Miketz: The Brothers

We’re right in the middle of the story of Yosef (Joseph) and his brothers, a story that takes up about a third of the book of Bereshit (Genesis) and is probably the longest narrative in Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). As Robert Alter writes in The Art of Biblical Narrative, uniquely among the foundational stories of the ancient world, Tanakh is written in prose, not poetry. This, Alter argues, was done to allow complex character development, to show individuals grappling with the problem of how fallible humans could learn to serve God.

Perhaps surprisingly, half of Yaakov’s (Jacob’s) sons are not really sketched out in the Torah, being little more than names in the crowd of “Yaakov’s sons” or “Yosef’s brothers.” Six brothers are sketched out in more detail (actually, five appear in detail and one is illuminated by the lack of detail) and we can sometimes see from their behaviour how the tribes that would emerge from them would behave. Interestingly, these sons are all descendants of Leah and Rachel, not the maidservants Bilhah and Zilpah. I will examine them in age order.

Reuven (Reuben)

Perhaps the most complex of the brothers, Reuven was described by Rabbi Lord Sacks z”tzl as having good intentions, but poor follow-through. He found mandrakes which he thought could cure his mother’s secondary infertility, but inadvertently triggered an argument about them between Leah and Rachel, the only argument recorded between them. According to the plain meaning of the Torah text, he slept with his father’s concubine and while the rabbis saw this as meaning simply that he moved Yaakov’s bed from her tent to his mother’s, either way it indicates an attempt to assert himself as patriarch of the family against his father, perhaps with good intentions (according to the rabbis, he was angered by his father shunning his mother as “primary wife” after the death of Rachel in favor of a “mere” concubine), but doing so immorally. Finally, he intended to rescue Yosef from the brothers, but, rather than simply spirit him away, he had him thrown in a pit, planning to rescue him later. By the time he returned (probably from watching the flocks while the other brothers ate), Yosef had been sold.

Overall, Reuven comes across as someone who failed to think of the consequences of his deeds and who delayed action until it was too late. We later see his descendants criticized by Devorah (Deborah) in her song after Israelite victory over the Canaanites for procrastinating, holding long discussions over whether to help the other tribes, but ultimately failing to show up for the battle. It is no wonder that he lost the position of family leadership despite being the eldest.

Shimon (Simeon) and Levi

Shimon and Levi are singled out in the Torah as the perpetrators of mass murder in response to the abduction and rape of their sister, Dinah. Having tricked the men of Shechem into circumcising themselves, the other brothers apparently planned to rescue her, but Shimon and Levi brutally wiped the men of the town out, much to Yaakov’s anger, both at the time and on his deathbed. Rabbinic tradition sees them as the ringleaders in the plot to kill Yosef, explaining Yosef’s choice of Shimon as a hostage when the other brothers return home to get Binyamin (Benjamin); he wants to separate him from his partner-in-crime Levi. They appear as religious zealots, acting violently in the belief that right is on their side. While the tribe of Shimon faded into obscurity, Levi became the tribe of the priesthood and Temple service, having used their violence in an authorized way in suppressing the Golden Calf.

Yehudah (Judah)

Yehudah starts off fairly unlikeable. We first see him when Yosef has been thrown in the pit, at which point Yehudah asks what profit there is for them in letting him die when they could sell him into slavery. The word used for profit, betzah, is relatively rare. It recurs in Shemot (Exodus), when Yitro (Jethro) advises that a leader must be someone who “hates betzah/profit”. In other words, the Torah is flagging to us that Yehudah is not fit to be a leader at this stage of his development.

This is followed by his “going down from his brothers,” a descent that the rabbis saw as moral as well as physical: he went down in their esteem for leading them into selling Yosef and he went down morally by marrying a Canaanite against the family tradition. When his first son died, he married the widow, Tamar, to his second son, as per the law of yibbum, levirate marriage. When the second son also died, he delayed marrying the third son to Tamar for fear that she was somehow responsible for their deaths. When Tamar tricked Yehudah into sleeping with her and getting her pregnant (deception and impersonation being a norm in the patriarchal family) he initially condemns her to death, but, when shown his staff, seal and cord that he gave her, he admits paternity, saying that Tamar is “more righteous” than he is, a biblical phrase that can also mean that she is vindicated in a court of law. He is, in effect, admitting that he was wrong not to let her marry into the family again as well as admitting paternity of the twins he has fathered.

This is a turning point in Yehudah’s moral development. For the first time, he has taken responsibility for his actions. When Yaakov refused to send Binyamin down to Egypt, Yehudah, unlike Reuven, bided his time, waiting for the right moment to convince his father, when the family was dangerously short of food. While Reuven offered to let Yaakov kill his two sons if he failed to return Binyamin (a classic Reuven “heart in the right place, but not the brain” moment – he was probably thinking of Yehudah’s two dead sons and assumed this was the “price” of failing to protect a brother, but obviously Yaakov would not kill his own grandsons), Yehudah took personal responsibility for bringing Binyamin back.

When faced with Binyamin apparently being reduced into slavery like Yosef, Yehudah asks to be taken into slavery in his stead. This is full teshuvah (repentance) as defined by Rambam (Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon AKA Maimonides): not just regret and confession (which the brothers engaged in when in prison), but a refusal to commit the same sin again. It is this that marks him and his tribe out for future leadership, eventually producing the Davidic monarchy.

Yosef

Yosef is the brother one portrayed in most detail in the Torah. He begins the story as a rather annoying youth, proud of being his father’s favorite and telling tales about his brothers. He boasts about his dreams of honor and status. Even when sold into slavery, the statement that he was “beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance” in his master’s house led the sages to see him as preening and beautifying himself there. Only when in the dungeon does he change, noticing the butler and the baker’s sadness and trying to help. This is the point when he starts to care about others.

He is emotional, crying three times in the course of the narrative of his testing of the brothers’ morality, something he is not recorded doing when sold into slavery, falsely accused of rape or thrown in the dungeon. Nor can he disguise his emotions, having to leave the room or order others to leave the room to hide his tears. He is emotionally open.

Having seen the extent of the brothers’ repentance, he reveals his identity to them. Twice, he shows that he has forgiven them by seeing the “bigger picture,” that although they intended to harm him, God was operating behind the scenes to bring about the salvation of Egypt and the covenantal family through him.

However, this “big picture” view is also responsibility for his most questionable act as an adult, when he sells the Egyptian populace into slavery in return for grain during the famine. Perhaps Yosef saw this as a mere formality: the masses would pay a tax to Pharaoh and notionally be his slaves in return for enough food to survive the famine. There is no record of the Egyptians being oppressed in the way that the Israelites later would be. Yet, knowing that the Israelites would soon be enslaved more brutally, we are left wondering if this was why the Egyptians were so determined to enslave the Israelites, if they resented the Israelite freedom in the region of Goshen while they were technically Pharaoh’s slaves.

Yosef is a gifted administrator, but he neglects the human dimension. Perhaps this is why his descendants took on leadership positions, but not for long. Yehoshua (Joshua) and Gidon (Gideon) were important leaders, but made no effort to establish a hereditary dynasty, with Gidon openly refusing to become a king. When Yerovoam ben Nevat (Jeroboam) was told by God to rebel against the Davidic monarchy, this was intended as a short-term measure, but Yerovoam feared that the Israelites would return to Jerusalem three times a year on pilgrimage for the festivals and that they would re-establish their links with the Davidic line. He therefore established idolatrous calves at Dan and Be’ersheva as alternative religious sites. He wanted to build a dynasty of his own, but God ensured that this did not last long. Like his ancestor, Yerovoam thought too much of himself and focused on the big picture of staying in power ahead of the morality of his actions, but while Yosef learnt some humility, Yerovoam did not. The result was disastrous for the Jewish people.

Binyamin

Despite being the focus of the end of this week’s sedra and the beginning of next week’s sedra, Binyamin is a curiously passive figure. The other brothers argue with Yaakov about bringing him down to Egypt, but Binyamin says nothing at all, not even when he is wrongfully accused of theft and threatened with being sold into slavery. He lets his older brother argue on his behalf.

Perhaps an explanation for this strange behavior can be found in the rabbinic statement that four people were sinless and died only because humanity is cursed to mortality: Binyamin; Amram, the father of Moshe (Moses); Yishai (Jesse), the father of King David; and Kileav, one of David’s sons. These are relatively obscure figures and not the righteous heroes and leaders of Tanakh that we might expect. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner (twentieth century) argued from this that living a blameless life is incompatible with living a dynamic, constructive life, contributing something to society. True greatness requires action and risk-taking, which necessarily sometimes leads to failure and sin. Binyamin, though deeply pious, was simply too passive to become a leader like Yehudah and Yosef. Although his descendant, King Shaul (Saul) became the first Israelite king, his rule ended in failure and defeat. The rabbis considered Shaul a more righteous individual than David, but a worse king, because David’s sins were private and he took responsibility for them, while Shaul sinned in the matter of providing leadership and made excuses for his actions.