are brought out by the threefold “good things of Egypt (vv. 18,20,23) and by the repeated exhortation to “come” (v. 18,19).

could not refrain himself.  The repeated references to the misfortune of his aged father overwhelm him; and as he does not wish his retinue to hear of the old crime of his brethren, he orders every man to depart.  He is now alone with his eleven brothers.  There is no interpreter present, and Joseph uses the language of his brethren.

wept aloud.  lit. ‘gave forth his voice in weeping’.

the house of Pharaoh heard.  From the retinue of Joseph.  The news of the coming of Joseph’s brethren travelled fast.

[RA] And he wept aloud. The Hebrew says literally, “and he gave his voice in weeping.”  This is the third, climactic weeping of Joseph: now he no longer turns aside to weep in secret but sobs uncontrollably in the presence of his brothers, so audibly he is heard by the Egyptians outside and heard all the way to the palace of Pharaoh.  As in English, “house” may refer either to the physical structure or to the people associated with it.

doth my father yet live?  The question seems to ask, ‘Is it really true that our father, so old, so sorely tried, is still alive?’ The wonder of it seems to urge the question from Joseph’s lips as the first word in revealing himself to his brethren.  The thought of his father is uppermost in his mind.  He does not wait for an answer.

[RA] I am Joseph  Is my father still alive?  His very first utterance, after his sobs have subsided, is the essential revelation of identity, a two-word (in the Hebrew) bombshell tossed at this brothers.  He follows this by asking whether his father is alive, as though he could not altogether trust the assurances they had given him about this when he questioned them in his guise of Egyptian viceroy.  His repeated reference to “my father” serves double duty:  the first-person singular possessive expresses his sense of personal connection with old Jacob (he is, aftaer all, my father, he is saying to his brothers); but it is also idiomatic usage for the familiar “Father” in biblical Hebrew (rather like ‘abba  in Aramaic and later Hebrew).

He said; I am Yosef your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. 

come near to me.  The better to convince themselves.

[RA] And Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me, pray.”  The purblindness to which a mechanical focus on source criticism can lead is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the contention of some critics that this verse reflects a different source from the preceding verse because it is a “doublet” of it.  What should be obvious is that this repeated speech is a brilliant realization of the dramatic moment.  When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, they are, quite understandably “dismayed.” And so he must speak again, first asking them to draw close.  (The proposal of the Midrash Bereishit Rabba that he invites them to come close in order to show them that he is circumcised is of course fanciful, but the closing of physical space does reflect his sense that he must somehow bridge the enormous distance he has maintained between himself and them in his Egyptian persona.)

I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt.  The qualifying clause Joseph now adds to his initial “I am Joseph” is surely a heart-stopper for the brothers, and could be construed as the last—inadvertent:—gesture of his test of them.  Their most dire imaginings of retribution could easily follow from these words, but instead, Joseph immediately proceeds in the next sentence to reassure them.

be not grieved.  ‘With the singular generosity Joseph reassures them by pointing out the Providential purpose which had overruled their crime for good’ (Skinner).

sold me hither. i.e. caused me to be sold hither.

[EF] (upset): At each other, or referring to each individual’s feelings of guilt.

[RA] do not be incensed with yourselves. The literal Hebrew wording is “let it not be incensed in your eyes.”  

for sustenance God has sent me before you. Joseph’s speech is a luminous illustration of the Bible’s double system of causation, human and divine.  Commentators have tended to tilt the balance to one side, making Joseph a mouthpiece of piety here.  His recognition of a providential plan may well be admirable from the viewpoint of monotheistic faith, but there is no reason to assume that Joseph has lost the sense of his own brilliant initiative in all that he has accomplished, and so when he says “God” (‘elohim, which could also suggest something more general like “providence” or “fate”), he also means Joseph.  “Before you” is the first intimation that he intends the whole clan to come down to Egypt after him.

a remnant.  Offspring, descendants.

but God.  Joseph again ascribes his presence in Egypt to the intervention of God.

a father.  Heb. Ab, which is the exact transliteration of an Egyptian title of state rank, corresponding to ‘vizier’.

[RA[ father to Pharaoh.  The obvious meaning of “father” is “authority,” and there are biblical parallels for this sense of the term.  It is a matter of debate among specialists whether the term also reflects an actual Egyptian administrative title.  Joseph’s characterization of his political power moves outward through concentric circles from Pharaoh to the court (“all his house”) to the whole land of Egypt.

tarry not. The anxiety to see his father is revealed by this request.

[RA] Thus says your son Joseph.  This is the so-called messenger formula that is regularly used in biblical Hebrew as a kind of salutation to introduce letters or orally conveyed messages.

Goshen.  The railway from Alexandria to Suez now runs through the district where Joseph’s father and family settled.  It was the best pasture-land in Egypt.

thou shalt be near unto me. This was possibly spoken with a view of inducing Jacob to come to Egypt.

[RA] the land of Goshen.  “Land” here obviously means a region, not a country.  The area referred to is the rich pastureland of the Nile Delta, which would also be close to the border of the Sinai.  In historical fact, Semitic nomads from the Sinai were granted permission by the Egyptian government to graze their flocks in this region.

[EF] as disinherited: Or “reduced-to-poverty.”

[RA] lest you lose all.   The Hebrew verb here has often been confused with another one, with which it shares two consonants, meaning “to become poor.:”;  The literal meaning of the verb used by Joseph is “to be inherited,” that is, to lose all of one’s possessions, either through bankruptcy or by being conquered by an enemy.

your eyes see.  This spoken to his dazed and still incredulous brethren.

[RA] it is my very mouth that speaks to you. As Abraham Ibn Ezra nicely observed, until the crucial moment when Joseph said, “Clear out everyone around me,” all his communications with the brothers would have been through an interpreter, as we were reminded in 42:23.  Now he has been speaking to them directly in their native Hebrew, a fact they may have barely assimilated in their dumbfounded condition, and of which he reminds them now at the end of his speech as confirmation of his identity.

[RA] and he wept, and Benjamin wept.  After the three times Joseph wept apart from his brothers, there is at last a mutual weeping in the reunion of the two sons of Rachel.

after that. The brethren did not talk with him until he had shown the same fraternal love to them as he had done to Benjamin.  Then they knew ‘that his heart was with them’  (Kimchi).

[EF] his brothers spoke with him:  Which they could not do “in peace” in 37;4.

[RA] And after that, his brothers spoke with him. The brothers’ silence through Joseph’s long speech is an eloquent expression of how overwhelmed they are by this amazing revelation.  Only now, after he embraces them and weeps over them, are they able to speak, but the writer preserves the dramatic asymmetry between Joseph and his brothers by merely referring to their speaking without assigning actual dialogue to them.

16-20.  Pharaoh seconds Joseph’s invitation and orders wagons to be sent for the conveyance of Jacob and his family.

[EF] come: The verb focuses toward Pharaoh’s invitation to follow: “Yosef’s brothers have come!” (v. 16) to “and come to me” (v. 18) to “and come” (v.19).

[EF] Migration to Egypt
(45:16-47:12):  Yaakov’s descent to Egypt involves three meetings with God, with Yosef, and with Pharaoh.  The first is God’s final revelation to Yaakov.  God had previously forbidden Yitzhak to go to Egypt during a famine (26:1-2), but his son may now go as part of the divine plan, his people’s destiny.  The blessing given to Avraham’s children (particularly to Yishmael) is repeated in 46:3, and God will be “with” Yaakov (46:4) on this journey as he has been on others.

The meeting between father and long-lost son is brief but powerful, returning as it does to the “face” motif (46:30).  Immediately afterward Yosef gives the family advice on how to demonstrate their usefulness to the Egyptians, and one is struck by the precariousness of their situation in even this best of circumstances.

Yaakov’s brief audience with Pharaoh is both moving and pathetic.  the Patriarch sums up his life in depressing terms, and it becomes clear that long life (he believes his own to be short), in addition to wealth and fertility, is considered a sign of divine favor.

The actual migration is sketched in a few brief strokes.  The list of names in 46:8-27 has been constructed on patterned numbers, with a total of seventy.

load your animals and go, 

the good of the land.  Seems to be parallel to the next phrase, ‘the fat of the land’; wherever the word fat is used, it means the best, the most desirable part of anything (Rashi).

[EF] good-things: More preciesly “best things” (“good” has been retained here to indicate a major theme of the story: good and ill).

[RA]  the best of the land of Egypt.  The source critics have noted an apparent contradiction with Joseph’s instructions, which are to settle specifically in the region of Goshen—unless one construes “the best of the land” as a reference to that fertile area, something supported by 47:11.

live off the fat of the land. The Hebrew says literally, “eat the fat of the land.”

now thou art commanded, this do ye.  The phrase is elliptical, it means:  ‘Now thou art commanded by me to tell them, this do ye’ (Rashi).

[RA] And you, charge them. The Masoretic Text has “And you [singular] are charged,” which is a little incoherent in light of what follows.  Both the Septuagint and the Vulgate read “charge them.”  Evidently Joseph is enjoined by Pharaoh to transmit this royal directive to his brothers conferring special status on their clan (Nahum Sarna).

also regard not your stuff.  They would have to leave much of their property in the land of Canaan, and would be able to transport only part of their movable property, but they should pay no regard to this.

for the good things of all the land of Egypt are yours.  Thus Jacob and his family came to Egypt at the express invitation of the king.  There was even a promise of good treatment to the immigrants as guests of the State, which one of their family had saved.  As free men they were subsequently entitled to return at their pleasure to their old home in Canaan.

[EF] Let not your eyes look-with-regret: Possibly “Do not stint.”

[RA] regret not your belongings. The literal meaning of the Hebrew idiom used is “let not your eye spare.”

according to the commandment of Pharaoh.  i.e., provided by the king.

[RA] as Pharaoh had ordered.  This reflects the Hebrew locution that means literally “according to Pharaoh’s mouth.”

[EF] but to Binyamin he gave: The original situation (Chap. 37) is set up once more; this time the brothers do not react adversely to the youngest son’s being favored.

[RA]  he gave changes of garments, and to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver.  The bestowal of garments, as Nahum Sarna notes, is a kind of antithetical response to Joseph’s having been stripped of his garment.  The regal amount of silver given to Benjamin is the final gesture of “restitution” for the twenty pieces of silver the brothers took for the sale of Joseph.

[RA] as follows.  Because a whole list of items is being introduced, the narrator announces it with kezo’t, a term prefaced to catalogues or inventories.

fall not out by the way.  This is usually interpreted as meaning, ‘Do not quarrel owing to mutual recriminations.’

[RA] Do not be perturbed on the journey. There has been some dispute about the meaning of the verb here.  It is occasionally used in contexts that associate it with anger, and so many interpreters have imagined that Joseph is warning his brothers not to yield to mutual recrimination and perhaps fall to blows on the way home.  But the primary meaning of the verb is “to quake” or “to shake,” either physically (as a mountain in an earthquake) or emotionally (as a person trembling with fear), and it is the antonym of being tranquil or at peace.  In all likelihood, Joseph is reassuring his brothers that they need not fear any lurking residue of vengefulness on his part that would turn the journey homeward into a trap.

his heart fainted. i.e. his heart stood still, unable to beat for astonishment.

for he believed them not. The news was too good to be true.

[RA] his heart stopped. Translations like  “his heart fainted’ (King James Version), “his heart was numb” (Speiser and New Jewish Publication Society), and “he was stunned” (Revised English Bible) blunt the force of the original.  The Hebrew verb plainly means to stop, or more precisely, to intermit.  Judah had warned that the loss of Benjamin would kill the old man.  Now the tremendous shock of this news about Joseph, which at first he cannot believe—does he imagine his less-than-trustworthy sons are perpetrating a cruel hoax? —induces a physical syncope.

[EF]  Yosef’s words:  In Chap. 37 his words were damaging, but here they are life-giving.

[RA] And they spoke to him all the words of Joseph . . . and he saw the wagons. Jacob’s incredulity begins to yield to the circumstantial account of Joseph’s own story that his sons give him.  Then he fully registers the presence of the wagons, which would have been oxen-drawn vehicles of a distinctive Egyptian design that would not normally be seen in Canaan and that mere foreign buyers of grain would surely not be able to obtain.  At this point his “spirit . . . revived,” that is, came back to life:  he emerges from the state of temporary heart failure, or heart pause, triggered by the astounding report.  One should note that the only hint of direct discourse given to the brothers in this scene is “Joseph is still alive” (just three words, four syllables, in the Hebrew). The effect is to keep them in the background, even though they are actually speaking to Jacob.  Joseph looms in the foreground in the first half of the chapter, as does Jacob—the father from whom he has been so long separated—in the second half.

it is enough.  ‘What care I for all his glory?  Joseph, my son, is still alive!’

[RA]  Joseph my son is still alive. Let me go see him before I die.  The wonderful poignancy of these words should not deflect us from noting that Joseph is again invoking a kind of self-defining motif.  Ever since Joseph’s disappearance twenty-two years earlier in narrated time, he has been talking about going down to the grave.  By now, he has in fact attained advanced old age (see 47:9), and so the idea that he has little time left is quite reasonable.  The brief seizure he has just undergone is of course evidence of his physical frailty.  Jacob’s story, like David’s, is virtually unique in ancient literature in tis searching representation of the radical transformations a person undergoes in the slow course of time.  The powerful young man who made his way across the Jordan to Mesopotamia with only his walking staff, who wrestled with stones and men and divine beings, is now an old man tottering on the brink of the grave, bearing the deep wounds of his long life.

• Joseph is given an Egyptian name by the Pharaoh: Joseph is given an Egyptian woman Asenath for a wife
  • Tsophnath Pa’neach 
  • “The man to whom secrets are revealed”
• Joseph sires 2 halfbreed Egypt-born sons
  • firstborn Menashsheh:
    •  ‘Elohiym has made me forget all my toil, and my fa¬ther’s house.’
  • secondborn Ephrayim: 
    • ‘For ‘Elohiym has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.’  

[We feature three commentaries here:  the unbracketed is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; RA/Robert Alter, EF/Everett Fox; the latter’s translation is what we feature here.—Admin1.]

Genesis/Bereshith 41

two full years.  After the events recounted in the previous chapter.

[EF] two years’-time: Lit. ‘two years of days.’

[RA] at the end of two full years. The Hebrew says literally “two years of days.”  The expression might simply mean “two years’ time,” but it is equally plausible, as the King James Version surmised, that the addition of “days” emphasizes that a full period of two years has elapsed before the course of events compel the chief cupbearer to recall his neglected promise to Joseph.

by the Nile.  Given the Nile’s importance as the source of Egypt’s fertility, it is appropriate that this dream of plenty and famine should take place on its banks, a point made as long ago as the thirteenth century in Narbonne by the Hebrew exegete David Kimhi.  As this story set in the pharaonic court unfolds, its Egyptian local color is brought out by a generous sprinkling of Egyptian loanwords in the Hebrew narrative: “Nile” (ye’or), “soothsayers” (artumim) “rushes” (‘au), “ring” (taba’at), “fine linen” (shesh).

reed grass.  Heb. achu, another Egyptian loan-word.  The Nile-grass is meant here.

[EF] cows: in later (Ptolemaic) Egyptian inscriptions, as here, cows represent years.

[RA] and stood by the cows.  There is a small ominous note in the fact that the second set of seven cows do not graze in the rushes, as the first seven do, and as one would expect cows to do.  In a moment, they will prove themselves carnivores.

[RA] and Pharaoh awoke. Although Pharaoh’s dreams, like Joseph’s, are quite stylized, the one element of psychological realism is his being shaken out of sleep by the nightmarish turn of the dream plot.

rank. Heb. ‘fat. i.e. rich.

[EF] fat and good: Referring to the ears of grain.

east wind. The dreaded sirocco coming from Arabia. It lasts at times fifty days and destroys the vegetation.

[RA] blasted by the east wind. The desert lies to the east, and the wind that blows from there (the amsin) is hot and parching.

[RA] and the meager ears swallowed the seven fat and full ears.  The nightmare image of carnivorous cows is intensified in the second dream by this depiction of devouring stalks of grain.  The imagery of Pharaoh’s second dream corresponds to the grain imagery of Joseph’s first dream, but an act of depredation is substituted for the ritual of obeisance.

his spirit was troubled. The double dream convinced him of its significance.  The Heb. verb for ‘was troubled’ suggests the violent beating of the heart in excitement.

magicians. Or, ‘sacred scribes’; Heb. chartumim—probably an Egyptian god.

none that could interpret. The complete failure of heathen magic is here contrasted with the perfect wisdom of the God-inspired Hebrew slave; cf. Exod. VII,12, and Daniel II and V.

[EF] his dream: The two dreams function as one, as Yosef explains.

[RA] his heart pounded. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “his spirit pounded.” none could solve them for Pharaoh. Since it is implausible to imagine that the soothsayers had no interpretation at all to offer, one must assume that none could offer a convincing decipherment, as Rashi observes: “they interpreted (the dreams) and he was dissatisfied with their interpretation, for they would say: seven daughters you will beget, seven daughters you will bury.

I make mention of my faults. Not only his offence against the king, but also his sin against Joseph in forgetting him.

[RA] I recall. The verb means both “to mention” and “to cause to remember” and so is linked with the theme of remembrance and forgetting what is central to both to this episode and to the larger Joseph story.

to each man according to his dream.  The dream was appropriate to each one, and the interpretation was equally appropriate.

[RA] a slave. Although the Hebrew ‘eved is the same term the chief cupbearer has just used in the sense of “servant” (and which is used in verses 37 and 38 to refer to Pharaoh’s courtiers), it is likely that he invokes it here to highlight Joseph’s status as slave.

he shaved, changed his clothes, and came before Pharaoh.

[RA] and he shaved and changed his garments. It is obvious that an imprisoned slave would have to make himself presentable before appearing in court, but, in keeping with the local color of the story, he does this in a distinctively Egyptian fashion.  In the ancient Near East, only the Egyptians were clean-shave, and the verb used here can equally refer to shaving the head, or close-cropping it, another distinctive Egyptian practice.  The putting on of fresh garments is realistically motivated in the same way, but we are probably meant to recall that each of Joseph’s descents into a pit was preceded by his being stripped of his garment.  When Pharaoh elevates him to viceroy, he will undergo still another change of clothing, from merely presentable dress to aristocratic raiment.

[RA] I have heard about you that you can understand a dream. “Heard” and “understand” are the same verb (shama’), which has both these senses, precisely like the French entendre.  Though the second clause has often been construed as a kind of hyperbole—you need only hear a dream to reveal its meaning—the straightforward notion of understanding dreams makes better sense.

it is not in me. Pharaoh assumed that Joseph was a professional interpreter of dreams.  Josephs answer is a fine combiantion of religious incerity and courtly deference.

an answer of peace.  i.e. an answer that will correspond to the needs of Pharaoh and his people.

such as I never saw. Pharaoh colours the recital by giving expression to the feelings which the dream excited.

[EF] in all the land . . . I have never seen their like: Pharaoh’s description of the his dream is more vivid than the narrator’s (vv1-4).

[RA] gaunt and very foul-featured and meager in flesh, I had not seen their like in all the land of Egypt. In keeping with the biblical convention of near verbatim repetition, Pharaoh, in recounting his dreams to Joseph, uses virtually the same words that the narrator used in first reporting them.  The piquant difference, as Meir Sternberg (1985) has noted, is that his language underlines his own sense of horror at what he has seen in his dream: “foul to look at and meager in flesh” is elaborated and intensified in Pharaoh’s repetition, and he adds the emphatic exclamation, “I had not seen their like . . .” (The phrase “in all the land of Egypt” will become a verbal motif to indicate the comprehensiveness of the plenty, of the famine, and of the measures that Joseph adopts.) The comment in verse 21 about the unchanging lean look of the cows after swallowing their fat predecessors again reflects Pharaoh’s horrified perspective.

meager in flesh. Here, and again in verses 20 and 27, I read daqot, “meager,” instead of the Masorettic raqot (“flat,” or perhaps “hollow”).  The Hebrew graphemes for d and r are similar in form, and several of the ancient versions reflect daqot in these verses.

[RA] and none could tell me the meaning. The Hebrew uses an ellipsis here, “and none could tell me.”

is one. The two dreams have the same meaning. They are a foreoding of what God is about to do.

[EF] Is one: Or “has a single meaning.”

[RA] Pharaoh’s dream is one. Joseph, it should be observed, doesn’t miss a beat here.  The moment he has heard the dreams, he has everything in hand: the meaning of all their details, and the explanation for the repetition.

[EF] The seven good cows . . .:  Yosef’s interpretation is highly structured.  The rhetoric emphasizes the last line of v. 27 after hearing “x are seven years,” three times we hear “x will be seven years of famine!” See above, 40:19, where “Pharaoh will lift up your head” is followed by “from off you.”

[RA] what God is about to do He has shown Pharaoh. Although the framework of the Joseph story is “secular” in comparison to the preceding narratives, and though Joseph’s exercise of okhmah (wisdom) in dream interpretation and economic planning has led scholars to detect a strong imprint of ancient Near Eastern Wisdom literature, he himself is careful to attribute the determination of events as well as his own “wisdom and discernment” to God (compare verse 16).  Whatever the considerations of source criticism, moreover, the name he uses for the deity in speaking with Pharaoh is ‘elohim, the term that has general currency among polytheists and monotheists, and not the particularist YHWH.

33-36. Joseph explains how God gives Pharaoh the answer of peace (v. 16).  The interpretation of the dream is supplemented by the practical advice as to how the coming crisis should be met. Joseph the dreamer and saint proves himself in an eminent degree a man of practical affairs.

[RA] And so, let Pharaoh look out for a discerning, wise man. The advice after the interpretation has not been requested. Joseph perhaps runs the risk of seeming presumptuous, but he must have a sense that he has captivated Pharaoh by the persuasive force of his interpretation, and he sees that this is his own great moment of opportunity.  One wonders whether Pharaoh’s two dreams also make him remember his own two dreams of future grandeur.

let him appoint appointed-overseers: We already know that Yosef is a man often entrusted with responsiblity—“appointed” (39:4, 40:4). dividing. . . into five parts: Hebrew obscure. B-R uses “arm (the land of Egypt).”

[RA] muster the land of Egypt. The meaning of the verb imesh is disputed.  It could be derived from amesh, “five,” and thus refer to a scheme of dividing the land into fifths or perhaps taking a levy of 20 percent from the crops of the good years. (In chapter 47, once the great famine is under way, Joseph institutes a 20 percent tax on the produce of the lands that have been made over to Pharaoh).  But the same root is also used for the arming or deployment of troops, and the idea here may be that Joseph is putting the whole country on a quasmilitary footing in preparation for the extended famine.

the hand of Pharaoh. i.e. in the royal granaries.

in the cities. Where the royal granaries were.

[EF] hand: I.e. supervision.

[RA] under Pharaoh’s hand. Joseph deferentially and diplomatically indicates that everything will be under Pharaoh’s jurisdiction, though it will really be the “hand”—authority, power, trust—of the “discerning, wise man” that will run the country.

store. A reserve.

[EF] the land: i.e. Its people.

in whom the spirit of God is.  i.e. combining the supernatural power of interpreting dreams with the practical sagacity of a statesman.

[EF]  The words seemed good: Words now bring about Yosef’s rise to power.

[RA] Could we find a man like him, in whom is the spirit of God?  Pharaoh produces exactly the response Joseph would have hoped for.  Again, the flexibility of ‘elohim serves the dialogue well.  The Egyptian monarch has not been turned into a monotheist by Joseph, but he has gone along with Joseph’s idea that human wisdom is a gift of God, or the gods, and the expression he uses could have the rather general force of “divine spirit.”

To your orders shall all my people submit; 

over my house.  He makes him Grand Vizier.

he ruled. Or, ‘do homage.’

[EF] the One Over My House: A title similar to that ofo Yosef’s steward lin 43:16ff. submit: Hebew obscure. only by the throne: similar to Yosef’s situation in Potifar’s house.  “He is no greater in this house than I” (39:9)—but he withholds his wife.

[RA] by your lips all my folk shall be guided. The Hebrew says literally “by your mouth.”  The clear meaning is “by your commands,” “by the directives you issue.”  There is some doubt about the verb yishaq. The usual sense of “will kiss” is extemely unlikely here, unless this is a peculiar idiom for civil obedience not otherwise attested.  It is best to associate it with the noun mesheq (15:2), which appears to refer to economic administration.

[EF] all the land of Egypt: A refrain here, pointing to Yosef’s power.

[RA] And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See I have set you.”  This is a nice deployment of the convention of a second iteration of the formula for introducing direct discourse without an intervening response from the interlocutor.  Joseph for the moment has remained silent, uncertain what to say to Pharaoh’s astounding proposal, even if eliciting such a proposal may have been his express intention.  So Pharaoh must repeat himself—this time in a performative speech-act in which he officially confers the high office on Joseph and confirms the act by adorning the Hebrew slave with regal insignia: the signet ring, the golden collar, and the fine linen dress.

signet ring. Thereby symbolically endowing him with royal authority.

fine linen. The Heb. word comes from the Egyptian. It is the material worn by the royal family and the highest officials of the kingdom.

a gold chain. The gold collar appertaining to the office of Grand Vizier. This is another instance of the remarkable historical exactness of the Joseph narrative.  ‘No ancient civilization was more distinct and unique than that of Egypt.  Her customs, her language, and her system of writing were shared by no other people; and yet at every point, the narrative reveals a thorough familiarity with Egyptian life. Peculiar Egyptian customs are also reflected in the stories; as, for example , the giving of the much-prized golden collar, which was bestowed upon a public servant for distinguished achievement’ (F.C.Kent).

[RA] the golden collar. Although English translators have repeatedly rendered this as “chain,” Egptian bas-reliefs show a more elaborate ceremonial ornament made out of twisted gold wire that covered part of the shoulders and upper chest as well as the neck. In fact, the Hebrew word is not the normal term for “chain,” and reflects a root that means “to plait,” “to cushion,” “to pad.”

second chariot. Next to Pharaoh’s. Horses and chariots were introduced into Egypt during the Yhksos period.

abrech. ‘Probably an Egyptian word similar in sound to the Herew word meaning “to kneel”‘ (RV Margin).

[EF] Avrekh/Attention:  Hebrew unclear.  Some suggest that it is Hebrew for “bend the knee,” others that it resembles an Assyrian title.

[RA] Abrekh. Despite the ingenuity of traditional commentators in construing this as a Hebrew word, it is evidently Egyptian (in consonance with the loanwords in the surrounding narrative) and may mean something like “make way.”  Gerhard von Rad calls attention to this meaning while canvassing other possibilities and sensibly concluding that the term is entirely certain.

lift up his hand or his foot. i.e. do anything.

[RA] I am Pharaoh! Most commentators and translators have construed this as an implied antithesis: though I am Pharaoh, without you no man shall raise hand or foot . . . But this is unnecessary because we know the royal decrees in the ancient Near East regularly began with the formula:  I am King X.  The sense here would thus be: By the authority invested in me as Pharaoh, I declare that without you, etc.

Zuphenath-paneah.  Joseph receives a new name on his state appointment.  This is both an Egyptian and a Hebrew custom; e.g. Num. XIII,16. Egyptologists explain that Zaphenath means ‘food-man’, and paneah, ‘of the life,’ i.e. the Chief Steward in the realm in face of Famine (Kyle).  The importance of the change of name in the story lies in the fact that it helps to conceal the identity of Joseph when his brethren come to Egypt.

Asenath. i.e. belonging to the goddess Neith.

Poti-phera. To be distinguished from Potiphar, the former master of Joseph.

On. Later known as Heliopolis, near Cairo.  On was the centre of Sun worship in Egypt. Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames Embankment originally stood on On.

[EF] Tzafenat-Pane’ah/The God Speaks and He lives: An Egyptian name which is appropriate to the story. Yosef lives, and through him so do Egypt, his family, and the future People of IsraYosef’s influence: Perhaps an idiom, or merely “Yosef went out.”

[RA] Zaphenath-Paneah. The change to an Egyptian name is of a piece with the assumption of Egyptian dress and the insignia of high office.  the name may mean “God speaks, he lives, as Moshe Weinfeld, following the lead of Egyptologists, surmises.

Potiphera. This is the full form of the same name borne by Joseph’s old master, Potiphar, but evidently refers to a different person, since Potiphar was identified as courtier and high chamberlain, not as priest.  On is not a deity but the name of a city, later designated Heliopolis by the Greeks because of the sun worship centered there.

Joseph went out over the land. The wording is a little odd.  It may be assoociated with the end of verse 46.

thirty years old.  He had spent about twelve years in prison.

[EF] thirty: Yosef will be in power for eighty years (2×40), another patterned number.

[RA] when he stood before Pharaoh. This could mean, idiomatically, when he entered Pharaoh’s service, though it is equally possible that the verb refers literally to the scene just reported, when he stood before Pharaoh and made his way to greatness by interpreting the dreams.

in heaps. The produce was mot abundant. Some Jewish commentators render, ‘for the store houses.’

[RA] made gatherings. The Hebrew qematsim elsewhere means “handfuls,” and there is scant evidence that it means “abundance,” as several modern versions have it.  But qomets is a “handful” because it is what the hand gathers in as it closes, and it isphonetically and semantically cognate with wayiqbots, “he collected,” the very next word in the Hebrew text.  The likely reference here, then, is not to small quantities (handfuls) but to the process of systematically gathering in the grain, as the next sentence spells out.

[RA] like the sand of the sea, very much, until he ceased counting.  The language here is strongly reminiscent of the covenantal language in the promise of progeny to Abraham and thus provides a kind of associative link with the notice of Joseph’s progeny in the next three verses.  Upon the birth of Ephraim, Joseph himself will invoke the verb for making fruitful that is featured in the repeated promises of offspring to the patriarchs.

all my toil, and all my fathers house. His position had made him forget his toil as a bondman, and the will-will of his brethren that was the cause of that bondage.  Or, the phrase can be viewed as the Heb. idiom for ‘all the suffering caused to me by my father’s house’, i.e. my brethren (Wogue).

{EF] Menashe: Trad. English “Menasseh.” made-me-forget: Yet he does not forget for long, any more than the cupbearer did (Chap. 41).

[RA] Menasseh . .  released me from all the debt.  The naming pun is on the verbal stem n-sh-h. The virtually universal construal of this term here is “made me forget,” but it must be said that the root in that sense occurs only five times in the biblical corpus, and at least two or three of those are doubtful.  It is also somewhat odd that Joseph should celebrate God for having made him forget his father’s house.  But a very common usage of n-sh-h is “to hold in debt,” and a natural meaning of that stem in the pi’el  conjugation, as here, would be “to relieve from the condition of debt.”  Such an unambiguously positive verb is a better parallel to “made me fruitful” in the next verse. I am grateful to Amos Funkenstein for this original suggestion.

52 And the name of the second he called: Efrayim/Double-fruit, meaning: God has made me bear fruit in the land of my affliction.

[EF] bear fruit . . . affliction: Two expressions from the stories about the Patriarchs.

[RA] Ephraim . . . made me fruitful. The naming pun is on the verbal stem p-r-h.

all lands. All the neighbouring lands.

[EF] Famine occurred in all lands: The repetition of “all” here brings home the totality of the famine.

[RA] all the land of Egypt was hungry. The contradiction between this report and the preceding statement that there was bread in Egypt is pointed. There is food in storage, not to be had from the wasted fields, but Joseph metes it out tot he populace, and at a price.

the storehouses.  The granaries.

[RA] Joseph laid open whatever had grain within. The Masoretic Text, which lacks “whatever had grain,” is problematic at this point.  The Aramaic Targums supply these missing words.  Other ancient versions presume a phrase like “stores of grain.”

all countries. i.e. ‘the whole world’, everybody. This verse prepares for the next scene of the drama (Chap. XLII).

GENESIS 42 

JOSEPH’S BRETHREN IN EGYPT

 saw.  He had probably seen the corn brought by caravans.

 why do you look one upon another?  Paralysed by doubt and helplessness (Luzzatto).

[RA] provisions.  Most of the biblical occurrences of this noun shever, as well as the transitive verb shavar (verse 3, “to buy”) and the causative verb hishbir (verse 6) are in this story.  The root means “to break,” and the sense seems to be: food provisions that serve to break an imposed fast, that is, a famine (hence “provisions to stave off the famine,” shever ra’avon, in verse 19).  The term “rations” adopted by at least three recent translations has a misleading military connotation.

fearful.  All English versions construe this as a reflexive of the verb for seeing (r-‘-h) and render it along the lines of “staring at one another.”  But the four other occurrences of this root in the reflexive in the Bible invariably link it with panim (“face”), and staring as a gesture of inaction is not characteristically biblical.  The Targum of Yonatan derived the verb from the root meaning “to fear” (y-r-‘), a construal feasible without emendation because the yod can be elided.  Fearing and the injunction to fear not are recurrent elements in the story of the brothers’ descent to Egypt.

[EF] that we may live and not die:  This becomes a refrain in the story, alternating in meaning between Yosef’s family (here and 43:8) and the Egyptians (47:19).

[RA] And he said. The repetition of the formula introducing speech with no intervening response from the person of persons addressed accords with the general biblical convention we have observed elsewhere: such repetition is an indication of a failure of response by the interlocutors.  The brothers here do not know how to respond to their father’s challenge.

that we may live and not die. The almost excessive spelling out in Jacob’s words may reflect his impatience with his sons, who are acting as though they did not grasp the urgency of the situation.

to buy some rationed grain from Egypt.

[RA] the ten brothers. Biblical narrative is meticulous in its choice of familial epithets.  When the ten go down to Egypt to encounter the man who will prove to be their supposedly dead brother, they are identified as Joseph’s brothers, not Jacob’s sons.

[EF] Yosef’s brother: His full brother, as opposed to the others who were half-brothers.

[RA]  Benjamin, Joseph’s brother.  The identification of Benjamin as Joseph’s brother is formally identical to the family epithet in the previous verse, with the pointed difference that only Benjamin is Joseph’s full brother.

[RA] among those who came. This economical phrase indicates a great crowd of people, from “all the earth,” drive by the famine to Egypt, where there was food to be bought.

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he it was that sold.  He superintended the sales, and foreign purchasers would be brought to him to be interrogated.  His dreams were being fulfilled, see XXXVII,7-10.  The brothers ‘bowed themselves down before him’.

spoke roughly with them. The brother who had been shamefully and pitilessly sold into slavery now had his opportunity for revenge.  The greatness of Joseph lies in the fact that for all time he showed men a better way.  He tests his brethren, holding his own natural feelings in check until convinced of their filial piety to their father, their love for Benjamin, and their sincere contrition for their crime towards him.  Then he forgives them freely, fully, and lovingly.

[EF] recognized: Ironically recalling the brothers “Pray recognize” of 37:32.  pretended-no-recognition: Others use “pretended to be a stranger.”

[RA] and recognized them, and . . . played the stranger to them. The verb for “recognize” and the verb for “play the stranger” are derived from the same root (the latter being a reflexive form of the root). Both uses pick up the thematically prominent repetition of the same root earlier in the story: Jacob was asked to “recognize” Joseph’s blood-soaked tunic and Tamar invited Judah to “recognize” the tokens he had left with her as security for payment for sexual services.

his brethren.  Recognized, but not recognizing the Grand Vizier, who in dress, name, language, and bearing was an Egyptian, as their brother.

[RA] And Joseph recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him.  Given the importance of the recognition theme and the verb to which it is linked, it is fitting that the fact of Joseph’s recognizing his brothers should be repeated, along with their failure to recognize him (in other words, the success of his playing the stranger).

and Joseph remembered his dreams.  Not in a spirit of pride and hatred, but as the revealed will of the good God whose ways are inscrutable.

ye are spies.  The most natural accusation to bring against strangers in Egypt, or anywhere.

nakedness of the land.  The weak spots in the line of defence along the border.  The North-East of Egypt was its weak side, and strangers entering from this direction were jealously watched.

[EF] nakedness:  Vulnerability (strategically).

[RA] And Joseph remembered the dreams. This brief memory-flashback is a device rarely used in biblical narrative. Its importance here is that the brothers, prostrated before Joseph, are, unbeknownst to them, literally fulfilling his two prophetic dreams, the very dreams that enraged them and triggered the violence they perpetrated against him.  There is surely an element of sweet triumph for Joseph in seeing his grandiose dreams fulfilled so precisely, though it would be darkened by his recollection of what the report of his dreams led his brothers to do.  The repetition of Joseph’s angry accusation thus has psychological resonance: he remembers, and he remembers the reason for his long-standing anger.

the land’s nakedness.  The idiom refers to that which should be hidden from an outsider’s eyes, as the pudenda are to be hidden from all but the legitimate sexual partner.  Joseph’s language thus casts the alleged spies as violators of the land.

one man’s sons. A sufficient answer to the charge of being spies, for no man would risk the lives of ten sons in so dangerous an undertaking.

[EF] honest: They will be, by the end of the chapter (Redford).

[RA] We are all the sons of one man.  We are honest.  Your servants would never be spies. This series of three brief sentences, without connecting “and’s,” is uncharacteristic of biblical style, and may well be intended to reflect the brother’s emphatic, anxious defensiveness in the face of Joseph’s wholly unexpected accusation.

nay. Joseph repeats his accusation.  This throws them off their guard, and they seek to disarm his suspicions by volunteering information about their father and youngest brother, of which Joseph at once takes advantage.

one is not.  Refers of course to Joseph.  They did not say that he was dead, because they did not really know what became of him.

[EF] twelve: At last they think of themselves as a unit “we are brothers!”

[RA] Twelve brothers your servants are.  The Hebrew places the number twelve at the very beginning of the brother’s speech.  They use the euphemism “is no more” (literally, “is not” ) to indicate that Joseph is dead, not imagining, in the strong dramatic irony of the scene, that the brother who makes the full complement of twelve stands before them.  It is thematically pointed that they identify themselves as “twelve brothers,” although only ten of them stand before Joseph.

[RA] 15-16.  Joseph’s swearing by Pharaoh at first seems merely part of his playing his role as Egyptian.  Not until verse 23 do we learn that he is addressing them through an interpreter, so the locution also probably reflects the fact that he is speaking Egyptian.

ye shall be proved.  Their story is improbable.  It must be verified.  Let them bring Benjamin down to Egypt.  In this way, Joseph would test their loyalty to their youngest brother. Did they also hate Benjamin as they had hated him?  He delicately refrains from cross-questioning them about the brother who ‘is not’.

[EF] tested: Heb. bahan, a different root from the word translated “tested” (nissa) in 22:1. Interestingly, the English “test” and the Hebrew bhn originally meant the refining of metals, separating pure from impure.  or not–: Or “(in you.)/If not . . .”

this do, and live.  Better, ‘this do in order that ye m ay live.’   The brethren claimed to be upright, honest men.  Profession was not enough.  Let them bring the youngest brother, ‘so shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die’ (v. 20).

for I fear God. And so am unwilling to treat you with unnecessary severity on mere suspicion.  I will keep one of you as a hostage, the rest shall convey food for your families. ‘Fear of God is the universal element in religion which humanizes our dealings with “foreigners”, even when national interests are involved’ (Procksch).

[RA] And your youngest brother you shall bring to me.  The “test” of bringing Benjamin to Egypt is actually a test of fraternal fidelity.  Joseph may have some lingering suspicion as to whether the brothers have done away with Benjamin, the other son of Rachel, as they imagine they have gotten rid of him.

we are verily guilty. Joseph had at last awakened remorse in their hearts.  They had been blind to the distress of their brother, and deaf to his entreaties.  They were guilty, and their misfortune was a just retribution for their cruelty.  It is only now, in the mirror of their repentance, that we see reflected the agonizing scene when the lad was thrown into the pit many years before.  See on XXXVII,23.  With broken and contrite hearts, they now recall their inhuman callousness—all in the hearing of Joseph.

[EF] guilty: Perhaps it is the phrase “youngest brother” in Yosef’s words (v. 20) that jars their memory.  They must now show responsibility to their father, which they had evaded in Chap. 37.  distress. . . distress: Another example of justice in the Bible: the punishment fits the crime.

[RA] Alas, we are guilty.  The psychological success of Joseph’s stratagem is confirmed by the fact that the accusation and the hostage taking immediately trigger feelings of guilt over their behavior toward Joseph.  Notably, it is only now, not in the original report (37:23-24), that we learn that Joseph pleaded with them when they cast him into the pit, a remarkable instance of withheld narrative exposition.  Reuben, who tried to save him, now becomes the chief spokesman for their collective guilt.

his blood is required.  Reuben assumes that Joseph’s death, whatever form it took, was due to them. They were morally guilty of his death.  His blood is ‘required’, i.e. is now being avenged (see IX,5).

[EF] Re’uven: A replay of Chap. 37, with Re’uven again making extravagant but ineffective declarations. Once again Yehuda will emerge in charge.

interpreter. Joseph throughout spoke to them as the Viceroy, in Egyptian

[EF] translator:  Interpreter.

[RA]  And they did not know that Joseph understood. The verb for understanding which also means “to hear” or “to listen,” plays ironically against its use in the immediately preceding verse, “and you would not listen.”

and wept.  He is touched to tears by their penitence and contrition.

Simeon. As the next in age to Reuben, who is the eldest was to report to Jacob.  According to Rabbinic tradition, it was Simeon who had counselled that Joseph be slain.

[EF]  imprisoning: Or “fettering.”  before their eyes: As opposed to the sale of Yosef where their presence is not mentioned, strictly speaking.

[RA] And he turned away from them and wept.  This is the first of three times, in a clear crescendo pattern, that Joseph is moved to tears by his brothers.

[EF] they fill: “They” refers to Yosef’s servants.  silverpieces: Yosef had been sold for silver (37:28).

[RA] to put back their silver into each one’s pack. The return of the silver is also associated with the brothers’ guilt, for it repeats their receiving of silver from the Ishmaelites for the sale of Joseph as a slave.  If the story reflects the realia of the Patriarchal period, the silver would be weights of silver, not coins, and the weighing out of silver in Abraham’s purchase of the burial site from the Hittites suggest that is what is to be imagined here.

lodging-place. Wayside shelter.

they turned trembling. They wonder what such an unusual occurrence may portend.  Will they be accused of theft?

[RA] My silver has been put back and, look, it’s actually in my bag.  These words of astonishment, with their virtual redundance and their locutions of emphasis—wegam hineh be’amtati, “it’s actually in my bag”—ironically correspond to the language of amazement used by the young Joseph in reporting his dream (compare 37:7).

dumbfounded. The Hebrew says literally, “their heart went out.”

What is this that God has done to us?  This is a kind of double dramatic irony.  It is of course Joseph who has done this to them, but we are also invited to think of him as God’s instrument—an idea he himself will emphasize after he reveals himself to his brothers.  Thus a double system of causation, human and divine, is brought to the fore.

29-34.  They recount their experience to their father.

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the lord of.  The Heb. is in the plural, often used to express power or greatness.  harshly: Paralleling their earlier attitude: they “could not speak to him in peace” (37:4).

[EF] The man. Used eight times of Yosef in Chaps. 42-44, perhaps out of ironic anonymity.

[RA] 31-34.  The near verbatim repetition of reported speech, as we have seen elsewhere, is standard biblical practice, though more commonly there are subtle significant variations in the repetition.  Here, the one notable change is that in addressing Jacob directly, they substitute “our father’ for “one man.”

corn for the famine. The words ‘corn for’ are supplied from the context.

[RA] provisions against the famine. The Hebrew here uses an ellipsis, simply, “famine.”

traffic in the land. Joseph did not say this, but ‘and ye shall not die’ 9v. 20). This could only be by allowing the brethren to come to Egypt and buy corn.

[RA] trade. The primary meaning of the verb is “to go around,” and by extension, “to engage in commerce.”  Given the situation of going back and forth to Egypt to buy grain, the sense of trading seems more likely here.

they were afraid. i.e. Jacob and his sons. They looked upon it as a deliberate act on the part of the Egyptian lord to bring a charge of theft against them.

[RA] look, each one’s bundle of silver was in his pack. The second discovery of the silver in the baggage of course contradicts the first discovery at the encampment and probably reflects the splicing together of two variant traditions—unless one assumes that the brothers deliberately act out a discoery in the presence of their father in order to impress upon him how they are all at the mercy of a superior power.

upon me are all these things come. The point of the reproach is that it is his children, not their own, that they are endangering: to which Reuben’s offer is the rejoinder.

[RA] Me you have bereaved.  As earlier in the story, Jacob speaks as a prima donna of paternal grief: hence the “me” at the beginning of his discourse (the Hebrew has an accusative pronoun before the verb instead of the normal accusative suffix appended to the verb), and hence the emphatic rhythmic arrangement of his speech in a formal symmetry that verges on poetry: “Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and Benjamin you would take!”  In a small envelope structure, the “me” at the beginning is balanced by the “It is I” at the end (the last sentence is literally: “Upon me they all were”).  Jacob’s equation of Joseph and Simeon with the verb “is no more” teeters ambiguously between two possibilities:  either he gloomily assumes that Simeon is already as good as dead, or, despite his protestations of grief, he clings to the hope that Joseph, like Simeon, is absent, not dead.

slay my two sons. The impetuous nature of Reuben is seen here.  ‘Two sons’ one for Benjamin and one for Joseph—of whose death he feels that he shares the guilt with his brothers.

[EF] My two sons: Re’uven is again spouting nonsense. I myself will reutnr him: But he did not in 37:22 (Ackerman 1982).

[RA] My two sons you may put to death.  Reuben, as usual means well but stumbles in the execution: to a father obsessed with the loss of sons, he offers the prospect of killing two grandsons.  David Kimhi catches this nicely: “[Jacob] said: ‘Stupid firstborn! Are they your sons and not my sons?” This is not the only moment in the story when we sense that Reuben’s claim to preeminence among the brothers as firstborn is dubious, and he will be displaced by Judah, the fourth-born.

[EF] My son is not to go own . . . you will bring down my gray hair in grief:  Yaakov will indeed “go down,” but to Egypt, not to Sheol, to meet his “dead” son.  The latter part of the phrase is basically repeated in 44;29 and 44:31, as a key to the father’s feelings.  he alone is left” Of his mother Rahel (see 44;20).

[RA]  My son shall not go down with you. The extravagant insensitivity of Jacob’s paternal favoritism continues to be breathtaking.  He speaks of Benjamin as “my son” almost as though the ones he is addressing were not his sons.  This unconscious disavowal of the ten sons is sharpened when Jacob says, “he alone remains,” failing to add “from his mother.”  The histrionic refrain of descending in sorrow to Sheol, the underworld, is one Jacob first recited when he was handed Joseph’s blood-soaked tunic.  “Should harm befall him” is a formula first spoken by Jacob in an interior monologue (verse 4) and now repeated in actual speech to the sons.  Jacob is of course fearful of another dreadful accident like the one in which he believes Joseph was torn to pieces by a wild beast.  There is, then, an ironic disparity between Jacob’s sense of a world of unpredictable dangers threatening his beloved son and Joseph’s providential manipulation of events, unguessed by his father and his brothers.

Genesis/Bereshith  43

THE SECOND VISIT OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN TO EGYPT

1-14.  Judah prevails upon Jacob to allow Benjamin to accompany the brethren.  Judah now takes the lead in the place of Reuben, in whom his father had little confidence.

eaten up the corn.  Not in its entirety; they must have left sufficient for their father and the household during their absence in Egypt.

[EF] my face:  The great confrontation theme of the Yaakov stories returns.

[RA] The man firmly warned us. “The man” refers elliptically to the phrase the brothers previously used in their report to their father, “the man who is lord of the land” (42:30).  Their repeated use of this designation aptly dramatizes their ignorance of Joseph’s identity.  In the second half of this chapter, there is pointed interplay between the references to the brothers as “the men”—almost as though they were represented from an Egyptian point of view—and to Joseph’s majordomo as “the man.”

You shall not see my face.  The Hebrew idiom has distinct regal overtones: you shall not come into my presence.

[EF] send: Or “release,” “let go.”

we will not go down.  Judah’s decisive language has the desired effect with Jacob.

[RA] You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. Judah reiterates this sentence word for word, at the end of his first speech to Jacob as at the beginning.  The effect is to spell out the inexorable condition with heavy emphasis for the reluctant Jacob:  it is only by bringing Benjamin along that we can return to Egypt.

dealt ye so ill with me. This is not a question, but a reproach.  He blames them for volunteering statements.

[RA] Why have you done me this harm? Consistent with his character from chapter 37 onward, Jacob flaunts his sense of personal injury.

straitly.  Closely, particularly.

according to the tenor of these words. i.e. we gave the answers which his questions called for.

[RA] that we may live and not die, neither we, nor you, nor our little ones.  The phrase “live and not die” was used by Jacob to his sons before their first journey to Egypt (42:2), and Judah now throws it back in his face.  By adding to it, “neither we, nor you, nor our little ones,” Judah makes a vividly persuasive point: as Rashi sees, the implicit argument is that if we risk taking Benjamin, he may or may not be seized, but if we stay here, every one of us will perish from hunger.

I will be surety for him.  I guarantee to bring him back.  Jacob is more impressed by his words than by Reuben’s wild offer.

bear the blame. lit. ‘I shall have sinned against thee for ever’.

[EF] I will act as his pledge/at my hand you may seek him:  Echoing Yaakov’s own language of responsibility in 31;39 (“I would make good the loss/at my hand you would seek it”).  in your presence:  Literally “before your face.”

[RA]  I will be his pledge, from my hand you may seek him. The repetition through synonymity signals a performative speech-act, a legally binding vow.  Judah, who conceived the scheme of selling Joseph into slavery, now takes personal responsibility for Benjamin’s safety.  But befitting the son who will displace Reuben as the progenitor of the kings of Israel, he asserts solemn responsibility without Reuben’s rash offer to put two of his own sons to death if harm befalls Benjamin.

except we had lingered.  And wasted time in discussion.

if it be so now, do this. ‘Since it must be so, do this.” Jacob yields to the inevitable, and offers his children prudent counsel.

honey.  i.e. the date-honey, rarely found in Egypt.

nuts. i.e. pistachio nuts. Still considered a delicacy in the East.

[EF] Take:  Three times, culminating in the pathetic “And as for your brother, take him” (v. 13).  alsam . . .honey; balm and ladanum, pistachio nuts and almonds:  Another example of concealment in the story.  The list includes the cargo of the caravan that carried Yosef away (37:25).

[RA] the best yield of the land.  The Hebrew zimrat ha’arets occurs only here.  The most plausible construal of the first term links it with a root that means “strength” or “power,” though it could be related to zemorah, “branch” or “sprout.”

some balm and some honey, gum and ladanum. The tribute or gift (minah) to Joseph includes three of the same items as those in the briefer list of luxury export goods carried by the Ishmaelite traders (37:25) who brought Joseph from the brothers and sold him as a slave in Egypt.  As with the silver sent back and forth, the brothers are thus drawn unwittingly into a process of repetition of and restitution for their fraternal crime.

double money . . . and the money. They were now to take double money, as they were returning the money that had been placed in their sacks.

[RA] And double the silver take. Now they are to go to Egypt with three times the original amount of silver: the amount they intend to return to Joseph, and double that amount besides.  Nahum Sarna construes the second clause, “and the silver that was put back …,” as an explanation of the first, concluding that only double the amount in sum was taken, but his reading dismisses the clear additive sense of “and” in “and the silver.”  Rashi, with characteristic shrewdness, suggests that extra silver was taken because the brothers were fearful that the price of grain might have gone up steeply—a plausible possibility, given Egypt’s monopoly of food supplies and the persisting famine.

take in your hand. The addition of “in your hand,” which is not strictly required by Hebrew idiom, is repeated several times in the story.  One suspects it is linked with the theme of restitution:  the very hands that were “raised against’ Joseph (37:22 and 27) now bear tribute to him.

And your brother take.  Jacob holds back the detail that is most painful to him, the sending down of Benjamin, until the very end of his instructions.  Pointedly, he does not refer to Benjamin by name but instead calls him “your brother,” stressing the fraternal responsibility his nine older sons have for their half brother.

God Almighty. Heb. El Shaddai. ‘The God of Abraham can alone now help him, an old man trembling for the life of his two children’ (Procksch).

mercy. Divine pity for the helpless misery of the weak and the defenceless.

if I be bereaved.  An expression of mournful acquiescence in the Divine will, like the exclamation of Esther, v. 16, ‘and if I perish, I perish.’

[RA] he discharge to you your other brother, and Benjamin. Jacob’s fearful formulation virtually presupposes that Benjamin will be seized by the Egyptians, just as Simeon was.

As for me, if I must be bereaved, I will be bereaved.  Jacob is of course remembering his grief over the loss of Joseph and perhaps as well his concern over Simeon’s imprisonment.  But he is also once more playing his role as histrion of paternal sorrow, echoing his dirgelike words to his sons (42:36),n”Me you have bereaved,” using the same verb that refers specifically in Hebrew to the loss of children and again placing the first-person singular pronoun at the beginning of his statement.

15-34.  The brethren in Joseph’s palace.

before Joseph.  At his government office, where the people came to purchase corn.

the steward of his house.  lit. ‘him that was over his house.’

dine with me at noon. This is interesting as indicating the time when meat was eaten in the house of the upper classes in ancient Egypt.

[RA] the one who was over his house. Virtually all the English versions represent this as “steward,” but the Hebrew opts for this more circumlocutionary phrase (which does occur, in a clear administrative sense, in notices about the later Israelite royal bureaucracy) instead of one of the available biblical terms for steward or majordomo.  This roundabout designation reflects an Egyptian title and may at the same time intimate the perspective of the Hebrew brothers toward this Egyptian “man who was over the house” with whom they have to deal.  It also enables the writer to play “man” against “men” in his narrative report.

Joseph’s house. The phrase is repeated three times in rapid sequence, and amplified by the secondary references to “the man who was over his house.”  For the ten Hebrew men to go into Joseph’s house is a momentous thing, politically and thematically.  Since they are aware that it is not customary for foreigners who have come to buy grain to be introduced into the residence of the viceroy, they are afraid it may be a trap (verse 18).  Their last encounter with Joseph in Canaan, more than two decades earlier, was in an open field, where he was entirely in their power.  Now, crossing the threshold of his house, they will be entirely in his power—whether for evil or for good they cannot say.  Pointedly, their actual sitting down at Joseph’s table is prefaced by a literally liminal moment:  they stand at the entrance, expressing their anxiety to Joseph’s steward.

money that was returned.  The brethren fear that they are entrapped and about to be punished.

take us for bondmen.  As detected thieves; cf. Ex. XXII,2.

[EF] roll upon us: Others use “attack us.” roll upon us, and fall upon us: The rhythm reflects the brothers’ emotional anguish.

[RA] to fall upon us. The Hebrew verb might well have the sense of “to find a pretext against us,” as many English versions render it, but it is at least as plausible to construe it as a verb of physical assault, in apposition to the term that follows it.

and our donkeys.  This odd addendum at the very end of the sentence looks suspiciously like a comic inadvertency.

at the door of the house. Before crossing the threshold, they would clear themselves of the suspicion against them.

we have brought it back.  They say this to forestall the suspicion of theft.

we know not who put.  They emphasize their ignorance of the entire transaction.

I had your money.  Doubtless on the instruction of Joseph, the steward reassures them that what they found in their sacks was God’s gift.

[EF]  has come in: I.e., I have received full payment.

[RA] has placed treasure for you in your bags.  The majordomo dismisses their fears by introducing a kind of fairy-tale explanation for the silver they found in their bags.

Your silver has come to me. These words take the form of a legal declaration meaning “I have duly received payment.”

against Joseph’s coming.  Here means, ‘so as to be ready when Joseph arrived.’ This is the old use of ‘against’, in the sense of ‘in readiness for the time when’.

[RA] they would eat bread.  “Bread,” as in the English expression, “to eat the king’s bread,” is obviously a synecdoche for food, but it diminishes the literary dignity of the narrative to render this, as many modern translations have done, simply as “dine.”

of whom ye spoke.  Joseph carefully avoid betraying himself to his brethren.

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[EF]  well:  Or “at peace”—as before, a key element of the Yaakov stories.

his mother’s son. These words augment the pathos of the situation

[EF] Is this: Or “So this is.”

[RA] God be gracious to you, my son. Benjamin, though considerably younger than Joseph, would be at least in his late twenties at this point.  In addressing him as “my son,” Joseph faithfully maintains his role as Egyptian viceroy, though “my brother’ is hiding in the word he uses.  The great medieval Hebrew poet Shmuel Hanagid (eleventh century Granada) would brilliantly catch this doubleness in a moving elegy to his brother by altering the end of the phrase:  “God be gracious to you, my brother.”

Joseph made haste.  To close the interview and to retire.

his heart yearned toward.  Seeing his own mother’s son he felt unable to restrain his tears.

[RA] And Joseph hurried out…and he wanted to weep, and he went into the chamber and wept there. In the pattern of incremental repetition, this second weeping of Joseph’s is much more elaborately reported than the first (42:24), including as it does the flight to a private chamber and (in the next verse), his bathing his face to remove evidence of the tears and his effort of self-restraint when he returns to the brothers.

his feelings . . . overwhelmed him. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “his mercy [the same term used by Jacob in verse 14] burned hot.”

set on bread.  i.e. let the food be served.

for him by himself.  As an Egyptian noble he would have his food apart from his retinue, and, or course, apart from the Hebrews, who were foreigners in the eyes of the Egyptians.  The Hyksos conquerors soon adopted the old Egyptian exclusiveness in intercourse with foreigners.

[RA] for the Egyptians would not eat bread with the Hebrews.  The dietary exclusionism of the Egyptians is also attested by Herodotus.  Both medieval and modern commentators have linked this taboo with an Egyptian prohibition against eating lamb, a staple of Hebrew diet.

as it was abhorrent to Egypt.  The consensus of English translations treats this as “to the Egyptians,” but the Masoretic vocalization of the final noun—mitsrayim and not mitsrim—construes it as “to Egypt,” which makes perfectly good sense.

the men marvelled.  How could the Egyptian know their ages?  They looked at one another in astonishment.

[RA] And they were seated before him. The seating in order of age of course has been done at Joseph’s direction: it constitutes a kind of dramatization of the contrast between knowledge and ignorance—“and he recognized them but they did not recognize him”—that has been paramount from the moment the brothers first set foot in Egypt.

were merry.  lit. ‘drank largely’. Joseph wishes to divert their attention from his table, whence his goblet was about to be removed.  The extra portion given to Benjamin was a special mark of respect.

[EF]  five times: Others use “many times.” Yet the prominence of the number five throughout the Yosef story, as noted above, should not be overlooked.

[RA] they drank, and they got drunk with him. In the Hebrew, there are two entirely distinct verbs.  The meeting between the eleven brothers and the man who is lord of the land o Egypt appears to end on a note of conviviality, which will quickly be reversed in the next scene of the drama Joseph has carefully devised for his brothers. It should be noted that the drinking at the conclusion of this scene anticipates the mechanism of what is to follow, for it is the alleged theft of Joseph’s silver goblet that will bring the brothers back to his house under strict arrest.

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Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh’s two officers.  The scene faithfully reflects Egyptian conditions in the age of Joseph.

after these things. Recounted in the preceding chapter.

[EF] the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt: The Hebrew has “the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and the baker,” a common construction in biblical Hebrew.

the butlers . . .  the bakers. The Egyptian court had a ‘scribe of the sideboard’ and a ‘superintendent of the bakehouse’  (Erman).

These officers had to taste the food for the king before the royal meal began.  The word for butler may also be rendered, ‘cup-bearer.’ It is conjectured that these officials were accused of plotting to poison Pharaoh.

[EF[ cupbearer: Others use “butler.”

in ward.  In confinement, pending their trial.

captain of the guard. i.e. Potiphar. In the prison, the keeper was in charge and was responsible to Potiphar.

Potiphar appoints Joseph to be with the imprisoned officers.  He is not appointed over them, but he is deputed to be their attendant—a mark of courtesy on the part of Potiphar to his unfortunate colleagues.

a season.  lit. ‘days’; implying a considerable time.

[EF] appointed Yosef: As Potifar had “appointed him over his house” (39:4).

[RA] And the high chamberlain assigned to Joseph to them and he ministered them. The source critics take this as a flat contradiction of the end of chapter 39, where Joseph is appointed as general supervisor of the prison, serving as a kind of managing warden.  But, in fact, Joseph’s “ministering’ to the two courtiers need not imply a menial role. These two prisoners had occupied important places in the court, and Pharaoh may yet pardon them, so it makes perfect sense that they should be singled out for special treatment in prison, to be attended personally by the warden’s right-hand.  There is another seeming discrepancy with the preceding report of Joseph’s incarceration: there, the prison was run by a prison warden (sar beyt hasohari) whereas here it is governed by the high chamberlain (sar hatabaim), the title assigned to Potiphar himself at the beginning of chapter 39.  But it is easy enough to imagine the high chamberlain as a kind of minister of justice, bureaucratically responsible for the royal prisons, with the warden answering to him.

according to the interpretation.  As the future verified.

[EF] interpretation: Or, “meaning.”

[RA]  solution. Although a long tradition of translations opts for “interpretation” here, the Hebrew verb patar  and its cognate noun suggest decipherment (compare the related term pesher used in the Dead Sea Scrolls).  There is one conclusive decoding for every dream, and a person who is granted insight can break the code.

[RA] they were frowning.  The Hebrew zo’afim can refer either to a grim mood or to the grim facial expression that it produces.  Because both the narrative report in this verse and Joseph’s words in the next verse make clear that he sees something is wrong when he looks at their faces, this translation opts for facial expression, against all the previous English versions.

none that can interpret it. No professional interpreter was available, and they had in vain consulted others in the prison as to the possible meaning of their dreams.  The interpreter was a professional man of importance in Egypt and Babylon, belonging to the class of soothsayers, magicians and ‘wise men’.

do not interpretations belong to God? i.e. it may be that God who sent the dreams will give me the interpretation of them.  ‘Man cannot by his own wisdom interpret dreams. God alone can reveal their true meaning. Pray tell me the dream, perhaps He will favour me with wisdom to explain its import ‘ (Chizkuni).

[EF] Are not interpretations from God: Foreshadowing 41:16, “Not I!/God will answer . . . “

[RA]  Are not solutions from God? Joseph in Egyptian captivity remains a good Hebrew monotheist.  In Egypt, the interpretation of dreams was regarded as a science, and formal instruction in techniques of dream interpretation was given in schools called “houses of life.”  Joseph is saying, then, to these two high-ranking Egyptians that no trained hermeneut of the oneiric—no professional poter—is required; since god possesses the meanings of dreams, if He chooses, He will simply reveal the meanings to the properly attentive person.  But one should note that Joseph immediately proceeds to ask the cupbearer to recount his dream, unhesitantly assuming that he, Joseph, is such a person whom God will favor with insight into the meaning of the dream.

[RA] and as it was budding, its blossom shot up, its clusters ripened to grapes.  Like Joseph’s pair of dreams, both these dreams are stylized, schematic, and nearly transparent in regard to meaning.  The only item requiring any effort of interpretation is the three tendrils representing three days. (Numbers stand out in each of the three sets of dreams in the Joseph story—first twelve, here three, and then seven.)  The one manifestly dreamlike element in the cupbearer’s dream occurs at this point, when time is speeded up as he looks at the vine, and in a rapid blur the vine moves from bud to blossom to ripened grapes to wine.

pressed them. Grape juice mixed with water is mentioned as a refreshing drink on the Egyptian inscriptions.

[EF] Pharaoh’s cup: The cup was a common symbol of fate in the ancient Near East.

lift up thy head.  In honour, by restoring thee to thy post.

[EF[ lift up your head: A parallel expression in Assyrian means “release’ or “pardon.”

[RA]  lift up your head.  As almost any reader of the Hebrew quickly sees, the biblical idiom, here rendered quite literally, is doubly punned on in the story.  To lift up someone’s head, in administrative and royal contexts, means to single out (as in a census), to invite, to grant favor or extend reconciliation (as when a monarch lifts up with a gesture the downcast head of a contrite subject).  When Joseph addresses the baker in verse 19, he begins as though he were using the idiom in the same positive sense as here, but by adding “from upon you,” he turns it into a reference to beheading, the first such reference in the Bible.  In verse 20, when both courtiers are the object of the idiom, it is used in the neutral sense of “to single out.”

have me in thy remembrance. All he asks is that the chief butler should not forget him, but try to secure his freedom.

[EF] with you: Possibly stressing the personal nature of the plea.

stolen away. See XXXVII,28, implying that he was not a slave by birth.

land of the Hebrews. The land where Jacob was dwelling.  Some identify the word ‘Hebrews’ in this verse with the Habiri, the invaders of Palestine in the 14th pre-Christian century, who are mentioned in the Tell-el-Amarna tablets.

[EF] stolen: The Yaakov motif of Chaps. 30-31.

[RA]  put in the pit. In the previous verse, Joseph refers to the place of his incarceration as “this house” (invoking elliptically the “house” component of “prison-house”).  Now he calls it a pit, perhaps because it is a kind of underground dungeon, but also to make us see the link with the empty cistern into which he was flung by his brothers—twice he has been put in a pit for what he must feel is no good reason.

that the interpretation was good. i.e. favourable. This encourages him to realte his dream.

baskets of white bread.  For the king (cf. Neh. V,18); or, ‘baskets of open wicker-work,’ enabling the birds to peck at the contents (Rashbam).

[EF] white-bread: Others use “wicker.”

baked food. Confectionery.

and the birds.  The butler dreamed that he actually performed the duties of his office, whereas the baker only sought to do so, but was prevented.  The further ominous circumstance was the birds darting down upon the food, he being powerless to drive them away.

[EF] eating: In Pharaoh’s dreams of Chap. 41, “eating up” comes to symbolize the disaster of famine.

[RA] in the topmost…all sorts of food for Pharaoh…and birds were eating. The cupbearer in his dream performs his normal court function, though at fast-forward speed.  The baker executes a kind of bizarre parody of his normal function, balancing three baskets of bread one on top of the other.  This precarious arrangement may imply, as Amos Funkenstein has proposed to me, a sense that the baker has been negligent of his duties.  The pecking of birds at this tower of baked goods is of course an explicitly ominous element.  The two dreams parallel Joseph’s two dreams in that the first is anchored in an agricultural setting and involves harvesting while the second is oriented toward the sky above.  But instead of the glorious celestial bodies, here we have the swooping down of ravenous birds from the sky.

hang thee.  Impale thee.  The decapitated corpse of a malefactor was allowed to hang exposed to the public view, and to become the prey of the birds.  In Israel, this barbarous custom was prohibited 9Deut. XXI,23).

[EF] hang . . . on a tree:  Others use “impale on a stake.”

[RA] impale.  Despite the fact that the Hebrew verb generally means “to hang,” hanging was not a common means of execution anywhere in the ancient Near East, and there is evidence elsewhere that the same verb was sued for impalement, which was frequently practiced.  The baker’s dire fate would seem to be first decapitation and then exposure of the body on a high stake.

Pharaoh’s birthday. On that day he reviewed the prisoners or considered their petitions.

 not . . . remember Joseph.  On that day.

but forgot him. (Afterwards (Rashi).  As Joseph had put his trust in the butler, God caused him to wait two years for his freedom (Midrash). The chief butler’s forgetfulness, in the enjoyment of his own good fortune, is sadly natural.  Nothing alas is more common than ingratitude.  Man forgets; but God does not forget his own.  And when the night is darkest, the dawn is near.

[EF] he forgot him: here, as in Potifar’s house, initial success gives way to failure and continued imprisonment.

[RA] did not remember Joseph, no, he forgot him. The verb for remembering also means “to mention,” and Joseph employs both senses of the root in his words to the cupbearer in verse 14.  Now, with the emphasis of synonymity (did not remember, forgot), attention is drawn to the cupbearer’s failure to respond to the plea of the man who helped him in prison.  It will take another pair of dreams—with which the next episode begins—to elicit that mention/remembering.  It should also be kept in mind that remembering is central to the larger story of Joseph and his brothers. When he sees them again after more than twenty years of separation, this same crucial verb of memory zakhar, will be invoked for him, and the complicated strategy he adopts for treating his brothers is a device for driving them into a painful process of moral memory.

[This is a revisit, the original post was published September 2012.  As we have done with all revisited posts, we have added three commentaries interspersed in the chapter verses; the introduction is ours, from our initial discussions of the chapter, without recourse to commentaries.  Except for the introduction which is ours, the unbracketed notes within the chapter verses are from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H.Hertz, while “RA” is from Robert Alter and “EF” from Everett Fox, whose The Five Books of Moses is our featured translation.—Admin1.]

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There is some mystery in the workings of Divine Providence in the course of human affairs.  Men make willful choices which on the one hand are either selfless and other-centered, and on the other hand selfish, self-serving and evil; yet  it turns out in the end that they were actually fulfilling personal or national destiny, unconsciously participating in carrying out God’s plans. This is manifest in the patriarchal stories but does it work the same way for people outside of the chosen nation?

Only Israel can truly say “leave it to God” since that God Who chose them for a specific purpose gave them specific instructions and guidelines and prophetic vision. Whether or not Israel did its part, God did His. If they obeyed, the blessings came as promised; if they disobeyed, the curses automatically resulted, as warned.  In their case, even when individuals ‘did their thing’ so to speak, still the divine agenda was fulfilled, despite the disobedience and sometimes because of the disobedience!  

As victim of sibling jealousy and bullying, Joseph becomes an instrument of God to pave way for saving Jacob’s tribe when a future famine will force this 3rd patriarch and his family of 70 to seek refuge in the land of plenty; just as Abraham and Isaac had similarly done for the same reason.  But we’re getting ahead of the narrative. When Genesis/Bereshith 37 ended, the Medianites brought Joseph with them to Egypt and sold him to Potiphar, a courtier of Pharaoh, the Chamberlain of the Butchers [AST]. Those who notice inconsistencies in Scripture have brought up this point:

[http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/who-purchased-joseph-ishmaelites-or-midianites]

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It is hard to miss in the Joseph narratives the repeated emphasis of YHWH’s felt presence in Joseph’s life, evident to people around him; in fact blessings upon Joseph spill over to others.  Implicit here and in other biblical stories (Abraham’s nephew Lot, the whole family of Noah) is that God’s grace, mercy, protection, blessing, and abundance fall on others for no reason than their connectedness, if not show of kindness to a God-favored one.  It gives us hope that by our faith in YHWH, our kin and households, perhaps even workplaces benefit so that they will somehow think about the God we now serve and put their faith in Him.  Would that it be so!

NSB@S6K

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Genesis/Bereshith 39

POTIPHAR’S WIFE

The story of Joseph is resumed in this chapter.  Amid the new and trying circumstances of his new existence, Joseph’s winsome personality and innate nobility of character are revealed.  He gains the confidence of his master and emerges unscathed from sinful temptation.

[RA] This chapter is the most elegantly symmetrical episode in Genesis.  It comprises an introductory narrative frame (verses 1-6), a closing frame (20-23) that elaborately echoes the introductory verses, and the central story of the failed seduction, which is intricately linked to the framing verses by a network of recurring thematic key words.

was brought down. Better, ‘had been brought down.’

an Egyptian. The story of Joseph took place during the reign of the Hyksos kings, the Bedouin conquerors of Egypt.  Exceptionally, ‘an Egyptian; was entrusted with a high Government post.

[EF]  Potifar . . .: The narrative resumes exactly, almost literally, where it had left off in 36:36.

[RA] an Egyptian man. This slightly odd designation of the high chamberlain might perhaps be used here in order to be played off against the derogatory identification of Joseph as “a Hebrew man” in verse 14.  The household staff are also referred to as “men” (see verse 11), though that plural form can include both sexes, which it probably does when the mistress calls in the “people of the house” in verse 14, as she will go on to stress their collective sexual vulnerability to the Hebrew intruder.

2-6.  The thematic key words, emphatically repeated lin phrase after phrase, are:  all, hand, house, blessing, succeed–the lat two terms being the manifestation of the reiterated “the LORD was with Joseph.”

2 But YHVH was with Yosef, so that he became a man of success: 

prosperous man. All that he did prospered.

[EF] a man of success: Or “a man blessed by success.”

[RA] master. Only in the introductory verse is Potiphar referred to by name.  Afterward he is designated consistently as Joseph’s master.  Although the source critics may be right in attributing this difference between verse 1 and the rest of the chapter to a difference in literary strands, the stylistic peculiarity of referring to Joseph’s lord only by role serves the thematic purpose of constantly highlighting the master-slave relationship and the concomitant issue of trust and stewardship.

3 his lord saw that YHVH was with him, 

so that whatever he did, YHVH made succeed in his hands.

ministered unto him.  As his personal attendant.  Then he is advanced to the position of overseer, or controller of hte household and estate generally.

[EF] over his house: Foreshadowing Yosef’s eventual position and title (41;40).

YHVH’S blessing was upon everything that belonged to him, in the house and in the fields.

6 So he left everything that was his in Yosef’s hands, 

 having him, he knew not aught. i.e. having him,, he troubled himself about nothing, and left all his affairs to the care of Joseph, except his food.  This could not be left to a non-Egyptian; see XVIII,32.

of beautiful form. Like his mother Rachel (Ibn Ezra).

[EF] left:  Consigned; see also v. 13 for a play on words. except for the bread that he ate: Since the Egyptians did not eat with foreigners (see, for instance 43:32). fair of form and fair to look at: The only other person in the Bible described in exactly these words is Rahel, Yosef’s mopther (29:17).  We are thus given an indirect clue about the source of Yaakov’s doting behavior in the Yosef story.

[RA] And Joseph was comely in features and comely to look at.  These are exactly the words used to describe Joseph’s mother in 29:17.  They signal an unsettling of the perfect harmony of Joseph’s divinely favored stewardship—that comprehensive management of “all” that is in the “house”—as they provide the motivation for the sexual campaign of his mistress.

after these things. i.e.after the twofold advancement of Joseph, when he was no longer a slave, but had become overseer and trusted confidant, his master’s wife makes advances to him.  The immorality of the ancient Egyptians, both men and women, was notorious.

[RA] Lie with me. The extraordinary bluntness of this sexual imperative—two words in the Hebrew—makes it one of the most striking instances of revelatory initial dialogue in the Bible.  Against her two words, the scandalized (and perhaps nervous) Joseph will issue a breathless response that runs to thirty-five words in the Hebrew.  It is a remarkable deployment of the technique of contrastive dialogue repeatedly used by the biblical writers to define the differences between characters in verbal confrontation.

and sin against God. Joseph would not betray his master’s confidence, neither would he sin against God.  As a God-fearing man, he knows that the thing is wrong in the sight of God; and that is enough for him.  Potiphar might never know of the sin, but God would know.

[EF] sinning: Or “at fault.” against God: From this point on, it is clear that Yosef is no longer the spoiled brat of Chapt. 37.  At key points in his life he consistently makes mention of God as the source of his success and good fortune (40:8;41:16;45;5,7,9).

[EF] to lie beside her, to be with her:  A curious expression.  Why does not the text say, as in v.7, “to lie with her”? There is an additional irony:  to be with” usually refers to God (see v. 2, for example).

[RA] to lie by her. The narrator, by altering the preposition, somewhat softens the bluntness of the mistress’s sexual proposition.  This led Abraham ibn Ezra to imagine that she adopted the stratagem of inviting Joseph merely to lie down in bed next to her.

11 so it was, on such a day, 

when he came into the house to do his work, 

and none of the house-people was there in the house-

12 that she grabbed him by his garment, saying: 

[We apologize for losing the source of this image]

and fled.  Some sins can only be avoided by flight.  Ecclesiasticus XXI,2. ‘Flee from sin, as from the face of a serpent; for if thou come too near it will bite thee: the teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion, slaying the souls of men.’  The Rabbis say, ‘At the moment of temptation, his father’s image appeared to him and gave him strength to resist.’

[RA] she seized him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” The two-word sexual command, which is all she is ever reported saying to Joseph, is now translated from words into aggressive action.  “Garment” (beged) is a generic term.  It is certainly not an outside garment of “coat,” as E.A. Speiser has it, though the Revised English Bible’s “loincloth” probably goes too far in the opposite direction.  In any case, Joseph would be naked, when he runs off leaving the garment behind in her grasping hand.

[RA] The narrator repeats the terms of the preceding sentence both in order to build up momentary suspense–what will she do now?–and in order to review the crucial evidence and sequence of events, which she is about to change.

she called. Filled with vindictive malice because of thwarted desire, she calls aloud to the men of the house, who would be envious of their master’s favour towards Joseph.

a Hebrew.  See v. 17 and XVIII,32.  Being of ancient Egyptian stock (see v. 1), she appeals to Egyptian racial prejudice.  The admission of this Asiatic alien into her home is an insult to her and to every race-pure Egyptian!

to mock us. To attempt the greatest outrage against us.

[EF] play around: A sexual reference; or it might mean “laugh at.” (Translated laughing-and-loving in 26:8).

[RA] he has brought us a Hebrew man to play with us. Rather contemptuously, she refers to her husband neither by name nor title.  The designation “Hebrew” is common when the group is referred to in contradistinction to other peoplles, but it may well have had pejorative associations for Egyptians.  “Play” can mean sexual dalliance or mockery, and probably means both here.  “Us” suggests they all could have been game for this lascivious–or, mocking–barbarian from the north and is an obvious attempt on her part to enlist their sense of Egyptian solidarity.  She is probably suggesting that the very supremacy of this foreigner in the household is an insult to them all.

He came into me. She plays shrewdly on a double meaning.  Though all she is saying is that he came into the house, or chamber, where she was alone, the idiom in other contexts can mean to consummate sexual relations. (It is the expression that in sexual contexts is rendered in this translation as “come to bed with.”)

[EF] beside: Three times here, the word perhaps suggests to the audience that Yosef’s garment is all that she will ever get “to lie beside her.”

[RA] when he heard me raise my voice. We, of course, have been twice informed that the raising of the voice came after the flight, as a strategy for coping with it, and not before the flight as its cause.

he left his garment by me. She substitutes the innocent “by me” for the narrator’s “in her hand.”  A verbal spotlight is focused on this central evidentiary fact that she alters because of the earlier “left all that he had in Joseph’s hands” (the Hebrew actually uses the singular “hand”), and we are repeatedly informed that trust was placed in his hand.  Now we have a literal leaving of something in her hand, which she changes to by her side.

 laid up. i.e. put by.

his garment. As evidence to convict Joseph, and convince Potiphar of her own innocence.

[RA] she laid out his garment by her.  She carefully sets out the evidence for the frame-up.  This is, of course, the second time that Joseph has been stripped of his garment, and the second time the garment is used as evidence for a lie.

[RA] The Hebrew slave came into me. Talking to her husband, she refers to Joseph as “slave,” not “man,” in order to stress the outrageous presumption of the slave’s alleged assault on his mistress.  She avoided the term “slave” when addressing the household staff because they, too, are slaves.  Again, she uses the ambiguous phrase that momentarily seems to say that Joseph consummated the sexual act.

whom you brought us, to play with me. The accusation of her husband in her words to the people of the house is modulated into a studied ambiguity.  The syntax–there is of course no punctuation in the Hebrew–could be construed either with a clear pause after “brought us,” or as a rebuke, “you brought us to play with me.”

that he left his garment beside me and fled outside.

19 Now it was, when his lord heard his wife’s words which she spoke to him, 

[RA] Things of this sort your slave has done to me. Rashi is no doubt fanciful in imagining that the first words here are to be explained by the fact that she is talking to her husband in the midst of lovemaking, but the comment does get into the spirit of her wifely manipulativeness.

the prison.  The Heb. word occurs only here, and seems to be Egyptian.  The Midrash explains that Potiphar had some doubt as to the truth of the accusation against Joseph; otherwise he would ahve put him to death, instead of putting him in prison. To this episode in Joseph’s life, there is an interesting parallel in the Egyptian “Tale of the Two Brothers’.  In the Tale, the wicked wife is slain by her husband.

[EF] dungeon: Hebrew obscure.

[RA] the prison-house. The reiterated Hebrew term for prison, beyt sohar, occurs only here.  It should be noted that the term includes a “house” component which helps establish a link with the opening frame and the tale of attempted seduction.  Joseph, though cast down once more, is again in a “house” where he will take charge.

And he was there in the prison-house. The division of the text follows the proposal of the nineteenth-century Italian Hebrew scholar S.D. Luzatto in attaching these words to the concluding frame.  In this way, the last part of verse 20 together with verse 21 becomes a perfect mirror image of verse 2.

21-23. The great rhythm of Joseph’s destiny of successful stewardship now reasserts itself as the language of the introductory frame is echoed here at the end:  “God was with Joseph,” granted him favor in the eyes or,” “placed in Joseph’s hands,” “all,” and, as the summarizing term at the very conclusion of the narrative unit, “succeed.”

but the LORD was with Joseph.  In the prison, giving him comfort and strength to endure the suffering and the shame.  He wins the confidence of the keeper, as he did of his master.  The light of a superior mind and soul cannot be hidden even in a prison.

[EF] kindness:  Or “faithfulness,” “loyalty.”  See 32:11.

committed to Joseph’s hand. i.e. he is made superintendent of the other prisoners.

he was the doer of it. All was done at the suggestion of Joseph.

looked not to any thing.  Just as Potiphar had done.  Joseph enjoyed full confidence.

[This was first posted in September 2012; there is no change in the original article, we are simply replacing the former translation with a more recent one:  The Five Books of Moses by Everett Fox.  This is a free download from the publisher Shocken Books, check this link:  

http://toby.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/4/8/2748917/everett_foxxstorah.pdf.–

–Admin1.]

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As the previous chapter closes, the plot in the Joseph story has just thickened; one would expect its continuing build-up in this next chapter, instead the suspense is put on hold because out of the blue, this anti-climactic interlude about another son of Jacob veers off to another direction. Why? Could this story not have been inserted before the Joseph story? After all according to Torah for Dummies’  a rule of thumb for reading the TNK is: 

”There is no earlier or later in the Torah.”  

. . . the Torah isn’t a historical narration and isn’t in chronological order. 

The text does say “at that time” and if its placement is the Joseph narrative, then that’s where it belongs chronologically.  Except for the interruption, what does it matter if we are introduced to a phase in the life of Judah, 4th son of Jacob with Leah, from whom will descend the tribe of Judah. There will be many significant connections to that tribal name the discussion of which we will postpone for later articles; for now, we confine our thinking only to what the narrative says, that’s the whole point of rereading with all previous orientations, presuppositions and brainwashing erased!

We learned earlier about the patriarch Abraham’s preference that a wife for Isaac not be taken from among the Canaanite women so he ends up with Rebecca, daughter of Bethuel, sister of Laban.  Jacob also seeks a wife from Abraham’s kin and ends up with Laban’s 2 daughters.  Esau initially did take wives from Canaanite women until he heard Isaac’s preference for Jacob, and he goes to the tribe of Ishmael for his next wife.  We read without judgment upon the practice of having multiple wives in the patriarchal families only because it was normal for the culture of those times. Monotheism was just beginning to be introduced in polytheistic religious settings, monogamy had not been prescribed in polygamous patriarchal societies.  

The next generation, the 12 sons of Jacob, could not have been told about any prohibition regarding intermarrying with women from among the Canaanites; there would have been none then and 2 patriarchs’ preference is not yet law nor tradition. So Judah takes a wife–nameless daughter of Shua—from among the Canaanites and she bears him 3 sons:

• Er 
• Onan 
• Shelah  

This story of Judah and his sons might be unsettling in our times when birth control opened a Pandora’s box of women’s issues, the discussion of which we will save for another article.  For now, be aware of a natural way of birth control which is introduced in this chapter.

It is one thing to read in Scripture that Judah’s first 2 sons “died” but it is another to read that God killed both sons. Yes we could attribute command responsibility to the Creator of all living things and the source of all life knowing that once we are born, we are programmed to die and whatever causes our death, whether accident, sickness, or old age, that is only natural for all living creatures. So yes, in this sense God could be blamed for anyone’s death but that is not what is suggested here. 

The Judah story relates that Er the eldest died because he was “wicked”; what constitutes “wicked” or “evil” seems to be associated with the practices of Canaanites, we can only deduce that much.

It is the custom that a brother marry the widow of his deceased brother so middle son Onan had to marry his brother’s widow Tamar; his sin is refusing to impregnate her by spilling his semen on the ground, probably the first mention of this method of birth control in the bible; “onanism” which the dictionary defines as masturbation/coitus interruptus.  Does this mean that God does not allow birth control and considers it a sin? Or that sex is only for procreation?  Or is the message here about something else? We’ll leave that up to the reader to decide because we’re clueless at this point; the consequence for Onan is — God gets him out of the picture too.

So the 3rd son is supposed to be the next to pick up where the 2 brothers left off, but that does not happen because Judah has already lost 2 sons in connection with Tamar . . . which leaves the widow Tamar to her own devices to ensure she conceives a child from her husband’s line. This is yet another story of deception, this time perpetrated upon Judah who will later be the son to tell Jacob the made-up story about Joseph.  So, the Judah interlude with Tamar is fitting after all in the continuing theme of deception in the family of this 3rd patriarch.  

NSB@S6K

Image from doubleportioninheritance.blogspot.com

Genesis/Bereshith 38 

[This was first posted  in 2012, reflecting 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.  

Image from www.goodsalt.com

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 key word (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.”