Joseph and His Brothers, page 55
He already started worrying about the proper form for communicating his dream the moment he startled up from it during the night, full of joy that he now had in his hands such decisive proof for the credibility of his previous vision. Above all, his immediate worry was whether his brothers would even give him a chance to justify himself, that is, whether they would allow him to tell another dream—this seemed doubtful to him. Even the first time they had come very close to paying him no attention, or withdrawing it too soon. How much greater his fear, then, given that the experience of satisfying their curiosity had evidently not brought them unalloyed pleasure.
That was why it was necessary to take precautions to counter their refusal to listen, and that very night on the threshing floor Joseph conceived a plan by which to do it. The next morning he went as usual to his father, for Jacob liked to see him each morning, to look him in the eyes to assure himself that his son was well, and to bless him for the day.
"A right good morning, my dear papa and prince of God," Joseph said. "Behold, a new day born of the night—I think it will be quite warm. One day follows another much like a string of pearls, and the child is pleased with life. It delights him particularly during this time of harvest. It is beautiful in the fields, whether one toils or rests, and men become friends over common tasks."
"What you have said is pleasant to hear," Jacob replied. "And so
you are getting on well together on the threshing floor and in the fields and have come to understand one another in the Lord, you and your brothers?"
"Excellently," Joseph responded. "Apart from minor disagreements such as the day brings with it and the world's fragmentation furnishes, it is all running like a top; for an honest word, even if somewhat coarse, will clear up any confusion, and then harmony reigns again. I wish my dear papa might witness it sometime. You are never there—something that, when we join company, we often regret."
"I do not love the tilling of the soil."
"But of course, but of course. And yet it is a shame that those assembled never see their lord and his eye does not know their work, particularly that of the hired hands, on whom one cannot depend. My brother Jehuda complained to me in confidence only recently that they usually don't keep the wheels on the threshing cart properly honed—they mash instead of cutting. So it goes when the master does not show his face."
"I must admit your reproach is just."
"Reproach? May God guard my tongue! It is a request that the sprout presumes to make, in the name of the eleven. Nor should you share in our labors, the drudgery of the soil, Baal's work—who would expect it of you?—but only in our fine rest, when we break bread, shaded from the sun at its zenith, chattering away, sons of one and of four. And if someone knows a joke or a dream, he tells it to the others. We have often nudged one another with elbows and nodded among ourselves at how delightful it would be to entertain our father at the head of our circle."
"I will come sometime."
"Hurrah! Come today, then, and honor your sons! Our work is already drawing to a close, there's no time to lose. Today then— agreed? I shall say nothing to my red-eyed brothers and divulge not a word to the handmaids' sons—let joy overtake them. The child, however, will know in his heart whom they all have to thank and who so prettily contrived it in his loyalty and ingenuity."
Such was Joseph's plan. And indeed, that same noon Jacob was sitting out in the field beneath the awning and among his sons, having first surveyed the grain pits and run his thumb across the wheels of the threshing cart, checking for sharpness. The brothers were
The Dreamer /^ii
dumbfounded. Over the last few days, the Dreamer had not joined them for their hour of rest. But now he was back, his head in his father's lap. It was clear he had to be there when their father visited, but the question was: What had suddenly brought the old man here? There they sat, very stiff and silent, all in proper dress out of consideration for Jacob's views. He was surprised to find no evidence whatever of the healthy intimacy that, according to Joseph, should have characterized the hour. It might have been respect that held them back. Even Joseph had nothing to say. He was afraid, although he lay in his father's lap and in arranging for his presence had created the support he needed to speak freely. Truth to tell, he was worried about his dream and its success. It could be told in one sentence and allowed for no embelHshment. If Gad would ask him, for instance, if that was all, he would be trounced. Brevity had the advantage that it was all out at once before anyone was even aware, and no one could interrupt. But any effect on their hearts and minds might easily be shattered by a certain grand spareness of the report. His heart was pounding.
He came close to letting the moment for his coup pass, for as the rest hour proved boring, things threatened to come to a premature end. Even hints that this could happen might very possibly not have enabled him to overcome his justifiable hesitation, had not Jacob at last made an amiable inquiry: "How was that? Did I not hear that you tell one another droll tales and dreams here in the shade at this hour?"
Bewildered, they said not a word.
"Yes, droll tales and dreams!" Joseph cried excitedly. "To think how they usually just trip from our lips on occasion. Does anyone know some untold tale?" he asked cheekily of all present.
They stared at him and said not a word.
"I know something, however," he said, sitting up from his father's lap, an intent look on his face. "I know a dream that I dreamt last night on the threshing floor, and you shall hear it, my father and brothers, and be amazed. I dreamt," he began again, and faltered. He felt an ominous shifting and twitching in his limbs—a cramp that lifted neck and shoulders, a wrenching at his arms. He lowered his head and the smile on his lips seemed intended to mitigate and excuse the way his eyes suddenly showed only the white. "I dreamt," he repeated, short of breath, "and what I saw in my dream—was
this. I saw: the sun, the moon, and eleven kokabim waiting upon me. They came forward and bent low before me."
No one stirred. Jacob, their father, kept his gaze firmly lowered. It was very still; but into the stillness came an ugly sound, furtive and yet audible to all—it was the brothers gnashing their teeth. Most of them gnashed with lips closed. But Shimeon and Levi even bared their teeth as they gnashed.
Jacob heard the gnashing. Whether Joseph also grasped its meaning is uncertain. Tilting his head to his shoulder, he smiled to himself, a modest, unruffled smile. It was out now, let them do with it as they pleased. Sun, moon, and stars, eleven of them, had waited upon him. Let them think about that.
Jacob looked nei-vously around. He found what he had expected: ten pairs of eyes directed at him, their gaze wild and piercing. He collected himself, made himself strong. As roughly as he could possibly manage, he said from behind the boy's back, "J^hoseph! What sort of dream is this that has come to you, and what might it mean that you've dreamt and told us such tasteless nonsense? Am I and your mother and brothers supposed to come and worship you? Your mother is dead—that's the first absurdity, but a long way from the last. Shame on you! By all human standards what you have served up to us is so preposterous you might just have well simply babbled ' Aulasaulalakaula'—it would have served the same purpose. I am disappointed in my soul that, despite your good seventeen years and all the enlightenment your mind has received through words of written reason bestowed upon you by my permission through Eliezer, my oldest servant, you have advanced no farther in your understanding of God, so that you allow yourself to dream disreputable things and play the buffoon before your father and brothers. You are hereby punished! I would punish you more harshly still and perhaps even tug painfully at your hair if your babbHng were not far too childish for a mature man to let himself be troubled by it or for a man of sober years to be tempted to repay you with severity. Farewell, sons of Leah! And greetings to conclude the meal, sons of Zilpah and Bilhah!"
And with that he stood up behind Joseph and left. His chastisement, coerced by the glances of his sons, had cost him a great deal, and he could only hope that these boys were satisfied. If there was any real anger in it, it was directed toward the fact that Joseph had
not confided his dream to him alone, but had been so fooUsh as to make witnesses of his brothers. Had he intentionally set out to embarrass his father, Jacob thought, Joseph could not have made a better start of it. He would tell him that face-to-face yet, for he had not been able to tell him that just now, and presumably even realized that the rascal had used his brothers as a shield against his father, and vice versa. For on the way home he had trouble squelching under his beard a tender and delighted smile at such chicanery. And though the concerns evident in his reprimand were genuine—concern for the child's spiritual well-being, for his penchant for dreams and crowing for effect—both his anger and worry were feeble emotions in comparison with the tender, semireligious pleasure he took in Joseph's overweening dreams. Quite irrationally he pleaded with God that the dream might have come from Him—which, if He had not been involved, as was quite probably the case, would be a totally absurd prayer; but Jacob was close to shedding tears of love when he imagined that these might be real presentiments of future greatness that had taken on visionary form and that the child, in total innocence and without taking into account their full impact, had simply blurted out. The poor father! Surely he should have been enraged at the idea that he and all the rest would come forward to worship the good-for-nothing. But it would have disconcerted him to have been told that—for did he not adore him?
As for the brothers, no sooner was Jacob gone than they also retreated to a man, pushing their way into the open. Twenty tempestuous strides into the field, they stopped for a brief, heated discussion. Big Ruben spelled it out, told them what was to be done now. Away from here—that was it. Away with them all, in self-imposed exile from their father's hearth. That, said Ruben, would be a dignified and powerful demonstration, the only possible answer on their part to this abomination. What he thought was: Away from Joseph, that no disaster may occur. But he did not say that, and instead tried to put these measures entirely in the light of a chastening protest.
That very evening they appeared before Jacob and announced that they were leaving. A place where such dreams were dreamt and where someone was allowed to tell about them while risking at most, at the very worst, getting his hair mussed perhaps—they had nothing to gain in such a place, they would not stay. The harvest, they said, was over, thanks to their strong efforts, and now they
would move on to Shechem—not just the six, but the four as well, all ten. For the meadows of Shechem were fertile and good, and with unshakable, if unappreciated, loyalty they would tend their father's flocks there, but would not return again to the camp at Hebron, given the thoroughly slanderous dreams dreamed there. In paying their farewell respects, they said that they bent low and bowed down to him, their father—and did as they said. They had no worries, they added, that their departure would cause him pain or even regret, for everyone knew that Jacob, their lord, would give ten for one.
Jacob bowed his head. Had he perhaps begun to fear that the despotism of emotion into which he had fallen by way of imitation was being taken amiss in the place of its divine origin?
Part Five
THE JOURNEY TO HIS BROTHERS
An Extraordinary Demand
We have heard how Jacob bowed his head as his embittered sons cut their ties with their father's home—and from then on he raised it only seldom. The oncoming season, the time of baking heat, of the sun's fiercest searing of the land—for the day was approaching when the sun would begin to decrease, and though it was the point in the year when his true wife had once bestowed Joseph upon him, in the month of Tammuz, Jacob's spirit nevertheless usually flagged beneath the singed bleakness of this quarter of the circle—the season, then, may well have contributed to his downcast state, even serving to help him explain it to himself. But the real reason for his depression was actually the unanimous decision of his sons to depart, an event about which it would be saying too much to claim that it had caused Jacob great pain—no, it was not so. In his heart he truly was willing to give "ten for one." But it was a different matter to deal with the reality of it, with having to realize that the cancellation of fraternal fellowship was final and that he, Jacob, now stood there with two sons instead of twelve, like a tree stripped bare. First of all, it was detrimental to his majesty; but beyond that, it left him with the worry of being put in an embarrassing position with God, for he wondered how great was the responsibility with which he had burdened himself in the eyes of the planning Lord of promise. Had the future-filled Lord not wisely prevented things from proceeding according to Jacob's heart, kept him from being fruitful in Rachel alone? Had He not given him many sons, by way of Laban's wiles and despite his own heart, and were they not all, even those of an unloved wife, fruits of the blessing and bearers of a future beyond reckoning? Jacob certainly realized that his choosing of Joseph was a matter of extravagant obstinacy, a private indulgence of the heart. But might it also, in all its consequences, be culpable presumption? Only as yet unknown and devastating blows in some ruinous altercation with God could reveal that—but it appeared as if this were
about to happen. For though Joseph's folly might have been the direct cause for both the strife and Jacob's pained anger toward him, Jacob did not delude himself—he knew that he and he alone had to answer for that folly before God and man. In bickermg with Joseph he was bickering with himself. If misfortune had been the result, the boy had only been its mediator, and it was Jacob's loving heart that had been at fault. And what good would it have done to hide this from himself? God knew it, and you could hide nothing from God. To honor truth was Abram's heritage, and that meant you did not gloss over something God already knew.
These were questions of conscience that Jacob put to himself in the days after the wheat harvest and that influenced his resolve. His heart had done harm; now he had to bring himself to turn the coddled object of its weakness, the mediator of that harm, into a mediator of reconciliation as well, to make a rather extraordinary demand of him to that end, to treat him a little roughly as an act of penitence for both his own heart and the boy.
And so, seeing him at some distance, he called him to him in a rather firm voice, saying, "Joseph!"
"Here I am," the lad answered and was at his side at once. He was glad to be called, for since his brothers' departure his father had said little to him, and, fool though he was, their last meeting had left him with uneasy forebodings.
"Listen now," Jacob said, blinking his eyes in thought and stroking his beard with one hand, pretending absentmindedness for one reason or another. "Do I not recall that your brothers, those older than you, are all tending flocks together in the valley of Shechem?"
"Indeed," Joseph replied, "I seem to recall that myself, and if memory is not playing a trick on me, they all intended to go to Shechem to tend your herds grazing there because of its rich meadows and because this valley here will not support all that is yours."
"That is so," Jacob confirmed, "and it is for that reason that I have called you. For I have heard nothing from Leah's sons and there are no tidings from the children of the handmaids. I have no knowledge of the state of the meadows there, whether Yitzchak's blessing was upon the summer lambing or if liver rot and bloating have ravaged what is mine. I know nothing of the health of my children, your brothers, and have not heard whether they exercise
pasturing rights in peace within a jurisdiction where, as I recall, grave events once occurred. It gives me pause for thought, and it is out of such thoughts that I have decided to send you to them, so that you may greet them for me."
"Here I am," Joseph cried again. He flashed his white teeth at his father and kicked up his heels, almost hopping about for sheer eagerness.
"By my estimation," Jacob continued, "you are about to enter the eighteenth year of your life, and it is time that you were treated a bit more roughly and that your manhood was put to the test. Which is the reason behind my decision to make this extraordinary demand of you, that you leave me for a short while and go to your brothers in order to ask them all the things I do not know, and return to me again, with God's help, in ten or nine days and report to me."
"Ah, here I am indeed," Joseph rejoiced. "My dear papa's ideas are gold and silver. I shall journey across country, I shall visit my brothers, and see if things are in order in the valley of Shechem— what fun! Had I been allowed to wish whatever my heart desires—it would have been this and none other!"
"You shall not see if things are in order with your brothers," Jacob said. "They are man enough to do that themselves, and have no need of the child for that. Nor is that my intention in sending you. Rather you shall bend low before them as is seemly custom and say, *I have come several days' journey in order to greet you and inquire about your health, both of my own volition and at our father's direction, for our meeting was held in the spirit of that wish.'"
"Give me Parosh to ride! His legs are long and he is tough and strong-boned, much like my brother Issakhar."
"It speaks for your manliness," Jacob replied after a pause, "that you are looking forward to this mission and do not consider it an extraordinary demand that you will be taken from me for a number of days, during which the moon will change from sickle to semicircle without my seeing you. But tell your brothers: 'It is our father's wish.'"
"Do I get Parosh?"
"Although I am willing to treat you roughly as befits your years, I shall not give you the ass Parosh, for he is stubborn, and his wits are not as quick as his temper. Much better for you is Hulda, the white jenny, an amiably cautious beast, and of dapper appearance
