Reading Genesis, page 17
They answer that they are twelve brothers, “and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not.” A novel drawn from this brief account of a very freighted moment, their counting Joseph among their number after years of his absence, and pairing him with Benjamin, his full brother, would find guilt and deep regret. Whenever, during those years, Jacob showed some special care for Benjamin, some hint of anxiety about their dealings with him, they would be reminded of the terrible grief they had caused their father, sorrow renewed in his continuous awareness of the lad Benjamin’s vulnerability. Jacob would inevitably seem to cherish Benjamin above his brothers, though the favor he showed to Joseph was presumably the provocation, if his brothers had indeed done away with him. A question too terrible to be asked, a confession too terrible to be made, and Jacob growing old in this silence.
The powerful stranger somehow knows where to touch the brothers’ unhealed wound. He singles out the lad, Benjamin, and tells them they must do the thing their father dreads and will try to forbid: They must bring him to Egypt. At first Joseph says one of the brothers must fetch him; then he says one of them must remain as a hostage while the others carry grain back to their households, then return to him with Benjamin. They know what bitter doubt they will see in their father when they tell him the one condition Joseph has set in selling them the grain that will let them “live, and not die.” This demand is perfectly calculated to call up in the minds of the brothers the thought of their crime and of the retribution they fear. Their response is not to the immediate situation but to the source of its disruption, the guilt that underlies it. They say to one another, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.” They may assume that they are responsible for his death, however this might have happened. It is not the sin of manslaughter that haunts them but the memory of the lad’s shock and grief. They all feel they saw his growing awareness of the reality of their betrayal of him.
If this were a Greek tragedy, and destiny had brought these protagonists to a place and circumstance where their transgression was made clear to them, there would be a chorus to help the audience ponder the complexity and potency of their recognition in that moment. No one could really know what it would be to realize, as Oedipus did, that they had killed their father and married their mother, and to learn this after a life lived to evade the oracle that doomed them to commit these acts they find abhorrent. In these tragedies horror lifts a veil that otherwise conceals the workings of the fates, the vengefulness of the gods, and the helplessness of the greatest mortal figures when these immortal forces touch them. A stunning recognition about the profounder nature of things is felt on human nerves.
Hubris is the transgression that offends the cosmic order in Greek tragedy. In Genesis the recurring sin is grievous harm to one’s brother. Cain casts a long shadow. When Joseph’s brothers are confronted with a situation that refers so powerfully to their crime, they assume that they are experiencing the justice of God. But in the Hebrew Bible, notably in the story of Cain, things are never that simple. The Lord is not Nemesis. He is free, acting toward His own ends, indifferent to the harsh symmetry of revenge. The brothers could not know that their distress brings them toward rescue from their most onerous regret and from some part of their father’s sorrow. They anticipate the worst, taking divine justice to proceed as human justice would do. Reuben says their trouble is a reckoning for Joseph’s blood, and Joseph, hearing these words, turns away to weep in secret. This is the beginning of his softening toward them and of the gradual transformation of their tense encounters with him into profound recognition, in the dramatic even more than the literal sense.
Joseph is very much a human being, not yet arrived at the realization that will liberate him from the impulse to avenge himself on his brothers. He keeps Simeon as a hostage, but he also provides food for his brothers’ journey home, and he has the money they have paid him put into their sacks of grain. Without their consciousness of guilt, and despite Joseph’s harsh manner toward them, this could be seen as a kindness. Instead, when they discover the money, they are terrified. “And their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, ‘What is this that God hath done unto us?’” It would be remarkable to see these ten nomad princes, terribly and furtively of one mind, all guilty and all witnesses of the others’ guilt, looking to one another in shared dread and amazement. They may have seemed to the Egyptians to tremble at the power and grandeur of Pharaoh’s viceroy. No, they are believers in the God of Abraham, the Fear of Isaac. Foreign potentates are impressive only as they might be His instruments. In this case, Joseph’s importance to them is magnified and interpreted by their terror of God.
When Jacob first raised the matter of going to Egypt, he asked his sons, “Why do ye look one upon another?” Only the ten of them would know that, on account of them, any chance event might have terrible meaning. Because they have offended so gravely, any choice might open on exposure and humiliation. They may have made a practice and then a habit of consulting together wordlessly, hesitating for no clear reason, as in this case when the possible solution to a pressing problem awaits their decision to act. Was this deadly famine their punishment? If so, is there any use in trying to find relief from it? Will the departure from the familiar expose them to risks, stir judgment out of its long, haunting silence? This conspiracy after the fact would have been apparent to Jacob. Since the presumed death of Joseph, he would have noticed a grim bond among them, stronger than loyalty, that excluded him. And he would not have been able to put aside the bitter knowledge that sons can deceive their fathers. Alone as he had been with his guilt as he stood absurdly disguised, lying to blind old Isaac, he might find a semblance of it in the tense caution of their dealings with him.
Joseph has told them that he will have no further business with them until they come back with their youngest brother. On their return to Canaan they find money in their bags again and are again alarmed. Jacob finally speaks his heart. “Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.” This deep disruption of Jacob’s family was foreseen in Reuben’s cry at the discovery that Joseph was gone from the pit, lost to them. “The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?” Back to their father, with proof of a violent death that did not happen, a confession of their intent that they felt somehow compelled to make though it could only darken his suspicions. They will go back to a family that will be grievously changed. On the one hand, a father in Jacob’s situation might try to suspend judgment rather than bring on the cataclysm of accusing ten sons of fratricide. On the other hand, he had the fatherly problem of protecting Benjamin from the worst he suspected of them. Since the Lord put that mark on Cain, the gist of every story in Genesis is that human judgment is no equivalent of God’s justice. Through his long trial, heroically, Jacob has almost suspended judgment.
The climactic scene of Joseph’s encounter with his brothers is prepared formally, artfully. To suggest craft in the making of sacred text disturbs some people, as if the Holy Spirit would never descend to the strategies of nuance and emphasis that heighten the intelligibility of a story and are as much aspects of language as are words themselves. Imagine that the old rabbis of my speculations had told this story a thousand times, seeing its effect on their listeners. Three times they made the long journey to Egypt! Or imagine that it was enacted. “If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved!” The text does not tell us how Jacob reacts when Reuben offers his own sons to be slain if he does not return with Benjamin. Does he think Jacob could possibly be compensated for the loss of offspring by the deaths of offspring? It all seems too rich for this narrative to be the only form in which it would be given to people who knew and loved it and saw their identity in it. The bereaved old man is Israel, after all, and his agonized restraint preserves the clan of twelve eponyms whose tribes will shape the future of the people of Israel.
As the ten brothers make the three journeys to Egypt, suspense develops with the varied repetition of detail. The stranger’s insistence on seeing Benjamin plays out against the background of a famine in which they and their families could die, and the deeper background of the guilty act and their father’s unassuageable sorrow, which might end in his death. Then there is the overarching suspense present to teller and hearer, a preoccupation of the text concerning the providential history that must somehow withstand and resolve all of this threat and fear within the limits of the tale. These repetitions, a familiar literary convention, are here made to emphasize Jacob’s refusal to entrust Benjamin to his brothers, which is absolute at first and then, under the extraordinary pressure of circumstance, becomes a tortured and weary concession to necessity. This family, of whom it is uniquely true that they are chosen by God to carry forward His will for humankind, must be as unhappy as any family could be. When we consider what the favor of God can look like, Jacob and his sons should surely be borne in mind.
Judah reminds Jacob of what is at stake, that they might live, “both we and you and also our little ones.” On the strength of his promise, “If I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever,” his father relents. Judah, like any of them, must make such a vow without any way of knowing what this presumably hostile Egyptian stranger intends. “Little ones” are mentioned in contexts where the tenderness and vulnerability of a group of people are thought of or appealed to. Judah gently reminds his father that there are other lives than Benjamin’s to consider.
The brothers return to Egypt, and this time Joseph orders a feast for them in his own house. As always, they are surprised and frightened. Before Joseph appears they query his steward to find out if the money that has been returned to them twice is regarded as stolen. With the insight the text so frequently grants to pagans, the steward tells them, “Your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks.” In light of the fact that these events are so thoroughly providential, this is true. Then they feast, not together but in proximity to one another, they at one table, Joseph by himself at another, Egyptians at still another. The brothers do not yet recognize Joseph.
This seating arrangement is necessary because “the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians.” Presumably an abomination is something to be abhorred. Both of these potent words occur in Scripture, rarely elsewhere. Whether they are given weight in particular instances seems to depend on the preferences of interpreters, and this makes them hard to define. What is described here resembles a caste barrier. It is more or less the kind of thing that scandalized observers when Jesus broke bread with tax collectors and prostitutes, except in this case the line not to be crossed is ethnic. All-powerful Joseph is married to the daughter of the Egyptian high priest, and still he must eat alone. It appears that he is also too Egyptian to be seated at table with his Hebrew brothers. There is a law, Deuteronomy 23:7, that in effect responds to this practice and much else: “Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land.” The fact that the sojourn in Egypt should remove stigma from the people who became the Hebrews’ oppressors is remarkable, as is their open acceptance of those who stigmatize them. This is consistent with a general biblical freedom from the coercions and constraints of retaliation. Other laws concerning peoples with whom they have a history are less forgiving and therefore less surprising. But to dismiss what is atypical in the text is to misrepresent it.
Joseph is deeply moved by the presence of Benjamin. He goes to his chamber to weep, then washes his face and returns to his brothers. He favors Benjamin with generous portions of food from his own table. They “were merry with him.” And then as they are leaving he has his steward put his silver cup secretly in the lad’s grain sack. Claiming that the cup has been stolen, he sends pursuers after his brothers and has them brought back to him. Exactly why he chooses to keep his brothers in this state of terrified uncertainty is never made explicit, but it has the effect, finally, of moving them to make a passionate account of how things are with their father, a confession of sorts, their father’s grief being the measure of their sin.
“They”—no speaker is named—make the kind of drastic pledge that is meant to insist in the strongest terms on their innocence. In fact it greatly heightens the suspense of the moment for listeners, who know what Joseph has done. The brothers say, “With whomsoever of thy servants it [the cup] be found, both let him die, and we also will be my lord’s bondmen.” The steward replies, “He with whom it is found shall be my servant; and ye [the rest of you] shall be blameless.” This milder version of their pledge means nevertheless that they will not return to their father with Benjamin. The steward searches their bags, eldest to youngest. This would be an amazing scene. Each exoneration would bring the possibility of apparent proof of the theft closer to Benjamin. The brothers might hope that their innocence would be proved when the cup was not found with any of them, if the story had not established twice over that they could not know what might be in their sacks. Their guilt and their expectation that punishment might come in any form from any side would heighten their dread. This is another of those moments when the experience of the protagonists is not to be imagined in other circumstances. Presumably as each brother is found to be innocent and the odds improve that blame will fall on Benjamin, relief at each vindication will become more deeply mingled with sorrow and fear.
The cup is found with Benjamin. His brothers rend their clothing with grief and return to the city, to Joseph’s house. He has played a trick on them, but he attributes the discovery of the supposed theft to divination. Perhaps this is a little satire on Egyptian sorcery. He rebukes them, and Judah answers, “What shall we say unto my lord?… God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants.” This is the retribution that they have expected to overtake them for years. Their individual innocence of this supposed theft is of no consequence to them in light of the guilt that has burdened their lives. Judah tells Joseph that they will all be his slaves. Joseph says no, only the one found with the cup will be his slave, “and as for you, get you up in peace unto your father.” This is exactly what they cannot do.
Joseph has created a situation in which the ten brothers can abandon a cherished son of Rachel and return to their father to make whatever account they can of the lad’s absence. He has given them a chance to act in their own interests, at the cost of a brother’s betrayal. This would be, in effect, one interpretation of Joseph’s own history with them. The brothers clearly see this recurrence of the old crime emerging out of circumstance, as if their punishment for it might be their having to reenact it. The unbearable consequence would be their father’s grief, this time greatly compounded. The old man anticipated that these ten sons might again bereave him. The horror of Shechem would linger in memory. To have his fears confirmed would be the confirmation of his most painful suspicions about them, the collapse of the tenuous doubt that they would descend to fratricide against his most tenderly favored children. The loss of all possibility of suspending judgment would surely, finally, bereave him of these ten as well.
Judah makes a long appeal to Joseph, who is still unrecognized by him, describing the sorrow that will overcome Jacob, father of them both, if they do not return with Benjamin. “His life is bound up in the lad’s life. It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die.” He asks to be made a slave in Benjamin’s place. “For how shall I go back to my father, and the lad be not with me? Lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father.” Joseph can no longer conceal his weeping and he reveals himself to his brothers. “He wept aloud: and that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, ‘I am Joseph; doth my father yet live?’” His brothers are speechless, “troubled at his presence.”
He brings them close to him and reassures them. “Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” Elevating these events, bitter as they are in themselves, to the level of divine providence lifts them beyond the reciprocities of injury and revenge, beyond the reach of justice as we mortals understand that word. It is not inevitable, humanly speaking, that the providential turn of events should mean that the brothers go unpunished, that they should even be treated as if they were guiltless. This is not a pardon. It is grace.
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The book of Genesis is framed by two stories of remarkable forgiveness, of Cain by the Lord, and of his ten brothers by Joseph. Cain was the father of saintly Enoch and the ancestor of Noah, from whom all humankind is descended. Nothing in Scripture suggests that human beings are interchangeable, so providence would act through the life of Cain to arrive at Noah, Cain’s crime notwithstanding. Cain’s descendants, through vengeful Lamech, also included Jubal, “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.” Considering the importance of music in the Hebrew Bible, this is no small thing. Psalm 150, the concluding hymn in the great book of worship, says, “Praise [the LORD] with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.” It would be wonderful to have been there. Jubal’s brother, Jabal, “was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle,” like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Providence can be seen working its way through very mingled human history, blessing it with music and with drifting pastoralists and their herds, sometimes, unpredictably, transmuting evil into good. Measured revenge, justice as it is understood among mortals, is rigorously queried in Scripture, challenged in the text by a higher awareness, a knowledge of what could be lost if small earthly dramas of action and reaction foreclosed whatever might come in the fullness of time.
