A.
The story of Yosef continues with Yosef’s rise to greatness on the strength of his interpretation of the Egyptian king’s dreams: Seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine.
Both of these predictions prove true, and as the world-wide famine ensues, Ya’aqov, driven by necessity, sends ten of his sons to Egypt to buy food, keeping only the youngest, Binyamin, at home. The ten brothers are brought before Yosef, who recognizes them immediately, though they, of course, fail to recognize the boy they had sold into slavery in the powerful Egyptian noble enthroned before them.
Speaking through an interpreter, Yosef accuses his brothers of being spies. They protest their innocence, and he proposes that they prove their bona fides by bringing the younger brother whom they claim to have left behind to Egypt: שלחו מכם אחד ויקח את טחיכם ואתם האסרו וגו' ויאסף אתם אל משמר שלשת ימים (“Send one of you, and he will bring your brother, and you, be imprisoned.... And he gathered them under guard for three days;” XLII, 16-17).
Then Yosef seems to change his mind: אם כנים אתם אחיכם אחד יאסר בבית משמרכם ואתם לכו הביאו שבר רעבון בתיכם וכו' ויקח מאתם את שמעון ויאסר אתו לעיניהם (“If you are upright, one of your brothers will be imprisoned, and you, go, bring famine relief to your homes.... And he took Shim’on and imprisoned him before their eyes;” ibid., 19-24).
Yosef’s evident capricious behaviour is striking, first saying that one would go fetch Binyamin whilst the others sat in jail, then imprisoning them all, finally releasing nine of them and keeping one; what is the reason behind it, and why was Shim’on the one he kept?
B.
To begin our search for an answer, we return to the beginning of last week’s parasha, where we read: ויבא יוסף את דבתם רעה אל אביהם (“And Yosef brought [his brothers’] ill fame to their father;” XXXVII, 2). The claim is not made that Yosef slandered his brothers; rather, he told lashon ha-ra about them, that is. things which he knew (or at least believed) to be true, but which were nonetheless defamatory. Rashi ad loc. writes, following the midrash, that one of the things he told Ya’aqov was: ומזלזלים בבני השפחות לקרותן עבדים (“and they were insulting the sons of the maidservants [bnei ha-shfachoth], calling them slaves [âvadim];” ע"ע רשב"ם שם).
The Talmud (הוריות י"ג.) establishes an order of precedence when it comes to the mitzva of פדיון שבויים, “redeeming prisoners” from captivity: An ordinary, free citizen of klal Yisra’él takes precedence over an êved, a kohén takes precedence over the ordinary Israelite, a king of Israel likewise has precedence over ordinary citizens, a talmid chacham (“Torah scholar”) has precedence even over the king, and one’s father who has been taken prisoner has priority over any of the above.
Now consider: Yosef’s goal in putting his brothers through all of the twists and turns which follow was primarily to determine whether or not they had changed their ways. One of the bad habits of Le’a’s sons, we have seen, was calling the sone of Bilha and Zilpa slaves, holding themselves to have a higher status. Yosef wanted to see if this was still so.
I think that Yosef was looking for a ben Lé’a whose only source of status lay in being a ben Lé’a. If he would be imprisoned, would the others attempt to substitute one of the bnei ha-shfachoth for him?
Le’a’s sons were Re’uven, Levi, Shim’on, Yehuda, Yissachar, and Zvulun. Levi and Yehuda, Yosef discounted at once: The one contained within him the future kehunna of Israel, the other the kingship; clearly, the brothers might feel an inherent sense of precedence in their cases.
Re’uven was Le’a’s first-born. The halacha is quite clear that, as the eldest, he was due a level of deference similar to that of his father (עיי' שו"ע יו"ד סי' ר"מ סעיף כ"ב, בית לחם יהודה שם). Hence he, too, could be discounted.
Yissachar, Yosef saw, would be famous for the talmidei chachamim who would arise from him (cf. Deuteronomy XXXIII, 18, Rashi ad loc.; I Chronicles XIII, 32, Radaq ad loc.). Here he, too, grounds for precedence could be found; and Zvulun, who would be the principle source of support for Yissachar’s Torah, would enjoy a similar status (עיי' יו"ד סי' רנ"א סעיף ה' ברכי יוסף שם ). Yosef’s eye therefore settled on Shim’on, the only son of Le’a whose sole claim to precedence over Dan, Naftrali, Gad or Asher was that he was a ben Lé’a.
But if that is why Shim’on was selected, why go through the whole charade of imprisoning all the brothers together for three days? Why not simply say that Shim’on should stay, and the others go and fetch Binyamin, and be done with it?
C.
Go back for a moment to the gmara, supra. It has never been a practice in Israel that if, for instance, a free citizen of Israel is taken captive, one goes and procures a slave in the marketplace to exchange for him, G-d forbid. Rather, the gmara is dealing with a case in which both the Israelite and the êved have been taken together, and the resources exist to free only one of them at the moment: Who should be freed first?
Had Yosef simply taken Shim’on and imprisoned him, there would have been no test; the brothers would simply have gone home and fetched Binyamin. They would not even have been tempted to offer one of the bnei ha-shafachoth in his place, because that was not, and is not a practice in Israel. By imprisoning all ten brothers together, however, and then releasing the others and keeping Shim’on, Yosef offered them the opportunity to allege Shim’on’s superiority over the sons of Bilha and Zilpa, and beg the “Egyptian nobleman” to hold one of them instead.
וילכו משם (XLII, 26); the brothers simply left to get Binyamin. They had passed the first test.
D.
There remains the question of why Yosef changed his mind the first time, initially decreeing that one brother would be released to fetch Binyamin, but ultimately letting nine of them go, keeping only Shim’on. What was the point of that exercise?
The Netziv analyzes the language of v. 19 and compares it the language of v. 33, when the brothers report their experience to Ya’aqov, and concludes that it had nothing to do with the “test” which Yosef was administering to his brothers. Rather, he writes, when Yosef told his brothers אם כנים אתם, “if you are upright,” he meant דכנים משמעו אנשים בעלי בתים בטף ונשים. וכך אמר יוסף שהוא ירא מן האלקים ושמא באמת כנים אתם שיש לכם אף ונשים וא"כ מה יעשו המה ברעב ע"כ אחיכם אחד וגו' (“that the meaning of ‘upright’ [here] is householders with children and wives; and so Yosef said that he was ‘G-d-fearing’ [in the previous verse] and if you are indeed as you say, that you have children and wives, if so, what will they do in the famine? Therefore, ‘one of your brothers [will be imprisoned], etc.’” העמק דבר עה"פ).
Such a show of pious mercy from an impersonal Egyptian noble, a presumptive idolator, was not to be expected. It seems to me that Yosef was thereby playing with his brothers, providing them with a hint of who he really was, even though it would only become clear to them at the climax of the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment