[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).
1 Yosef could no longer restrain himself in the presence of all who were stationed around him, he called out: Have everyone leave me! So no one stood (in attendance upon) him when Yosef made himself known to his brothers.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.
2 He put forth his voice in weeping: the Egyptians heard, Pharaoh’s household heard.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.
3 Then Yosef said to his brothers: I am Yosef. Is my father still alive? But his brothers were not able to answer him, for they were confounded in his presence.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).
4 Yosef said to his brothers: Pray come close to me! They came close. 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.
5 But now, do not be pained, and do not let upset be in your eyes that you sold me here! For it was to save life that God sent me on before you.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.
6 For it is two years now that the famine has been in the midst of the land, and there are still another five years in which there shall be no plowing or harvest. 7 So God sent me on before you to make you a remnant on earth, to keep you alive as a great body-of-survivors.a remnant. Offspring, descendants.
8 So now, it was not you that sent me here, but God! He has made me Father to Pharaoh and lord of all his household and ruler over all the land of Egypt.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.
9 Make haste, go up to my father and say to him: Thus says your son, Yosef: God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not remain!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.
10 You shall stay in the region of Goshen, you shall be near me, you and your sons and the sons of your sons, your sheep, your oxen, and all that is yours.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.
11 I will sustain you there, for there are still five years of famine left -lest you be as disinherited, you and your household and all that is yours.[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.
12 Here, your eyes see, as well as my brother Binyamin’s eyes, that it is my mouth that speaks to you!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.
13 So tell my father of all the weight I carry in Egypt, and of all that you have seen, and make haste, bring my father down here! 14 He flung himself upon his brother Binyamin’s neck and wept, and Binyamin wept upon his neck.[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.
15 Then he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After this his brothers spoke with him.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 The news was heard in Pharaoh’s household, they said: Yosef’s brothers have come! It was good in Pharaoh’s eyes and in the eyes of his servants.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.
17 And Pharaoh said to Yosef: Say to your brothers: Do this- load your animals and go,
come back to the land of Canaan; 18 fetch your father and your households and come to me! I will give you the good-things of the land of Egypt, so that you will eat of the fat of the land!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.”
19 And you, you have been commanded: Do this- take you wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and your wives, and carry your father down and come!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).
20 Let not your eyes look-with-regret on your household-wares, for the good-things of all the land of Egypt-they are yours!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.”
21 The sons of Yisrael did so, Yosef gave them wagons in accordance with Pharaoh’s orders and gave them victuals for the journey.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.”
22 To all of them, each man, he gave changes of clothes, but to Binyamin he gave three hundred pieces-of-silver and five changes of clothes,[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.
23 and to his father he sent in like manner: ten donkeys, carrying the good-things of Egypt, and ten she-asses, carrying grain and bread, and food for his father, for the journey.[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.
24 Then he sent off his brothers, and they went; he said to them: Do not be agitated on the journey!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.
25 They went up from Egypt and came to the land of Canaan, to Yaakov their father, 26 and they told him, saying: Yosef is still alive! Indeed, he is ruler of all the land of Egypt! His heart failed, for he did not believe them.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.
27 But when they spoke to him all of Yosef’s words which he had spoken to them, and when he saw the wagons that Yosef had sent to carry him down, their father Yaakov’s spirit came to life.[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.
28 Yisrael said: Enough! Yosef my son is still alive; I must go and see him before I die!
- Image from lavistachurchofchrist.org
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.