Trials, Tribulations, and Changing Circumstances
PARASHAT VAYEISHEV (“he settled”) begins the so-called “Joseph story cycle,” which goes on until the end of Genesis. In this first portion, the personal drama of Jacob and his family incorporates questions of national identity and survival outside the Promised Land. The reader follows Joseph’s external and internal journey as he grows through hardships and tribulations from a spoiled son—favored by his father but hated by his brothers—into a wiser youth in an Egyptian jail.
Two stories of a woman and sex stand literally at the center of the parashah. One is the story of Tamar and her father-in-law Judah (Genesis 38), in which she eventually gives birth to two sons, one of whom will be a forefather of King David; in this episode Tamar takes extraordinary risks to secure the family’s future (if not her own) by getting pregnant by her father-in-law. In the second story, the wife of Potiphar—Joseph’s Egyptian master—attempts to seduce Joseph; he resists, she lies about the circumstances, and he is sent to prison (Genesis 39).
The two stories present the men’s behavior as contrasts: Judah eagerly has sex with the veiled Tamar, whereas Joseph resists Potiphar’s wife. (The contrast displays a bias for Joseph tribes as Genesis retrojects a much later, ongoing rivalry between the tribes of Joseph in the north and Judah in the south.) In both cases the text presumes that women can be sexually dangerous to men; but Tamar, unlike Potiphar’s wife, is pronounced righteous for ensuring—by using her body—that Judah’s family is not “written out of history.”
Structurally, the parashah is symmetrical: the first and last episodes portray Joseph in relations to dreams and dream solving. Joseph’s development, the structure suggests, revolves around his dreams, and it is generated by his own actions as well as the behavior of others (his father, brothers, master, Potiphar’s wife). God, though involved, remains in the background.
These themes surround two stories about a woman’s desire and its consequences. In both, the woman uses a garment to deceive. In both, she furthers the education and development of a man. Yet her actions, while advancing the plot—and the divine plan, so it seems—are not transformational; Judah and Joseph will each have to struggle further to transform self-centeredness into leadership. Tamar’s desire and action are rewarded: she becomes a mother of twins—and is invoked in the book of Ruth within a blessing (4:12). In contrast, the desire of Potiphar’s wife remains unfulfilled and she disappears unnamed. (In early Christian interpretation, Jewish post-biblical sources, and Islamic re-tellings including the Qur’an [sura 12], she endures as a symbol of the dangerous foreign woman.)
—Athalya Brenner
Outline—
I. JOSEPH THE DREAMER
His Journey from Home to Slavery in Egypt (37:1–36)
II. AN INTERLUDE: TAMAR AND JUDAH
Judah Is Educated through Deception and Sex (38:1–30)
A. Introduction: Judah and his family (vv. 1–5)
B. Tamar loses her husbands and position (vv. 6–11)
C. Tamar evolves from victim to agent: deception, sex, and pregnancy (vv. 12–23)
D. Tamar is vindicated: trial, birth, and education (vv. 24–30)
III. JOSEPH AND MADAM POTIPHAR
Sex and Deception (39:1–23)
A. Joseph succeeds in Potiphar’s house (vv. 1–6)
B. Joseph resists seduction (vv. 7–12)
C. Madam Potiphar lies and Joseph is arrested (vv. 13–20)
D. Conclusion: Joseph succeeds in jail (vv. 21–23)
IV. JOSEPH’S EDUCATION CONTINUES
The Dream Interpreter in Jail (40:1–23)