Vayigash ויגש
Vayigash begins with the climactic scene in which Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers. Moved by Judah’s impassioned plea for Benjamin’s freedom, in return for which he declares himself ready to take Benjamin’s place as a slave, Joseph discloses his identity and the estrangement of the brothers comes to an end. On Joseph’s instructions, they return to Jacob with the news that his beloved son is still alive, and the family is reunited.
Three of the following essays are about the fundamental principles that underlie these events. The first is about teshuva, repentance; the second is about the seeming paradox that in Judaism the penitent is regarded as higher even than a perfectly righteous individual. The fourth is about forgiveness and why it is essential to the functioning of any human group, from a family to a society. The third offers an explanation of a feature of the Joseph story that puzzles most readers: why did Joseph not send a message to his father that he was alive? The suggested answer links the Joseph story to several others in Genesis, about the tragic misunderstandings that can emerge when human beings fail to communicate.
In Search of Repentance
The drama of Joseph and his brothers, which has thus far spanned two parashot and eight chapters, filled with tension and reversals of fate, now reaches its climax. Judah and Joseph face one another. Benjamin, the youngest of the sons, stands accused of theft and faces a lifetime of slavery. Judah makes an impassioned plea for his release. Yes, the missing silver cup has been found in his possession. Judah does not challenge the facts. Instead he throws himself on the mercy of the Egyptian ruler, of whose identity he is still unaware, and begs him to consider the impact Benjamin’s imprisonment will have on his father. Jacob has already lost one beloved son. The shock of losing another will kill him:
Now therefore, please let your servant remain here as your lordship’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that shall come upon my father…(44:33–34)
These are the words that finally break Joseph’s heart. Overcome with emotion, he commands all his attendants to leave, then turns to his brothers, and reveals his identity:
Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, for they were terrified at his presence. (45:1–3)
Their silence is eloquent. They are bewildered. The stranger turns out to be their brother. The ruler of Egypt is the boy who, years earlier, they had sold into slavery. The combination of shock and guilt paralyses them.
Breaking the silence, Joseph continues. He has yet another surprise for his brothers. He does not hold them guilty. There is no anger in his words. Instead he does the least expected thing. He comforts them. He forgives them. He speaks with a majestic graciousness:
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they came close, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, for God sent me ahead of you to preserve life. For two years now has there been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” (45:4–8)
With this, the long story reaches closure. The estrangement, which began with the words, “[The brothers] hated him and could not speak peaceably to him” (37:4), is at an end. Joseph is, as he twice dreamed he would be, a ruler. His brothers have bowed down to him. He has survived their attempt to kill him. He has risen from slavery to become the second most powerful man in the most powerful empire of the ancient world. But a central question remains. What kind of story is this? Is it a fairytale of rags to riches? A story of revenge? A tragedy of internal dissolution and family in-fighting? What are the deeper themes playing beneath the apparently simple surface? To understand the narrative, we must trace the sequence of events, trying to uncover the intent driving Joseph in the successive encounters with his brothers.
First, the brothers come before Joseph to buy grain. He recognises them but they do not recognise him. He then “speaks harshly,” accusing them of espionage. He has them imprisoned for three days.
He then releases them, holding Shimon as a hostage, and tells them that they must bring Benjamin with them next time, to verify their story. Unbeknown to them, he has the money they had paid for the grain put back into their sacks. Discovering this, the brothers are unnerved. Something is happening to them, but they do not know what. They are returning without Shimon but with money instead. It does not make sense, but it does evoke in them a guilty conscience. Did they not, once before, sell (or at least plan to sell) one of their brothers for money. They tremble and ask “What is this that God has done to us?” (42:28).
Returning home, they tell their father what has happened, but Jacob refuses to let Benjamin return to Egypt with them. Eventually the food runs out. After much persuasion on the part of Judah, Jacob allows Benjamin to accompany the brothers back to Egypt. This time, Joseph greets them with warmth, releasing Shimon, inviting them to eat with him. After providing them with fresh supplies of grain, he sends them on their way. Now, however, he does more than place money in their sacks. He has his favourite divination cup placed in Benjamin’s grain.
The brothers have left the city, relieved that the visit has been unexpectedly painless. No sooner have they gone than they are overtaken by Joseph’s steward. Someone has stolen his master’s silver cup. The brothers protest their innocence. The steward searches their bags, starting with the eldest. Finally they reach Benjamin’s, and there, in his sack, is the cup. It is the brothers’ worst nightmare come true. They knew that having once come home without Joseph, they cannot lose Benjamin as well. Judah has staked his life on it. He has told his father, “I myself will guarantee [Benjamin’s] safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life” (43:9). So the brothers appear before Joseph once more, and the drama moves toward its climax.
There are several possible readings of the logic driving this drama that so puzzles the brothers – and the readers. The first, suggested by the Torah itself (“Then he [Joseph] remembered his dreams about them and said to them: You are spies” [42:9]), is that Joseph was acting so as to fulfill his childhood dreams, in which his family bowed down to him.
This, however, cannot be the case. Before Joseph acts like a stranger, we read “When Joseph’s brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground” (42:6), fulfilling his first dream. If the story were simply about the fulfilment of Joseph’s second dream, he should have devised a strategy that would bring the whole family, including Jacob, to Egypt. Jacob and all his brothers would have bowed down to him, the dreams would be fulfilled, and Joseph could then reveal his identity. Nothing of this kind happens. Joseph’s actions do not advance, but actually delay this outcome. It cannot be, then, that Joseph was acting simply to fulfil his dreams.
The second possibility is that Joseph is driven by an urge for revenge: he is making his brothers suffer as they once made him suffer. But this too is untenable. At every significant stage (42:24, 43:30, 45:1–2), Joseph turns aside to weep, careful not to let the brothers see him in this state. People engaged in revenge do not weep when executing vengeance. The Torah emphasizes his uncontrollable emotional response, repeating this detail three times, precisely to exclude the possibility that Joseph was acting out of desire to do to his brothers what they had once done to him. Those who repay evil with evil take satisfaction in so doing. Joseph takes no satisfaction at all. He is acting against his inclination and it causes him unbearable pain. The question therefore returns in full force. What is the logic of Joseph’s carefully constructed plot?
One of the key concepts of Judaism – the theme of its holiest days from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur – is teshuva, a complex concept involving remorse, repentance and return. The abstract noun teshuva is post-biblical, but the idea it embodies is central to the Hebrew Bible. It is what the prophets call on Israel to do. It is what Jonah is sent to Nineveh to achieve. In a related sense it is what certain sacrifices (guilt and sin offerings) are intended to accompany.
Teshuva, as analysed by the sages and later by Maimonides, has certain key elements. The first is confession and acknowledgement of wrongdoing:
How does one confess? The penitent says, “I beseech You, O Lord, I have sinned, I have acted perversely, I have transgressed before You, and have done such and such, and I repent and am ashamed of my deeds.”1.Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuva, 1:1.
The second is to commit oneself not to repeat the offence:
What is this teshuva? It is that the sinner abandons his sin, removes it from his thoughts, and resolves in his heart never to repeat it, as it is said, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts.” (Isaiah, 55:7)2.Ibid., 2:2.
There is a further condition of complete repentance. As defined by Maimonides:
What is perfect teshuva? This occurs when an opportunity presents itself for repeating the offence once committed, and the offender is able to commit the offence, but refrains from doing so because of the teshuva – not out of fear or failure of vigour.3.Ibid., 2:1.
As soon as we understand these three points, the logic of Joseph’s course of action becomes clear. The drama to which he subjects his brothers has nothing to do with the dreams, or with revenge. To the contrary, Joseph is not acting for himself but for the sake of his brothers. He is leading them – for the first time in recorded history – through the three stages of teshuva.
Recall what happened as a result of his intervention. His initial move was to accuse his brothers of a crime they had not committed (being spies), holding them in custody for three days, to see whether this would remind them of a crime they did commit (selling their brother into slavery). The effect is direct and unequivocal:
They said to one another, “Indeed we are guilty [aval ashemim anaḥnu] because of our brother, for we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” …They did not realise that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter. (42:21–23)
Following the first encounter with Joseph, the brothers confess and express remorse for what they did. The first stage of teshuva has taken place.
The second takes place far away from Joseph, but he has so arranged matters that he will know whether it has happened or not. Joseph is holding Shimon as hostage.4.This is a significant detail. Shimon is the second oldest of the sons. By rights, Joseph should have held Reuben, the eldest. However, he knows that Reuben was the one brother who tried to save him. Shimon is therefore the eldest of those who conspired to kill Joseph.
He tells the brothers that he will be released only if they return with Benjamin. Knowing his father as he does, Joseph has calculated, rightly, that Jacob will only allow Benjamin to go if he is certain that his sons will not let happen to Benjamin what they let happen to Joseph. This indeed happens when Judah says to Jacob:
“I myself will guarantee [Benjamin’s] safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life.” (43:9)
The second condition of repentance has been achieved: a commitment not to repeat the offence. Judah undertakes not to let happen this time what happened last time, namely that Jacob’s sons returned without their youngest sibling whose safety they should have guaranteed.
The third act is a master-stroke. Joseph constructs a scene – one could almost call it a controlled experiment – to see if his brothers have indeed changed. They had once sold him into slavery. He now puts them in a situation in which they will have overwhelming temptation to repeat the crime by abandoning Benjamin to slavery. This is why he plants the cup in Benjamin’s sack, arranges for him to be accused of theft, rules that his punishment will be to remain in Egypt as a slave, and tells the other brothers that they are free to leave.
Joseph, in effect, recreates the past. Benjamin, like Joseph, is a son of Rachel, and therefore likely to be envied and despised by the other brothers. The brothers’ resentment of Joseph was heightened by the jealousy they felt at the sight of the many-coloured robe Jacob had given him. Joseph therefore creates once again a situation of inequality. When he sits the brothers down for a meal he arranges that they be seated in order of age, highlighting the fact that Benjamin is the youngest, and then ensures that “Benjamin’s portion was five times as much as anyone else’s” (43:34). There is only one explanation for this strange detail. Joseph is trying to make his brothers jealous of their youngest sibling.
As far as possible, the circumstances of their original crime have now been replicated. Their youngest brother, a child of Rachel, is about to be taken as a slave in Egypt. The brothers have reason to be jealous of him as they were of Joseph. This time they rise to the challenge. As Benjamin is about to be taken into custody, his brothers offer to join him in prison. Joseph declines: “Far be it from me to do such a thing! Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave. The rest of you go back to your father in peace” (44:17).
The moment of trial has now begun. Joseph has offered the brothers a simple escape route. All they have to do is walk away. It is then, when “Judah went up to him and said…” (44:18), that the story reaches its climax. Judah, the very brother who was responsible for selling Joseph into slavery (37:27), now offers to sacrifice his own freedom rather than let Benjamin be held as a slave.
The circumstances are similar to what they were years earlier, but Judah’s behaviour is now diametrically opposite to what it was then. He has the opportunity and ability to repeat the offence, but he does not do so. Judah has fulfilled the conditions set out by the sages and Maimonides for “perfect teshuva.” As soon as he does so, Joseph reveals his identity and the drama is at an end.
Not dreams, not revenge, but teshuva is what has driven Joseph all along. His brothers once sold him as a slave. He survived: more than survived, he has prospered. He knows (he says so constantly) that everything that has happened to him is somehow part of God’s plan. His concern is not for himself but for his brothers. Have they survived? Do they realise the depth of the crime they committed? Are they capable of remorse? Can they change? The entire sequence of events between the brothers’ first arrival in Egypt and the moment Joseph reveals himself to them, is an extended essay in teshuva, a precise rehearsal of what will later become normative Jewish law.
And it must happen at this precise point because – unbeknown to any of the participants – the family of Abraham is about to undergo exile in Egypt, prior to their becoming a nation under the sovereignty of God. That will place more demands on Israel than on any other people in history. God knows that they will often fail – they will sin, complain, worship idols, break His laws. That He accepts, though at times it gives Him great grief. God does not demand perfection: by giving us freewill He empowers us to make mistakes. All He asks is that we acknowledge our mistakes and commit ourselves not to make them again – in a word, that we be capable of teshuva. Judah, by undergoing Joseph’s test, demonstrated that the children of Israel had become ba’alei teshuva, masters of repentance, capable of learning from, and growing through, their mistakes. Jewish history, starting with exile and exodus in Egypt, could now begin.