Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
PART TWO
The second part of the Book of Bere'shit (Genesis) is a single, complete tale, in cyclical form, which serves to explain the presence of the Beney Yisra-El in Mitsrayim (Egypt). Yisra-El has now been established as an extended family, with Ya'akov, now renamed Yisra-El, as the clan-chief, and his twelve sons and one daughter, Dinah. The cycle, set at the time of the Hyksos rulers of Mitsrayim, follows Yisra-El into Mitsrayim, and ends, at the end of the Book of Yehoshu'a (Joshua), with their return as a conquering people, probably under Pharaoh Ach-Mousa. In a sense the preceding doesn't belong in the Book of Bere'shit at all, but could be considered as a separate book, a kind of pre-Bere'shit, with from here to the end of Yehoshu'a as the real story of Bere'shit.
The story of Yoseph (Joseph) itself appears to blend several traditions. In Poti-Phera (Potiphar) and in Bin-Yamin (Benjamin) we find evidence of the cult of the sun-disc through which the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) worshipped Ra and broke with traditional Egyptian religion (that this can only have been Amenhotep is demonstrable by the statement that Poti-Phera was high priest in Heliopolis, which the Egyptians called On; at no other time in Egyptian history was On the capital, Memphis being the normal capital, and Avaris in the Nile Delta the Hyksos capital). At the same time the famine - which must almost certainly have been the result of Nile inundation rather than drought - and the building of the store-cities, provides evidence of the Hyksos rule, with Yoseph as their leader.
Thirdly, concurrently in the tale though not in history, Yoseph as the non-tribal 13th sibling (his sons Ephrayim and Menasheh will complete the tribal 12) represents the sun ruling the twelve zodiacal constellations - as his first dream, in verse 5ff of this chapter, more than demonstrates - which was the traditional mesocosmic arrangement for earthly politics, as evidenced in the tribal lists of Nachor and Yishma-El and Esav, as well as that of Ya'akov, comparable with the amphictyony of the Greeks, and the confederation of the Beney Yisra-El in King David's time.
Yoseph is repeatedly portrayed (as Mosheh will be later) as the priest or even the incarnation of the sun-god Osher-Osiris (Adonis, Tammuz, Attis et cetera in other parts of the world, but here specifically Osher) whose descent into hell and mourning is "supervised" by the 12 planetary deities in this mythological retelling.
Finally there is the story of the descent of the Habiru into Goshen, which the redactors have taken through several shifts: first the Habiru have become Jacobite Beney Yisra-El, which historically they almost certainly were not; then Yoseph has been made a son of Ya'akov (which he almost certainly was not) and a Habiru, (which he definitely was not). Similarly Ben-Oni, or Bin-Yamin. In the end the various strands of Beney Yisra-El mythology, and the various strands of Egyptian mythology, are so carefully interwoven that they form a single Beney Yisra-El myth, which ends in the much-ignored contradiction that the Yoseph story is told from the Hyksos perspective, glorifying its conquest and enslavement of the native and regional populations, including Kena'an, while the Mosheh story is told from the perspective of the dethroned former Pharaonic dynasty, and that of the enslaved peoples - and yet it is all apparently one and the same people's tale that is being told.
It is worth wondering, as David Rohl does, whether the finds at Avaris include a statue of Yoseph in his multi-coloured coat, and indeed his tomb - or could this have been any of the Hyksos priests, all of whom famously dressed in multi-coloured robes?
The major outstanding question to be answered is the precise date of all this: was the Pharaoh pre-Hyksos, Hyksos, or post-Hyksos? The Mosheh story gives away much of the evidence; Yoseph's Pharaoh certainly appears to have been pre-Hyksos, with the Ya'akov descent reflecting the arrival of the Hyksos shepherd-kings, and the Mosheh rebellion against a later and less generous dynasty of Hyksos, seeking to restore the old Egyptian monarchy.
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YOSEPH 1 - VA YESHEV
37:1 VA YESHEV YA'AKOV BE ERETS MEGUREY AVIV BE ERETS KENA'AN
וַיֵּשֶׁב יַעֲקֹב בְּאֶרֶץ מְגוּרֵי אָבִיו בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן
KJ (King Kames translation): And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.
BN (Bible Net translation): And Ya'akov dwelt in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Kena'an.
Where exactly? The land of his father's sojournings does not tell us precisely, and this is not surprising as the last chapters have seen him settle in several different places, as well as moving Yitschak from Be'er Sheva to Chevron. And of course he has spent most of his adult life far away. Indeed, it could be said that Ya'akov's entire story after childhood isn't really a story set in Yisra-El at all, but in Padan Aram, on the Golan, and ultimately in Egypt. Other than the stealing of the birthright and the blessing, and the dream at Beit-El en route to leaving it, only one incident of significance happens to him inside the land, and that... in verse 12, we will be told that the boys have taken the flock to feed precisely there, around Shechem, the scene of that significant incident, surely the most unlikely of all places for him to be still living, given the tale of Dinah, and its consequences, in chapter 34?
Note that the text still names him Ya'akov, despite having his name changed, twice.
37:2 ELEH TOLDOT YA'AKOV YOSEPH BEN SHEVA ESREH SHANAH HAYAH RO'EH ET ECHAV BA TSON VE HU NA'AR ET BENEY VILHAH VE ET BENEY ZILPAH NESHEY AVIV VA YAV'E YOSEPH ET DIVATAM RA'AH EL AVIHEM
אֵלֶּה תֹּלְדוֹת יַעֲקֹב יוֹסֵף בֶּן שְׁבַע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת אֶחָיו בַּצֹּאן וְהוּא נַעַר אֶת בְּנֵי בִלְהָה וְאֶת בְּנֵי זִלְפָּה נְשֵׁי אָבִיו וַיָּבֵא יוֹסֵף אֶת דִּבָּתָם רָעָה אֶל אֲבִיהֶם
KJ: These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.
BN: These are the tales of the descendants of Ya'akov. Yoseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, being still a lad, he and the Beney Bilhah, and the Beney Zilpah, his father's wives; and Yoseph brought evil report of them to their father.
ELEH TOLDOT: As noted previously, the phrase literally means "these are the generations of..." but it is used idiomatically to mean "this is the story of..." No genealogical table is given here.
Rachel's other child Bin-Yamin will have been how old by this time? The way the story was told previously, he can't be younger than thirteen or fourteen.
Why do none of Le'ah's sons take part in the herding or flocking - or perhaps they are with different herds and flocks elsewhere, which makes an interesting sociological comment in itself? If Yoseph is seventeen, then they are all in their late twenties and thirties at least, and Re'u-Ven may even have turned forty.
DIVATAM (דבתם): what evil report? of what? and why? and how did his father respond? We are not told anything more about this, but seem to move on to another story, about Yisra-El now, not about Ya'akov. Are they, like Elohim and YHVH, two separate sets of myths interwoven? And yet, if telling tales on them like this is the sort of thing the little daddy's-boy-sneak does, no wonder they dislike him even before he has those egomaniacal dreams. Yet again, we are presented with a Yisra-Eli patriarch who, from the very outset, really isn't very nice.
37:3 VA YISRA-EL AHAV ET YOSEPH MI KOL BANAV KI VEN ZEKUNIM HU LO VA ASAH LO KETONET PASIM
וְיִשְׂרָאֵל אָהַב אֶת יוֹסֵף מִכָּל בָּנָיו כִּי בֶן זְקֻנִים הוּא לוֹ וְעָשָׂה לוֹ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים
KJ: Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
BN: Now Yisra-El loved Yoseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours.
YISRA-EL (ישראל): still the confusion as to which name to call him.
BEN ZEKUNIM HU (בן-זקנים הוא): not so much so as Bin-Yamin however; and if he was the son of his old age, then old age is reckoned very young, since he fathered him chez Laban. How old was he then? He stole the blessing at what, mid-twenties, twenty or possibly twenty-one years in exile - only about forty to fifty. Is that old? And if old age means 60 or 70, he must have been in his thirties at least when he stole the blessing, which puts a whole new slant on the two boys' relationships with their mother! Either old age came on at 40 or this statement has to be regarded as coming from yet another version.
And anyway, were we not told previously that he loved him because he was Rachel's son, and not because of his own age? Nothing previously had told us he was the son of Ya'akov's old age, indeed quite the contrary, we know he was born in Padan Aram in the months before the return; so he cannot have been by more than three or four years the youngest of them all, and Bin-Yamin came not more than a year or two later. Check the gaps between the births against the 7 year cycles of his service… but this statement endorses the view that Bin-Yamin was a late addition to the tribes, and Rachel too.
BEN ZEKUNIM HU LO: What is that "LO"? It means "to him", but how does it fit? It may be the conclusion of the "BEN ZEKUNIM HU" statement; in which case, why is it not translated, and why is it not SHEL LO, or SHELO, in the possessive form? And if it is not that, is it a scribal error, the LO that correctly follows two words letter being written here as well?
KETONET PASIM (כתנת פסים): What was the infamous coat of many colours? The tombs of the Beney Hassan in Egypt have thrown up precisely such coats, worn by Semitic chiefs in precisely the patriarchal age; also David Rohl's film shows a bust with discernible coloured markings, from the dig at Avaris, which makes it Hyksos.
Equally interesting is 2 Samuel 13:18, where Tamar (daughter of King David, sister of Av-Shalom), when Amnon goes to rape her, is wearing a "ketonet pasim" - the same phrase is used; but in this instance the writer found it necessary to add an explanatory gloss, "for with such robes were the king's daughters that were virgins appareled"; such "king's daughters" meant vestal virgin priestesses, guardians of the temple fires. The coat is thus a priestly garment.
If we now compare the elaborate design of the Temple priests' garments, given in Exodus 28:6-8, it all becomes much more clear:
"And they shall make the ephod of gold, blue, purple and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen, artistically worked. It shall have two shoulder straps joined at its two edges, and so it shall be joined together. And the intricately woven band of the ephod, which is on it, shall be of the same workmanship, made of gold blue purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen."
What we can now say for certain is that Yoseph was either initiated into the priesthood very young, or not wearing the coat until much later. The former is feasible, because thirteen was the age of initiation, and his dream-interpretations imply esoteric knowledge and therefore priestly initiation, and mostly because the laws of ultimo-geniture still applied, and if he was indeed Ya'akov's son, given that we know that Ya'akov was initiated as the priest-king of Yisra-El, then he would have been the one to inherit the spiritual authority, much as the Dalai and Panchen Lamas do in Tibetan Buddhism.
And yet, given the need for the gloze in Samuel, by the time David's story was written down, these facts must no longer have been known, else Tamar's dress would not have had to be explained.
But now it becomes still more interesting that Tamar should be so dressed; because suddenly, in the midst of the Yoseph story - the next chapter indeed - will be inserted a strange story about Yehudah and his incestuous night with his daughter-in-law: by name, Tamar.
37:4 VA YIR'U ECHAV KI OTO AHAV AVIYHEM MI KOL ECHAV VA YISNE'U OTO VE LO YACHLU DABRO LE SHALOM
וַיִּרְאוּ אֶחָיו כִּי אֹתוֹ אָהַב אֲבִיהֶם מִכָּל אֶחָיו וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם
KJ: And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.
BN: And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
Why did they hate him? Because he delivered "evil reports"? If it is correct to surmise that Bin-Yamin was an Egyptian added later, and not a son of this period (the only reason Ya'akov "needs" to have 12 sons is mythological after all), then Yoseph would have been the youngest, and under the laws we have already seen in practice, he gets the cherry, so they would be bound to have been envious. Effectively he has "stolen" their birthright and he clearly gets the blessing.
37:5 VA YACHALOM YOSEPH CHALOM VA YAGED LE ECHAV VA YOSIPHU OD SENO OTO
וַיַּחֲלֹם יוֹסֵף חֲלוֹם וַיַּגֵּד לְאֶחָיו וַיּוֹסִפוּ עוֹד שְׂנֹא אֹתוֹ
KJ: And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.
BN: And Yoseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him still more.
YOSIPHU (יוספו): this play on the root of Yoseph keeps cropping up. "Telling" and "adding" both come from the root.
37:19 VA YOMRU ISH EL ACHIV HINEH BA'AL HA CHALOMOT HA LAZEH BA
KJ: And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.
BN: And they said to each other, "Look, here comes the dreamer."
BA'AL...HA LAZEH (הלזה...בעל): The English translations are not logical. Why would they say "This dreamer cometh"? "This" is not colloquial, though it is technically correct, in that HA LAZEH appears to be an extremely obscure form of ZEH (זה) = "this". HALAZ (הלז) appears in the same way in Judges 6:20, 1 Samuel 14:1 and 17:26, 2 Kings 23:17, Zechariah 2:8 and Daniel 8:16, but this is HA LAZ and not HA LAZEH. 2 Kings 4:25 also has HA LAZ, but there it is generally translated as "that" rather than "this", and in the context the colloquialism works. HA LAZEH, with a final Hey (ה), occurs only twice, here and in Genesis 24:65, where it definitely does mean "this"; as it does with HA LEZU (הלזו) in Ezekiel 36:35. The conclusion seems to be that HA LAZEH stands for "that", and HA LAZ "for this", with HA LEZU as a dialect or epochal variation.
It is certainly a very obscure form of grammar, and most of the references indicate a late form, probably with Persian influence. But HA (ה) is also the definite article, and LAZEH treated as a noun in its own right leads us to the root LUZ (לזו). Luz was either the ancient name for Beit-El, or the name of the grove, later the village, adjacent to Beit-El, and meant "an almond tree".
I am inclined to suggest that what the brothers actually said was more like: "Behold, the Seer of Luz approaches", which would have been as much an ironical reference to their father's Beit-El dreams, and perhaps a hint of "like father like son", as it was a poke at Yoseph: and this would carry extra weight if Yoseph was wearing the coat of many colours at the time, If this is correct, then the phrase in Yehudit, though written the same, should now be written and pronounced as BA'AL CHALOMOT HA LUZEH BA.
37:20 VE ATAH LECHU VE NAHARGEHU VE NASHLICH'EHU BA ACHAD HA BOROT VA AMARNU HAYAH RA'AH ACHALAT'HU' VE NIR'EH MAH YIHEYU CHALOMOTAV
KJ: Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
BN: "Come, let's kill him, right now, and throw his body into one of those pits, and we can say, 'some evil beast must have devoured him'. And then we'll see what'll become of his dreams."
RA'AH (רעה): pun on LIR'OT (לרעות) = "to feed" etc, as above, and "evil" as here, both rooted in Reysh, Ayin, Hey (רעה).
BOROT (ברות): as opposed to Be'erot (בארות) with an Aleph (א); the former are dry pits, the latter wet wells.
Who actually made this suggestion? The Midrash claims Shim'on, and argues that this is why Yoseph later chose Shim'on for a hostage. But how would Yoseph have known that, since they said it among themselves before he reached them? We would like to hope that Shim'on had learned his lesson after the revenge at Shechem, but apparently extreme violence without remorse is part of the deity-given human condition, as Kayin (Cain) has already demonstrated in Genesis 4.
37:21 VA YISHMA RE'U-VEN VA YATSIL'EHU MI YADAM VA YOMER LO NAKENU NAPHESH
KJ: And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him.
BN: And Re'u-Ven heard it, and rescued him from their hands, and said, "Let us not take his life."
Why Re'u-Ven? Which is to say, for what tribal-political reason was it helpful to make Re'u-Ven the good guy here? Or is the story giving a response to my deliberately provocative remark above? Remember that Re'u-Ven was the firstborn, so if anyone would be blamed over such a matter, it would be him, and if anyone has the responsibility for taking responsibility, that too must be him. This too is presumably "part of the deity-given human condition", and presumes an understanding of "remorse" as well (hinted at in my hoping that Shim'on had learned from Shechem; though of course this may be before Shechem and he was taking out his suppressed Yoseph-anger with Shechem). The conflict between the two positions, that of possibly-Shim'on and that of definitely-Re'u-Ven, provides a perfect illustration of the concepts of Yetser ha Tov and Yetser ha Ra, the "inclinations" towards good and evil, to learn more about which click here.
37:22 VA YOMER AL'EHEM RE'U-VEN AL TISHPECHU DAM HASHLICHU OTO EL HA BOR HA ZEH ASHER BA MIDBAR VE YAD AL TISHLECHU BO LEMA'AN HATSIL OTO MI YADAM LAHASHIYVO EL AVIV
KJ: And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again.
BN: And Re'u-Ven said to them, "Shed no blood; throw him in this pit here in the desert, but lay no hand on him" - thinking that in this way he could rescue him out of their hands, and bring him home safely to his father.
Re'u-Ven the good son. Maybe he's just looking for a way to get back into his father's good books (i.e. remorse) after his night of love with Bilhah!
Yet what is he really hoping to achieve? Throw him in the pit and hope the brothers will rethink their aspiration to murder him? If he really thinks they mean it, saving him now is only a postponement of the inevitable, and we know that Shim'on and Levi are capable of doing it. So is he already thinking to get Yoseph away, and the sale to the Bedou not a "getting rid of" Yoseph but "getting him away to safety"? We can't answer that question, because the tale doesn't follow that theme through. But interesting in the light of what the tale does follow, to speculate.
End of second fragment.
37:23 VA YEHI KA ASHER BA YOSEPH EL ECHAV VA YAPHSHIYTU ET YOSEPH ET KUTANTO ET KETONET HA PASIM ASHER ALAV
KJ: And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him;
BN: And it came about that, when Yoseph reached his brethren, they stripped Yoseph of his coat, the coat of many colours that he was wearing.
Once again the text emphasises the coat of many colours; almost as though getting the coat is more important than anything they might do to the boy. But we also have to ask: why was he wearing it? This is his Bar Mitzvah suit, highly expensive, not the sort of thing you expect the kid to wear when he's traipsing across the hills in Mediterranean summer weather to find his brothers on the sheep-trail; sandals and a linen bernous - if his mum were still alive she would have made him go back to his tent and change. But it does mean that he arrives in Egypt dressed as a Hyksos chieftain or priest - no, it doesn't - see verses 31/32.
37:24 VA YIKACHUHU VA YASHLICHU OTO HA BORAH VE HA BOR REK AYN BO MAYIM
KJ: And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
BN: And they took him, and cast him into the pit - the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
This should not have needed explaining. See my note to verse 20.
37:25 VA YESHVU LE'ECHOL LECHEM VA YIS'U EYNEYHEM VA YIR'U VE HINEH ORCHAT YISHME-ELIM BA'AH MI GIL'AD U GEMALEYHEM NOS'IM NECH'OT U TSERI VA LOT HOLCHIM LEHORID MITSRAYEMAH
KJ: And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.
BN: Then they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and there was a caravan of Yishma-Elim from Gil'ad, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and laudanum, heading their way en route to Mitsrayim.
LE'ECHOL (לאכל). There seems to be something rather callous and cynical in this phrase, which is critical of all the brothers.
YISHME-ELIM (ישמעאלים): the sons of Ya'akov were in fact first cousins once removed of the Yishma-Elim (Av-Raham-Yitschak-Ya'akov-sons; Av-Raham-Yishma-El-sons); and also Esav, their uncle, married into Yishma-El, making the link even closer: it is his uncle, effectively, who is named here. Yet in this story the Yishma-Elim are depicted as just some group of Bedou who happen along, with no obvious connection to the brothers whatsoever. And not only this, but Gil'ad, or Gal-Ed, is precisely where Ya'akov and Lavan marked their border, and at the time no one said anything about it being Yishma-Eli/Edomite territory - and indeed it isn't; Edom is well south and east. Then perhaps they were just passing through, by way of Gil'ad, which probably means they were coming from Damasek (Damascus), the main trading centre of the region; srtange to mention it nonetheless.
LEHORID (להוריד): very significant term this, it was always seen as going down to Egypt and up to Kena'an.
LOT: (לט) - which also links us back to Av-Raham, though it is not the name of their great-uncle that is being referred to here. Lot appears in two other forms in Yehudit, principally as the root LOT (לט), which is either a corruption of, or possibly the original which then became extended into, both LAHAT (להט) and LA'AT (לאט), all of which mean "to cover over", "hide" or "wrap", and became connected with "hidden things" in the sense of secrets and mysteries and the magic arts (cf 1 Samuel 18:22, while also providing the word for a "covering" or "veil" (cf Ruth 3:7, Isaiah 25:7). Judges 4:21 uses it to mean "in secret", though .some translations mis-render it there as "softly".
However none of these are what is intended here. LOT (לט in the Yehudit versions, לוט in the Samaritan) is an Egyptian word derived from the Cypriot, and known in Latin as Cistus Ladanifera, in English, but entirely incorrectly as Laudanum - Laudanum was the 16th century CE invention of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus, and contained a mixture of opium, crushed pearls, amber, saffron, castor, ambergris, musk and even nutmeg, and was used as a drug in precisely the way that marijuana and LSD were used in the 1960s. It may sound exciting, or it may sound reprehensible, that Yishma-Elim careteled such drugs so long ago, but the truth is, it should be called "Labdanum" and not "Laudanum", and it is a very pretty white flower that was used to make perfumes in the ancient world.
37:26 VA YOMER YEHUDAH EL ECHAV MAH BETSA KI NAHAROG ET ACHIYNU VE CHISIYNU ET DAMO
KJ: And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is itif we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?
BN: And Yehudah said to his brothers, "What profit is there in slaying our brother and concealing his blood?
But this is precisely what Re'u-Ven said previously, and they agreed; that is why he is down there in the pit. Do we, yet again, have two versions of the same story? And has Yehudah been given the role for political reasons later on? Or does the answer lie in the word "profit"? If we sell him to the Yishma-Elim, they can traffick him to Mitsrayim and sell him on, and we can make a few shekels on commission. The chocolate industry in Ivory Coast works in much the same way today.
In truth, that is not really why he is down there in the pit anyway. He is there as a foreshadowing of the pit in which he will be held when he is framed in Mitsrayim (Egypt) by the disappointed wife of Poti-Phera; which is itself just a literary device to get him down to where he needs to be mythologically: in the Underworld, so that he can spend his metaphorical three days of death down there, and undertake his version of the "eucharist" with the chief butler (wine) and the head baker (bread), and then be "resurrected", and take his place at the right hand of the ruler of his universe - the Pharaoh in this case. (I am saying all this now to demonstrate how foreshadowing works - you are now ready for all this when we reach those scenes).
37:27 LECHU VE NIMKERENU LA YISHME-ELIM VE YADENU AL TEHI VO KI ACHIYNU VESARENU HU VA YISHME'U ECHAV
KJ: Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.
BN: "Come, let us sell him to the Yishma-Elim, and let our hand not be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh." And his brothers listened to him.
Yehudah the relatively good son, almost acknowledging responsibility in full - alas he only gets as far as not killing the boy. Note the pun on Yishma and Yishme-Elim. But also note that they missed their opportunity with the passing Yishma-Elim, and had to wait for the next caravan to pass by, which will be Midyanim. (Or yet again there are two versions badly syncretised.)
37:28 VA YA'AVRU ANASHIM MIDYANIM SOCHARIM VA YIMSHECHU VA YA'ALU ET YOSEPH MIN HA BOR VA YIMKERU ET YOSEPH LA YISHME-ELIM BE ESRIM KASEPH VA YAVIY'U ET YOSEPH MITSRAYEMAH
KJ: Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.
BN: Then some Midyanim, merchantmen, passed by, and they tugged and dragged Yoseph out of the pit, and sold Yoseph to the Yishma-Elim for twenty shekels of silver. And they brought Yoseph to Mitsrayim.
MIDYANIM (מדינים): the Midyanim are a trifle obscure here - are the Yishma-Elites themselves Midyanim, and the word Midyanim being used generically, the way we might say "Arabs" today, and mean any group or tribe or nation from Bahrain to Morocco? Or are two stories yet again being momentarily confused? Patai holds that the Genesist confused two manuscripts; an Ephrayimite (northern kingdom) document from before the destruction of Yisra-El, and a Yehudan (southern kingdom) one from after the exile: since he doesn't have those documents physically to demonstrate the hypothesis with, it can only be regarded as speculation: the Ephrayimite has him sold to Midyan with Re'u-Ven as his protector; the yehudan version sells him to Yishma-Elim, with Yehudah as his protector. A logical enough theory, despite its unproveability.
However we explain it, there is no question that the sentence is odd. As it stands, we can't really tell whether it's the brothers or the Midyanites who pull him from the pit, and whether the brothers (or indeed the Midyanites) then sell him on to the Yishma-Elites, or vice versa, or neither. And why does it need these Midyanites in the story anyway, if it was the Yishma-Elites have bought him and take him to Mitsrayim (Egypt)? Ah, but now look at verse 36, where it turns out that it was the Midyanites who took him to Egypt and sold him there. So maybe it was the Yishma-Elites who took him out of the pit, and sold him back to his brothers, who created a hedge fund, and took out insurance against the possibility of slave-in-Egypt sales not being so lucrative this week, and then they sold him on to the Midyanites...
37:29 VA YASHAV RE'U-VEN EL HA BOR VE HINEH EYN YOSEPH BA BOR VA YIKRA ET BEGADAV
KJ: And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes.
BN: Then Re'u-Ven came back, going by way of the pit; and behold, Yoseph was not in the pit; and he tore the edges of his garments.
Where was he then in verses 25 -29? The logic of the tale simply falls apart here. Or could it be that the Midyanites, or perhaps the Yishma-Elites, saw Yoseph in the pit, and stole up without the brothers noticing, and took him... but of course, if that had happened, then the brothers could simply go home and tell dad that his favourite son has been kidnapped or abducted, and not mention that he was ever in a pit, and not need to go through the whole pantomime of the goat and the blood that is about to follow. And we are told, unequivocally and unashamedly, that the all-knowing and all-wise Jewish God wrote this story himself, in exactly the muddled, confused, poorly edited and ultimately unintelligible form that we have it here. Amen.
VA YIKRA ET BEGADAV: The traditional response in Judaism, when one hears of a family death (click here). The inference is that he assumes they have ignored his advice during his absence. and killed the boy.
37:30 VA YASHAV EL ECHAV VA YOMAR HA YELED EYNENU VA ANI ANAH ANI VA
KJ: And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?
BN: And he went back to his brothers and said, "The boy isn't there; and as for me, where shall I go?"
Because he is the eldest, and therefore bears the responsibility? Not the inheritance, just the responsibility. He will make exactly the same assumption with respect of Bin-Yamin later on.
What a stunning piece of word-play: Ayneynu, va ani - anah ani va? The English simply cannot render it.
37:31 VA YIK'CHU ET KETONET YOSEPH VA YISHCHATU SE'IR IZIM VA YITBELU ET HA KUTONET BA DAM
KJ: And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;
BN: And they took Yoseph's coat, and killed a he-goat, and dipped the coat in the blood.
So they are goatherds rather than shepherds? No, they are both, and as we have seen before, sheep and goats were not that easily distinguishable in Biblical times, and generally both were flocked together; a great deal of hybridisation and husbandry has gone on down the centuries to create the creatures that we know today, though they were always two different species, with different chromosomes etc. Click here for a fuller scientific explanation.
SE'IR (שעיר): Extraordinary that the irony of this action has been so far ignored by the commentators. They dip Yoseph's coat in goat's blood - the very word used is Se'ir (שעיר); exactly as Rivkah (metaphorically speaking) dipped Ya'akov's clothes in goat's blood when he went to steal Esav's blessing - the pun on Se'ir is at Genesis 27:11, the dressing in Esav's garments at 27:15. Esav is Edom, and the founding father of Edom was named Se'ir the Chorite; and Esav married Yishma-Elites, to whom Yoseph may have just been sold (if they were Midyanites, these were Mosheh's matrilocal family, so the mythological effect is identical). Perhaps the brothers don't know their father's full story, but what a poignant moment, when they bring the coat home, and Ya'akov must think the wheel of his own wickedness has come full circle.
37:32 VA YESHALCHU ET KETONET HA PASIM VA YAVIY'U EL AVIYHEM VA YOMRU ZOT MATSA'NU HA KER NA HA KETONET BINCHA HI IM LO
KJ: And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.
BN: And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father, and said, "We found this. Know now whether it's your son's coat or not."
VA YESHALCHU...VA YAVI'U: "And they sent...and they brought..." One or the other, but surely not both.
"Your son's coat": they are only half-brothers to him, and through the father not the mother, so in a sense they are not even as much as that. But "your son" also distances them from the events, psychologically and emotionally. Very cruel to their dad nonetheless.
37:33 VA YAKIYRAH VA YOMER KETONET BENI CHAYAH RA'AH ACHALAT'HU TAROPH TORAPH YOSEPH
KJ: And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
BN: And he recognised it, and said, "It's my son's coat; some wild animal has devoured him; Yoseph is without doubt torn in pieces."
Echoes of the Adonis-Osiris-etc legend perhaps, torn to pieces by a wild boar, the eighteen parts of his body scattered in the eighteen holy places. And of course he was wearing his priestly garments at the time. The key difference is that one brother-killer turns into ten. And that this father does recognise his own son by his clothing.
Why the use of the highly emotive word "evil" in the King James? Would "wild" not have done?
We have witnessed a great deal of wickedness already in this book; but none on quite this scale; and even putting it in the context of the bad things that Ya'akov has done in his life, he doesn't deserve this.
TAROPH TORAPH: See my notes to Genesis 31:34 and 31:39.
37:34 VA YIKRA YA'AKOV SIMLOTAV VA YASEM SAK BE MATNAV VA YIT'ABEL AL BENO YAMIM RABIM
KJ: And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
BN: And Ya'akov rent his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
Tearing his clothes, as Re'u-Ven did in verse 29, and as Yoseph's have just been torn; this traditional mode of mourning is called Keri'a (קריע) and would be well worth a paragraph explaining against the laws of mourning that we now have. Do they derive from this passage? Click here.
Note that he is called Ya'akov again, not Yisra-El.
YIT'ABEL: From the root EVEL, which will recur when Ya'akov himself is taken for burial, in Genesis 50:11 - to Evel Mitsrayim (though in fact there is some dispute over the name, which may in fact be AVEL Mitsrayim, "the meadow of Egypt").
SAK: The source of the English word sackcloth, which really ought to be written Sak-cloth, without that confusing "c" in the first part - the reason why most people, incorrectly, think it means clothes made out of the same material from which sacks are made. It doesn't. It means "mourning garments", and they can be of any material you please, even your very best clothes, provided you have made the approapriate tear - see my link at verse 29.
YAMIM RABIM (ימים רבים): at what point did the 7-day and the 30-day rules come in? Genesis 50:3 has them mourning for 40 and then 70 days - or possibly 40 and then 30, making 70 in total - and describes this as the tradition in Mitsrayim. When they reach Evel Mitsrayim they will keep the shiv'a - 7 days.
37:35 VA YAKUMU CHOL BANAV VE CHOL BENOTAV LENACHAMO VA YEMA'EN LEHITNACHEM VA YOMER KI ERED EL BENI AVEL SHE'OLAH VA YEVCH OTO AVIV
KJ: And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
BN: And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, "No, but I will go down to the grave to my son in mourning." And his father wept for him.
Daughters! Plural! Of Ya'akov! This is the second time that there has been a suggestion of other daughters beside Dinah? Or are daughters-in-law and grandchildren intended?
SHE'OLAH (שאלה): surprising to find this so early; the abode of the dead.
37:36 VE HA MEDANIM MACHRU OTO EL MITSRAYIM LE POTI-PHAR SERIM PAROH SAR HA TABACHIM
KJ: And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.
BN: And the Medanim sold him into Mitsrayim, to Poti-Phar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard.
MEDANIM (מדנים): Is that right? Have the Midyanim suddenly changed into the Medanim? Has the Masoretic editor simply omitted a Yud? Do we have yet another version, yet another text, being synthesised into this one? Check other Yehudit texts than the Sar Shalom, the Mechon-Mamre, the Sefaria, the ORT... no, they all have Medanim... the Hertz Chumash too (but see Hertz's footnote if you have a paper copy - it isn't available online); are these the same people as Mosheh's in-laws? Check their lineage as well... and anyway, was it not Yishma-Elites to whom the brothers, or possibly the Midyanites, sold him in verse 28?
EL MITSRAYIM: The concept is a little strange. That they sold him "BA MITSRAYIM - in Egypt" would not be worrisome, but this says "EL = into". The inference is that he wasn't just sold in any slave market, but specifically to Pharaoh.
POTI-PHAR (פוטיפר): literally "the gift of Ra" according to Hertz, but this is either a) patently wrong, as the name of Ra is not present in the word; b) quite correct, for the following reason... that we recognise that the Poti-Phar referred to here as captain of the guard (but see my note below) at Yoseph's prison is precisely the same man later referred to as Poti-Phera (פוטי פרע), the High Priest of On (Greek Heliopolis), the religious capital of Mitsrayim under Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), the same man whose daughter Yoseph married, and whom he served in the role of junior priest before his elevation to the high priesthood and viziership in Poti-Phera's place. Grammatically the second version, with the final Ayin on Phera that is absent on Phar, is the more correct. Phera (פרע) is in fact the genitive form of Pharaoh (פרעה); the meaning of Poti (פוטי) in ancient Egyptian is less clear, though the western part of Lower Egypt - the area we now think of as Libya - was for many millennia known as Phut (פוט), or possibly Put, so it may well mean "lower", which makes sense in the context. Livy however believed Phut to be Mauretania (HN v1). The name occurs in Genesis 10:6, Jeremiah 46:9, Ezekiel 27:10 and 38:5 and in Nachum 3:9. The Septuagint invariably translates Phut as Libya, as does the Latin Vulgate.
SERIM (סרים): or SERIS (סריס)? It is necessary to go back and check this against the earliest texts. There are variations in all modern Yehudit versions of the text. Most prefer SERIM (סרים), despite the fact that it is clearly ungrammatical, and both 39:1 and 40:2 et al make it quite clear that SERIS is intended. Translations invariably make Poti-Phar an "officer", and explain in footnotes that there is an erroneous pluralisation. But Sar (סר) with a Samech (ס) does not mean "officer", rather Sar (שר) with a Seen (ש) does, as we discover just two words later when he is called Sar Ha Tabachim (שר הטבחים), for which even worse solecism see the following note. SERIS (סריס), on the other hand, having a final Samech (ס) and not a final Mem (ם) would root in the unused Yehudit verb - unused for obvious reasons - SARAS (סרס) = "to castrate". Seris thus being "a eunuch". We know from Egyptian records that all court and religious officials in ancient Egypt were eunuchs, as indeed - and this is the key point - Yoseph would himself have had to be in order to take the position that he obtained later. At what point though was he castrated? Before or after he "fathers" Ephrayim and Menasheh? The latter is feasible if they were not his natural sons, but "adopted" in the way the Roman emperors adopted their chosen successor? Poti-Phar would certainly have been a eunuch (which may explain why his wife went boy-chasing the way she did), as part of his priestly situation, corroborating the previous remark that he is the same man as the later Poti-Phera of On. But:-
SAR HA TABACHIM (סר הטבחים): See the jail stories later (39:1 et al), where it is once again the Sar Ha Tabachim into whose charge Yoseph is placed. Are there yet again two versions? TABACH (טבח) = "sacrificer" as we shall see when Mosheh builds his altars later on; it was also used to mean "executioner", in the sense of public hangman, which may be why Hertz translates the word here as "chief of the executioners"; but he is almost unique in getting even this close. The role that Poti-Phar would have had - public hangman or sacrificial high priest – has already been answered above. The High Priest does not usually man the gallows or the guillotine; the most likely explanation is that an originally Egyptian tale entered the folk-lore of the Beney Yisra-El, adapted at different times and in variant ways to fit the culture of the tellers and listeners, with Yoseph (originally Osher/Osiris) serving his initiation period as a priest with the High Priest, then descending into the Underworld (the pit with his brothers, the prison here), undertaking the Eucharist (in prison now, but also with the Kiddush cup later), delivering oracles (to his brothers, to the butler and baker, to the Pharaoh) from the Underworld, and then ascending to sit at the right hand of the worldly sovereign.
All of which is the best example of "critical enquiry" you will find; and why this more than any other? Because the book was supposedly written at the time of Mosheh, by YHVH, or possibly by Elohim – so you would expect it to be precise and correct on matters pertaining to contemporary Egyptian life; where it might get things wrong about social customs in earlier Padan Aram or liturgical practices in previous Babylonia. And yet here it is, in a complete mess about the most basic elements of Egyptian life: the equivalent of a modern American thinking that the "Secretary of State" was the person who answered the telephone in the White House.
End of chapter 37; pey break.
The general story that follows, his youthful beauty, attempted murder, resurrection from the pit (for a second time!) and eventual provision of bread to the starving, links him with Osher (Osiris) and as we shall see the butler and the baker will become eucharistic, less themselves than the anthropomorphisation of the wine and bread, the Hebrew Kiddush, whose cup Yoseph will arrange for Bin-Yamin to "steal". Much for Christians to ponder - including his three days in the pit at the beginning, and his time in the underworld later with the purveyors of the Eucharist, before being "resurrected" from Death Row and sitting literally on the right hand of Pharaoh.
However, before we resume, there is an immense digression:-
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VA YAGED (ויגד): hardly surprising that they should hate him is it? Psychologically, why would he tell them such a dream; surely he would keep it secret. But our tale has now entered the mythological realm, and we need to read it as such, not as "soap opera" or history. The one who will sit at the head of the Round Table is establishing himself with his twelve knights-disciples-constellations-brothers.
37:6 VA YOMER ELEYHEM SHIM'U NA HA CHALOM HA ZEH ASHER CHALAMTI
KJ: And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed:
BN: And he said to them, "Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed.
On all previous occasions in the Tanach, dreams have been vehicles for conversations with either angels or gods, revelations and prophecies and covenants. Can we read this then as Yoseph in his priestly role rendering an oracle to the people, rather than little brother telling his big brothers about a dream he has had? We have had hints of this oracle in earlier chapters, and of course it was this very configuration of the moon, the sun and the stars, in the form of the Milky Way, that Ya'akov established with his dream at Beit-El in chapter 28; both epic-sagas thus beginning with the same motif.
37:7 VE HINEH ANACHNU ME'ALMIM ALUMIM BETOCH HA SADEH VE HINEH KAMAH ALUMATI VE GAM NITSAVAH VE HINEH TESUBEYNAH ALUMOTEYCHEM VA TISHTACHAVEYNA LA ALUMOTI
KJ: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.
BN: "For behold we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf got up, and even stood upright; and behold your sheaves gathered around, and bowed down to my sheaf."
Which tells us straight away that we are in the realm of the corn-god, and thereby outside Kena'ani/Yisra-Eli/Phoenician mythology and into that of Egypt and Babylon: where all the former deals were about sheep and goats, and occasionally vineyards and orchards and sacred groves and sacred trees, and all of them moon oriented, these latter deal with sun-objects, all of them sun-coloured: corn, gold and cattle. The corn will become central to Yoseph's rule in Egypt, the means of his envassalement of the entire people, which will then became the Mosaic slavery of the Book of Exodus.
The manner of Yoseph's dream parallels the manner of both Poti-Phera's and Pharaoh's dreams later on.
We can also recognise that this story would have gone down like a bag of lead with his brothers. The details reflect the planetary mesocosm as explained above.
37:8 VA YOMRU LO ECHAV HA MALOCH TIMLOCH ALEYNU IM MASHOL TIMSHOL BANU VA YOSIPHU OD SENO OTO AL CHALOMOTAV VE AL DEVARAV
KJ: And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.
BN: And his brothers said to him, "Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have power over us?" And they hated him still more for his dreams, and for his words.
YOSIPHU (יוספו): yet again the pun on his name. It is almost as if the writer is trying to create a meaning for his name out of the telling of the story.
37:9 VA YACHALOM OD CHALOM ACHER VA YESAPER OTO LE ECHAV VA YOMER HINEH CHALAMTI CHALOM OD VE HINEH HA SHEMESH VE HA YARE'ACH VE ACHAD ASAR KOCHAVIM MISHTACHAVIM LI
KJ: And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.
BN: And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, "Behold I have dreamed yet another dream; and behold the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me."
Hitler and Napoleon had very similar dreams. Donald Trump appears to have it nightly in the White House and Benjamin Netanyahu appears to heading that way too. A psychiatrist would diagnose this as megalomania - and actually the scale of the tyrannical power that Yoseph will later accrue is of precisely that order. But we can also recognise - and Genesis 49 will confirm it - that the tribal configuration is an earthly representation of the pattern of the heavens, one tribe per constellation, and so in a sense what is being presented here, at the start of what we can call the Yisra-El story (as opposed to the Ya'akov story), is the formal genesis of the tribe that will become the nation, in exactly the same way that King Arthur arranged his 12 senior knights around the Round Table with himself - Ar Thur means "The King" - in the position of the sun, and Guinevere - "The White One", which is to say, in Yehudit, "Ha Lavanah" - beside him on his left, and on his right his seneschal, his right-hand man, his "Bin-Yamin"; though here the Bin-Yamin is actually Yoseph himself. Jesus does exactly the same at the table for the Last Supper, save only that Mary Magdalene (Guinevere, the Dinah role) appears to have been left out.
SHEMESH...YARE'ACH (ירח...שמש): the following verse tells us that they symbolise his parents, with the 11 stars obviously as his 11 brothers - again, no Dinah (see the reference to Mary Magdalene above)! Ya'akov thus becomes linked to the sun-god, Rachel to the moon-goddess, which latter we have already demonstrated. And who is Yoseph himself in this? Not the sun, but the "beloved" child of the sun and moon, which is to say Osiris-Tammuz-David-Jesus-Adonis: the Earth itself, whence his power over the corn.
But this is now. The dream predicts a future in which he will take his father's seat (he rather than Bin-Yamin? - we shall explore that question in later chapters), leaving Bin-Yamin in his own present seat, the new "beloved son" - and the events in Mitsrayim (Egypt) will confirm this.
37:10 VA YESAPER EL AVIV VE EL ECHAV VA YIG'AR BO AVIV VA YOMER LO MAH HA CHALOM HA ZEH ASHER CHALAMTA HA VO NAVO ANI VE IMCHA VE ACHEYCHA LEHISTACHAVOT LECHA ARTSAH
KJ: And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?
BN: And he recounted it to his father, and to his brothers, and his father rebuked him, and said to him, "What kind of dream is this to be dreaming? Shall I and your mother indeed come to bow down to you on the ground?"
MAH HA CHALOM HA ZEH: Ya'akov, who dreamed a ladder of angels at Beit-El.
ANI VE IMCHA: His mother has been dead for at least 15 years by this time. We witnessed her death and burial several chapters ago (Genesis 35:19), giving birth to Bin-Yamin. Yoseph was born not more than two or three years before that, and he is now seventeen.
Historically, if we are taking the tales as literal, this matters; mythologically it does not matter at all. We have to learn to read these various Av-Raham, Yitschak and Ya'akov stories as being "given" to them rather than necessarily their actual stories. In truth, dozens of different myths about dozens of different figures, some gods, some demi-gods, some tribal chiefs, some local priests, have been amalgamated under the triple heading of the patriarchs, plus Yoseph, Mosheh and Yehoshu'a, and then made to fit. This is not the same Ya'akov that we were reading about beforehand.
The important thing here is that Yoseph is the dreamer, where later he will become the interpreter of other people's dreams.
37:11 VA YEKAN'U VO ECHAV VE AVIV SHAMAR ET HA DAVAR
KJ: And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.
BN: And his brothers envied him; but his father kept the saying in mind.
YEKAN'U (יקנאו): they must believe it to some degree, or why else would they envy him?
end of first fragment
37:12 VA YELCHU ECHAV LIR'OT ET TSON AVIYHEM BI SHECHEM
KJ: And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.
BN: And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.
Where are they living, if the flock is away at Shechem? Does this tell us that the story in fact belongs to the time of the great massacre (Genesis 34), and therefore perhaps Rachel is still alive, and the absence of Bin-Yamin now easily explained. The answer lies in v14 – they are living in Chevron. Is Yitschak then still alive too? Why has the Redactor, knowing these details, placed the story here, out or order to the rest of the Ya'akov tale? To which the answer can only be: this is a new tale, the Yoseph tale. It begins where it needs to and we have to figure out the chronology for ourselves.
There is, however, one more problem. Ya'akov was twenty years in Charan, and Yoseph born in the very last years; Ya'akov at Chevron, before Rachel's death, is not more than two years after returning to Kena'an, so Yoseph could not be more than 6 or 7.
Whichever way we choose to read it, the dates, the years, the births and deaths, the chronology does not work.
37:13 VA YOMER YISRA-EL EL YOSEPH HA LO ACHEYCHA RO'IM BI SHECHEM LECHAH VE ESHLACHACHA ALEYHEM VA YOMER LO HINENI
KJ: And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, Here am I.
BN: And Yisra-El said to Yoseph, "Are your brothers not feeding the flocks in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them." And he said to him, "Here am I."
HINENI (הנני): a rather odd reply; or only odd because of the odd construction of the sentence. It appears to be there for Rabbinic reasons: to apply the great "Hineni" to Yoseph, so that he is up there with the other patriarchs in answering the call in this way. An essay on the subject of "Hineni" is due to be posted very soon.
And if this story is indeed set before the rape of Dinah, if Yoseph has already been sold and the truth of his death reported somewhat economically to his father, does this, should this, effect our reading of the Shechem tale - Shim'on's role in particular, at every point of the Yoseph tale?
37:14 VA YOMER LO LECH NA RE'EH ET SHELOM ACHEYCHA VE ET SHELOM HA TSON VA HASHIVENI DAVAR VA YISHLACHEHU ME EMEK CHEVRON VA YAVO SHECHEMAH
KJ: And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.
BN: And he said to him, "Go now, and see whether everything is okay with your brothers, and okay with the flock; and bring me back word." So he sent him out of the Vale of Chevron, and he came to Shechem.
The answer tomy question in verse12 = Chevron. Which leads to a further question: since when was he based in Chevron? Emek Chevron is the countryside around the town, rather than the town itself, which makes sense for a man with large flocks of sheep and goats. From Chevron to Shechem is quite a distance though (48.7 miles to be exact); perhaps they were living at the morthernmost point of the Chevron valley, so it was a few miles less.
37:15 VA YIMTSA'E'HU ISH VE HINEH TO'EH BA SADEH VA YISH'AL'E'HU HA ISH LEMOR MA TEVAKESH
KJ: And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field: and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou?
BN: And a certain man found him, and behold he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, "What are you looking for?"
A certain man? Just some random stranger, or a hint at a mystery? In this case almost certainly the former. Is the phrase intended to demonstrate that Yoseph is a bit of a dreamer?
MEVAKESH: This is usually used to mean "ask" or "request", rather than "seek". It yields the modern word for "please": BE VAKASHAH (בְּבַקָשָׁה), though actually NA or ANAH (אנא) are more correct.
37:16 VA YOMER ET ACHAY ANOCHI MEVAKESH HAGIDAH NA LI EYPHO HEM RO'IM
KJ: And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks.
BN: And he said, "I am looking for my brothers. Please can you tell me where they are feeding the flocks."
37:17 VA YOMER HA ISH NAS'U MI ZEH KI SHAMA'TI OMRIM NELCHAH DOTAYNA VA YELECH YOSEPH ACHAR ECHAV VA YIMTS'AEM BE DOTAN
KJ: And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.
BN: And the man said, "They were here, but they left. I heard them say, 'Let us go to Dotan.'" And Yoseph went after his brothers, and found them in Dotan.
DOTAN: 2 Kings 6:13/14 places it thirteen miles north of Shechem (today's Nablus) as a walled city, overlooking the main caravan route between Damasek (Damascus), Gil'ad (Gilead) and Mitsrayim (Egypt). The place is made to sound significant - was it? Not in itself, but in the parallel of the Kings verses, yes. Oddly symmetrical. In Kings, the king of Aram (many English versions change it to Syria) is seeking the great Prophet Elisha, "And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dotan." It is far too symmetrical to be coincidental, so can we read it as a used-phrase. I am trying to imagine a modern equivalent, and thinking, if you are wondering about the success or failure likelihood of the Emperor, and you are told he has been seen near Waterloo, or hearing of a potential rebellion, and being told the leader has been heard asking about the tea-ships in Boston Harbour. Something of the sort, though perhaps it is more Elisha's status as a prophet than Dotan itself that is being hinted at. Either way, it is even further from Chevron to Dotan than it was to Shechem.
37:6 VA YOMER ELEYHEM SHIM'U NA HA CHALOM HA ZEH ASHER CHALAMTI
וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם שִׁמְעוּ נָא הַחֲלוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר חָלָמְתִּי
KJ: And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed:
BN: And he said to them, "Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed.
On all previous occasions in the Tanach, dreams have been vehicles for conversations with either angels or gods, revelations and prophecies and covenants. Can we read this then as Yoseph in his priestly role rendering an oracle to the people, rather than little brother telling his big brothers about a dream he has had? We have had hints of this oracle in earlier chapters, and of course it was this very configuration of the moon, the sun and the stars, in the form of the Milky Way, that Ya'akov established with his dream at Beit-El in chapter 28; both epic-sagas thus beginning with the same motif.
37:7 VE HINEH ANACHNU ME'ALMIM ALUMIM BETOCH HA SADEH VE HINEH KAMAH ALUMATI VE GAM NITSAVAH VE HINEH TESUBEYNAH ALUMOTEYCHEM VA TISHTACHAVEYNA LA ALUMOTI
וְהִנֵּה אֲנַחְנוּ מְאַלְּמִים אֲלֻמִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַשָּׂדֶה וְהִנֵּה קָמָה אֲלֻמָּתִי וְגַם נִצָּבָה וְהִנֵּה תְסֻבֶּינָה אֲלֻמֹּתֵיכֶם וַתִּשְׁתַּחֲוֶיןָ לַאֲלֻמָּתִי
KJ: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.
BN: "For behold we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf got up, and even stood upright; and behold your sheaves gathered around, and bowed down to my sheaf."
Which tells us straight away that we are in the realm of the corn-god, and thereby outside Kena'ani/Yisra-Eli/Phoenician mythology and into that of Egypt and Babylon: where all the former deals were about sheep and goats, and occasionally vineyards and orchards and sacred groves and sacred trees, and all of them moon oriented, these latter deal with sun-objects, all of them sun-coloured: corn, gold and cattle. The corn will become central to Yoseph's rule in Egypt, the means of his envassalement of the entire people, which will then became the Mosaic slavery of the Book of Exodus.
The manner of Yoseph's dream parallels the manner of both Poti-Phera's and Pharaoh's dreams later on.
We can also recognise that this story would have gone down like a bag of lead with his brothers. The details reflect the planetary mesocosm as explained above.
37:8 VA YOMRU LO ECHAV HA MALOCH TIMLOCH ALEYNU IM MASHOL TIMSHOL BANU VA YOSIPHU OD SENO OTO AL CHALOMOTAV VE AL DEVARAV
וַיֹּאמְרוּ לוֹ אֶחָיו הֲמָלֹךְ תִּמְלֹךְ עָלֵינוּ אִם מָשׁוֹל תִּמְשֹׁל בָּנוּ וַיּוֹסִפוּ עוֹד שְׂנֹא אֹתוֹ עַל חֲלֹמֹתָיו וְעַל דְּבָרָיו
KJ: And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.
BN: And his brothers said to him, "Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have power over us?" And they hated him still more for his dreams, and for his words.
YOSIPHU (יוספו): yet again the pun on his name. It is almost as if the writer is trying to create a meaning for his name out of the telling of the story.
37:9 VA YACHALOM OD CHALOM ACHER VA YESAPER OTO LE ECHAV VA YOMER HINEH CHALAMTI CHALOM OD VE HINEH HA SHEMESH VE HA YARE'ACH VE ACHAD ASAR KOCHAVIM MISHTACHAVIM LI
וַיַּחֲלֹם עוֹד חֲלוֹם אַחֵר וַיְסַפֵּר אֹתוֹ לְאֶחָיו וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּה חָלַמְתִּי חֲלוֹם עוֹד וְהִנֵּה הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהַיָּרֵחַ וְאַחַד עָשָׂר כּוֹכָבִים מִשְׁתַּחֲוִים לִי
KJ: And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.
BN: And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, "Behold I have dreamed yet another dream; and behold the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me."
Hitler and Napoleon had very similar dreams. Donald Trump appears to have it nightly in the White House and Benjamin Netanyahu appears to heading that way too. A psychiatrist would diagnose this as megalomania - and actually the scale of the tyrannical power that Yoseph will later accrue is of precisely that order. But we can also recognise - and Genesis 49 will confirm it - that the tribal configuration is an earthly representation of the pattern of the heavens, one tribe per constellation, and so in a sense what is being presented here, at the start of what we can call the Yisra-El story (as opposed to the Ya'akov story), is the formal genesis of the tribe that will become the nation, in exactly the same way that King Arthur arranged his 12 senior knights around the Round Table with himself - Ar Thur means "The King" - in the position of the sun, and Guinevere - "The White One", which is to say, in Yehudit, "Ha Lavanah" - beside him on his left, and on his right his seneschal, his right-hand man, his "Bin-Yamin"; though here the Bin-Yamin is actually Yoseph himself. Jesus does exactly the same at the table for the Last Supper, save only that Mary Magdalene (Guinevere, the Dinah role) appears to have been left out.
SHEMESH...YARE'ACH (ירח...שמש): the following verse tells us that they symbolise his parents, with the 11 stars obviously as his 11 brothers - again, no Dinah (see the reference to Mary Magdalene above)! Ya'akov thus becomes linked to the sun-god, Rachel to the moon-goddess, which latter we have already demonstrated. And who is Yoseph himself in this? Not the sun, but the "beloved" child of the sun and moon, which is to say Osiris-Tammuz-David-Jesus-Adonis: the Earth itself, whence his power over the corn.
But this is now. The dream predicts a future in which he will take his father's seat (he rather than Bin-Yamin? - we shall explore that question in later chapters), leaving Bin-Yamin in his own present seat, the new "beloved son" - and the events in Mitsrayim (Egypt) will confirm this.
37:10 VA YESAPER EL AVIV VE EL ECHAV VA YIG'AR BO AVIV VA YOMER LO MAH HA CHALOM HA ZEH ASHER CHALAMTA HA VO NAVO ANI VE IMCHA VE ACHEYCHA LEHISTACHAVOT LECHA ARTSAH
וַיְסַפֵּר אֶל אָבִיו וְאֶל אֶחָיו וַיִּגְעַר בּוֹ אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מָה הַחֲלוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר חָלָמְתָּ הֲבוֹא נָבוֹא אֲנִי וְאִמְּךָ וְאַחֶיךָ לְהִשְׁתַּחֲוֹת לְךָ אָרְצָה
KJ: And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?
BN: And he recounted it to his father, and to his brothers, and his father rebuked him, and said to him, "What kind of dream is this to be dreaming? Shall I and your mother indeed come to bow down to you on the ground?"
MAH HA CHALOM HA ZEH: Ya'akov, who dreamed a ladder of angels at Beit-El.
ANI VE IMCHA: His mother has been dead for at least 15 years by this time. We witnessed her death and burial several chapters ago (Genesis 35:19), giving birth to Bin-Yamin. Yoseph was born not more than two or three years before that, and he is now seventeen.
Historically, if we are taking the tales as literal, this matters; mythologically it does not matter at all. We have to learn to read these various Av-Raham, Yitschak and Ya'akov stories as being "given" to them rather than necessarily their actual stories. In truth, dozens of different myths about dozens of different figures, some gods, some demi-gods, some tribal chiefs, some local priests, have been amalgamated under the triple heading of the patriarchs, plus Yoseph, Mosheh and Yehoshu'a, and then made to fit. This is not the same Ya'akov that we were reading about beforehand.
The important thing here is that Yoseph is the dreamer, where later he will become the interpreter of other people's dreams.
37:11 VA YEKAN'U VO ECHAV VE AVIV SHAMAR ET HA DAVAR
וַיְקַנְאוּ בוֹ אֶחָיו וְאָבִיו שָׁמַר אֶת הַדָּבָר
KJ: And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.
BN: And his brothers envied him; but his father kept the saying in mind.
YEKAN'U (יקנאו): they must believe it to some degree, or why else would they envy him?
end of first fragment
37:12 VA YELCHU ECHAV LIR'OT ET TSON AVIYHEM BI SHECHEM
וַיֵּלְכוּ אֶחָיו לִרְעוֹת אֶת צֹאן אֲבִיהֶם בִּשְׁכֶם
KJ: And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.
BN: And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.
Where are they living, if the flock is away at Shechem? Does this tell us that the story in fact belongs to the time of the great massacre (Genesis 34), and therefore perhaps Rachel is still alive, and the absence of Bin-Yamin now easily explained. The answer lies in v14 – they are living in Chevron. Is Yitschak then still alive too? Why has the Redactor, knowing these details, placed the story here, out or order to the rest of the Ya'akov tale? To which the answer can only be: this is a new tale, the Yoseph tale. It begins where it needs to and we have to figure out the chronology for ourselves.
There is, however, one more problem. Ya'akov was twenty years in Charan, and Yoseph born in the very last years; Ya'akov at Chevron, before Rachel's death, is not more than two years after returning to Kena'an, so Yoseph could not be more than 6 or 7.
Whichever way we choose to read it, the dates, the years, the births and deaths, the chronology does not work.
37:13 VA YOMER YISRA-EL EL YOSEPH HA LO ACHEYCHA RO'IM BI SHECHEM LECHAH VE ESHLACHACHA ALEYHEM VA YOMER LO HINENI
וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל יוֹסֵף הֲלוֹא אַחֶיךָ רֹעִים בִּשְׁכֶם לְכָה וְאֶשְׁלָחֲךָ אֲלֵיהֶם וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ הִנֵּנִי
KJ: And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, Here am I.
BN: And Yisra-El said to Yoseph, "Are your brothers not feeding the flocks in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them." And he said to him, "Here am I."
HINENI (הנני): a rather odd reply; or only odd because of the odd construction of the sentence. It appears to be there for Rabbinic reasons: to apply the great "Hineni" to Yoseph, so that he is up there with the other patriarchs in answering the call in this way. An essay on the subject of "Hineni" is due to be posted very soon.
And if this story is indeed set before the rape of Dinah, if Yoseph has already been sold and the truth of his death reported somewhat economically to his father, does this, should this, effect our reading of the Shechem tale - Shim'on's role in particular, at every point of the Yoseph tale?
37:14 VA YOMER LO LECH NA RE'EH ET SHELOM ACHEYCHA VE ET SHELOM HA TSON VA HASHIVENI DAVAR VA YISHLACHEHU ME EMEK CHEVRON VA YAVO SHECHEMAH
וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ לֶךְ נָא רְאֵה אֶת שְׁלוֹם אַחֶיךָ וְאֶת שְׁלוֹם הַצֹּאן וַהֲשִׁבֵנִי דָּבָר וַיִּשְׁלָחֵהוּ מֵעֵמֶק חֶבְרוֹן וַיָּבֹא שְׁכֶמָה
KJ: And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.
BN: And he said to him, "Go now, and see whether everything is okay with your brothers, and okay with the flock; and bring me back word." So he sent him out of the Vale of Chevron, and he came to Shechem.
The answer tomy question in verse12 = Chevron. Which leads to a further question: since when was he based in Chevron? Emek Chevron is the countryside around the town, rather than the town itself, which makes sense for a man with large flocks of sheep and goats. From Chevron to Shechem is quite a distance though (48.7 miles to be exact); perhaps they were living at the morthernmost point of the Chevron valley, so it was a few miles less.
37:15 VA YIMTSA'E'HU ISH VE HINEH TO'EH BA SADEH VA YISH'AL'E'HU HA ISH LEMOR MA TEVAKESH
וַיִּמְצָאֵהוּ אִישׁ וְהִנֵּה תֹעֶה בַּשָּׂדֶה וַיִּשְׁאָלֵהוּ הָאִישׁ לֵאמֹר מַה תְּבַקֵּשׁ
KJ: And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field: and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou?
BN: And a certain man found him, and behold he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, "What are you looking for?"
A certain man? Just some random stranger, or a hint at a mystery? In this case almost certainly the former. Is the phrase intended to demonstrate that Yoseph is a bit of a dreamer?
MEVAKESH: This is usually used to mean "ask" or "request", rather than "seek". It yields the modern word for "please": BE VAKASHAH (בְּבַקָשָׁה), though actually NA or ANAH (אנא) are more correct.
37:16 VA YOMER ET ACHAY ANOCHI MEVAKESH HAGIDAH NA LI EYPHO HEM RO'IM
וַיֹּאמֶר אֶת אַחַי אָנֹכִי מְבַקֵּשׁ הַגִּידָה נָּא לִי אֵיפֹה הֵם רֹעִים
KJ: And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks.
BN: And he said, "I am looking for my brothers. Please can you tell me where they are feeding the flocks."
37:17 VA YOMER HA ISH NAS'U MI ZEH KI SHAMA'TI OMRIM NELCHAH DOTAYNA VA YELECH YOSEPH ACHAR ECHAV VA YIMTS'AEM BE DOTAN
וַיֹּאמֶר הָאִישׁ נָסְעוּ מִזֶּה כִּי שָׁמַעְתִּי אֹמְרִים נֵלְכָה דֹּתָיְנָה וַיֵּלֶךְ יוֹסֵף אַחַר אֶחָיו וַיִּמְצָאֵם בְּדֹתָן
KJ: And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.
BN: And the man said, "They were here, but they left. I heard them say, 'Let us go to Dotan.'" And Yoseph went after his brothers, and found them in Dotan.
37:18 VA YIR'U OTO ME RACHOK U VE TEREM YIKRAV ALEYHEM VA YIT'NACHLU OTO LAHAMIYTO
KJ: And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.
BN: And they saw him from the distance, and before he reached them they were already conspiring among themselves to kill him.
וַיִּרְאוּ אֹתוֹ מֵרָחֹק וּבְטֶרֶם יִקְרַב אֲלֵיהֶם וַיִּתְנַכְּלוּ אֹתוֹ לַהֲמִיתוֹ
KJ: And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.
BN: And they saw him from the distance, and before he reached them they were already conspiring among themselves to kill him.
Is there an Egyptian tale of the Death of Osiris, or a Babylonian of Tammuz, that reflects this?
37:19 VA YOMRU ISH EL ACHIV HINEH BA'AL HA CHALOMOT HA LAZEH BA
וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל אָחִיו הִנֵּה בַּעַל הַחֲלֹמוֹת הַלָּזֶה בָּא
KJ: And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.
BN: And they said to each other, "Look, here comes the dreamer."
BA'AL...HA LAZEH (הלזה...בעל): The English translations are not logical. Why would they say "This dreamer cometh"? "This" is not colloquial, though it is technically correct, in that HA LAZEH appears to be an extremely obscure form of ZEH (זה) = "this". HALAZ (הלז) appears in the same way in Judges 6:20, 1 Samuel 14:1 and 17:26, 2 Kings 23:17, Zechariah 2:8 and Daniel 8:16, but this is HA LAZ and not HA LAZEH. 2 Kings 4:25 also has HA LAZ, but there it is generally translated as "that" rather than "this", and in the context the colloquialism works. HA LAZEH, with a final Hey (ה), occurs only twice, here and in Genesis 24:65, where it definitely does mean "this"; as it does with HA LEZU (הלזו) in Ezekiel 36:35. The conclusion seems to be that HA LAZEH stands for "that", and HA LAZ "for this", with HA LEZU as a dialect or epochal variation.
It is certainly a very obscure form of grammar, and most of the references indicate a late form, probably with Persian influence. But HA (ה) is also the definite article, and LAZEH treated as a noun in its own right leads us to the root LUZ (לזו). Luz was either the ancient name for Beit-El, or the name of the grove, later the village, adjacent to Beit-El, and meant "an almond tree".
I am inclined to suggest that what the brothers actually said was more like: "Behold, the Seer of Luz approaches", which would have been as much an ironical reference to their father's Beit-El dreams, and perhaps a hint of "like father like son", as it was a poke at Yoseph: and this would carry extra weight if Yoseph was wearing the coat of many colours at the time, If this is correct, then the phrase in Yehudit, though written the same, should now be written and pronounced as BA'AL CHALOMOT HA LUZEH BA.
37:20 VE ATAH LECHU VE NAHARGEHU VE NASHLICH'EHU BA ACHAD HA BOROT VA AMARNU HAYAH RA'AH ACHALAT'HU' VE NIR'EH MAH YIHEYU CHALOMOTAV
וְעַתָּה לְכוּ וְנַהַרְגֵהוּ וְנַשְׁלִכֵהוּ בְּאַחַד הַבֹּרוֹת וְאָמַרְנוּ חַיָּה רָעָה אֲכָלָתְהוּ וְנִרְאֶה מַה יִּהְיוּ חֲלֹמֹתָיו
KJ: Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
BN: "Come, let's kill him, right now, and throw his body into one of those pits, and we can say, 'some evil beast must have devoured him'. And then we'll see what'll become of his dreams."
RA'AH (רעה): pun on LIR'OT (לרעות) = "to feed" etc, as above, and "evil" as here, both rooted in Reysh, Ayin, Hey (רעה).
BOROT (ברות): as opposed to Be'erot (בארות) with an Aleph (א); the former are dry pits, the latter wet wells.
Who actually made this suggestion? The Midrash claims Shim'on, and argues that this is why Yoseph later chose Shim'on for a hostage. But how would Yoseph have known that, since they said it among themselves before he reached them? We would like to hope that Shim'on had learned his lesson after the revenge at Shechem, but apparently extreme violence without remorse is part of the deity-given human condition, as Kayin (Cain) has already demonstrated in Genesis 4.
37:21 VA YISHMA RE'U-VEN VA YATSIL'EHU MI YADAM VA YOMER LO NAKENU NAPHESH
וַיִּשְׁמַע רְאוּבֵן וַיַּצִּלֵהוּ מִיָּדָם וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא נַכֶּנּוּ נָפֶשׁ
KJ: And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him.
BN: And Re'u-Ven heard it, and rescued him from their hands, and said, "Let us not take his life."
Why Re'u-Ven? Which is to say, for what tribal-political reason was it helpful to make Re'u-Ven the good guy here? Or is the story giving a response to my deliberately provocative remark above? Remember that Re'u-Ven was the firstborn, so if anyone would be blamed over such a matter, it would be him, and if anyone has the responsibility for taking responsibility, that too must be him. This too is presumably "part of the deity-given human condition", and presumes an understanding of "remorse" as well (hinted at in my hoping that Shim'on had learned from Shechem; though of course this may be before Shechem and he was taking out his suppressed Yoseph-anger with Shechem). The conflict between the two positions, that of possibly-Shim'on and that of definitely-Re'u-Ven, provides a perfect illustration of the concepts of Yetser ha Tov and Yetser ha Ra, the "inclinations" towards good and evil, to learn more about which click here.
37:22 VA YOMER AL'EHEM RE'U-VEN AL TISHPECHU DAM HASHLICHU OTO EL HA BOR HA ZEH ASHER BA MIDBAR VE YAD AL TISHLECHU BO LEMA'AN HATSIL OTO MI YADAM LAHASHIYVO EL AVIV
וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם רְאוּבֵן אַל תִּשְׁפְּכוּ דָם הַשְׁלִיכוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל הַבּוֹר הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בַּמִּדְבָּר וְיָד אַל תִּשְׁלְחוּ בוֹ לְמַעַן הַצִּיל אֹתוֹ מִיָּדָם לַהֲשִׁיבוֹ אֶל אָבִיו
KJ: And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again.
BN: And Re'u-Ven said to them, "Shed no blood; throw him in this pit here in the desert, but lay no hand on him" - thinking that in this way he could rescue him out of their hands, and bring him home safely to his father.
Re'u-Ven the good son. Maybe he's just looking for a way to get back into his father's good books (i.e. remorse) after his night of love with Bilhah!
Yet what is he really hoping to achieve? Throw him in the pit and hope the brothers will rethink their aspiration to murder him? If he really thinks they mean it, saving him now is only a postponement of the inevitable, and we know that Shim'on and Levi are capable of doing it. So is he already thinking to get Yoseph away, and the sale to the Bedou not a "getting rid of" Yoseph but "getting him away to safety"? We can't answer that question, because the tale doesn't follow that theme through. But interesting in the light of what the tale does follow, to speculate.
End of second fragment.
37:23 VA YEHI KA ASHER BA YOSEPH EL ECHAV VA YAPHSHIYTU ET YOSEPH ET KUTANTO ET KETONET HA PASIM ASHER ALAV
וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר בָּא יוֹסֵף אֶל אֶחָיו וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף אֶת כֻּתָּנְתּוֹ אֶת כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים אֲשֶׁר עָלָיו
KJ: And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him;
BN: And it came about that, when Yoseph reached his brethren, they stripped Yoseph of his coat, the coat of many colours that he was wearing.
Once again the text emphasises the coat of many colours; almost as though getting the coat is more important than anything they might do to the boy. But we also have to ask: why was he wearing it? This is his Bar Mitzvah suit, highly expensive, not the sort of thing you expect the kid to wear when he's traipsing across the hills in Mediterranean summer weather to find his brothers on the sheep-trail; sandals and a linen bernous - if his mum were still alive she would have made him go back to his tent and change. But it does mean that he arrives in Egypt dressed as a Hyksos chieftain or priest - no, it doesn't - see verses 31/32.
37:24 VA YIKACHUHU VA YASHLICHU OTO HA BORAH VE HA BOR REK AYN BO MAYIM
וַיִּקָּחֻהוּ וַיַּשְׁלִכוּ אֹתוֹ הַבֹּרָה וְהַבּוֹר רֵק אֵין בּוֹ מָיִם
KJ: And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
BN: And they took him, and cast him into the pit - the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
This should not have needed explaining. See my note to verse 20.
37:25 VA YESHVU LE'ECHOL LECHEM VA YIS'U EYNEYHEM VA YIR'U VE HINEH ORCHAT YISHME-ELIM BA'AH MI GIL'AD U GEMALEYHEM NOS'IM NECH'OT U TSERI VA LOT HOLCHIM LEHORID MITSRAYEMAH
וַיֵּשְׁבוּ לֶאֱכָל לֶחֶם וַיִּשְׂאוּ עֵינֵיהֶם וַיִּרְאוּ וְהִנֵּה אֹרְחַת יִשְׁמְעֵאלִים בָּאָה מִגִּלְעָד וּגְמַלֵּיהֶם נֹשְׂאִים נְכֹאת וּצְרִי וָלֹט הוֹלְכִים לְהוֹרִיד מִצְרָיְמָה
KJ: And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.
BN: Then they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and there was a caravan of Yishma-Elim from Gil'ad, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and laudanum, heading their way en route to Mitsrayim.
LE'ECHOL (לאכל). There seems to be something rather callous and cynical in this phrase, which is critical of all the brothers.
YISHME-ELIM (ישמעאלים): the sons of Ya'akov were in fact first cousins once removed of the Yishma-Elim (Av-Raham-Yitschak-Ya'akov-sons; Av-Raham-Yishma-El-sons); and also Esav, their uncle, married into Yishma-El, making the link even closer: it is his uncle, effectively, who is named here. Yet in this story the Yishma-Elim are depicted as just some group of Bedou who happen along, with no obvious connection to the brothers whatsoever. And not only this, but Gil'ad, or Gal-Ed, is precisely where Ya'akov and Lavan marked their border, and at the time no one said anything about it being Yishma-Eli/Edomite territory - and indeed it isn't; Edom is well south and east. Then perhaps they were just passing through, by way of Gil'ad, which probably means they were coming from Damasek (Damascus), the main trading centre of the region; srtange to mention it nonetheless.
LEHORID (להוריד): very significant term this, it was always seen as going down to Egypt and up to Kena'an.
LOT: (לט) - which also links us back to Av-Raham, though it is not the name of their great-uncle that is being referred to here. Lot appears in two other forms in Yehudit, principally as the root LOT (לט), which is either a corruption of, or possibly the original which then became extended into, both LAHAT (להט) and LA'AT (לאט), all of which mean "to cover over", "hide" or "wrap", and became connected with "hidden things" in the sense of secrets and mysteries and the magic arts (cf 1 Samuel 18:22, while also providing the word for a "covering" or "veil" (cf Ruth 3:7, Isaiah 25:7). Judges 4:21 uses it to mean "in secret", though .some translations mis-render it there as "softly".
However none of these are what is intended here. LOT (לט in the Yehudit versions, לוט in the Samaritan) is an Egyptian word derived from the Cypriot, and known in Latin as Cistus Ladanifera, in English, but entirely incorrectly as Laudanum - Laudanum was the 16th century CE invention of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus, and contained a mixture of opium, crushed pearls, amber, saffron, castor, ambergris, musk and even nutmeg, and was used as a drug in precisely the way that marijuana and LSD were used in the 1960s. It may sound exciting, or it may sound reprehensible, that Yishma-Elim careteled such drugs so long ago, but the truth is, it should be called "Labdanum" and not "Laudanum", and it is a very pretty white flower that was used to make perfumes in the ancient world.37:26 VA YOMER YEHUDAH EL ECHAV MAH BETSA KI NAHAROG ET ACHIYNU VE CHISIYNU ET DAMO
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוּדָה אֶל אֶחָיו מַה בֶּצַע כִּי נַהֲרֹג אֶת אָחִינוּ וְכִסִּינוּ אֶת דָּמוֹ
KJ: And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is itif we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?
BN: And Yehudah said to his brothers, "What profit is there in slaying our brother and concealing his blood?
But this is precisely what Re'u-Ven said previously, and they agreed; that is why he is down there in the pit. Do we, yet again, have two versions of the same story? And has Yehudah been given the role for political reasons later on? Or does the answer lie in the word "profit"? If we sell him to the Yishma-Elim, they can traffick him to Mitsrayim and sell him on, and we can make a few shekels on commission. The chocolate industry in Ivory Coast works in much the same way today.
In truth, that is not really why he is down there in the pit anyway. He is there as a foreshadowing of the pit in which he will be held when he is framed in Mitsrayim (Egypt) by the disappointed wife of Poti-Phera; which is itself just a literary device to get him down to where he needs to be mythologically: in the Underworld, so that he can spend his metaphorical three days of death down there, and undertake his version of the "eucharist" with the chief butler (wine) and the head baker (bread), and then be "resurrected", and take his place at the right hand of the ruler of his universe - the Pharaoh in this case. (I am saying all this now to demonstrate how foreshadowing works - you are now ready for all this when we reach those scenes).
37:27 LECHU VE NIMKERENU LA YISHME-ELIM VE YADENU AL TEHI VO KI ACHIYNU VESARENU HU VA YISHME'U ECHAV
לְכוּ וְנִמְכְּרֶנּוּ לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים וְיָדֵנוּ אַל תְּהִי בוֹ כִּי אָחִינוּ בְשָׂרֵנוּ הוּא וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶחָיו
KJ: Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.
BN: "Come, let us sell him to the Yishma-Elim, and let our hand not be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh." And his brothers listened to him.
Yehudah the relatively good son, almost acknowledging responsibility in full - alas he only gets as far as not killing the boy. Note the pun on Yishma and Yishme-Elim. But also note that they missed their opportunity with the passing Yishma-Elim, and had to wait for the next caravan to pass by, which will be Midyanim. (Or yet again there are two versions badly syncretised.)
37:28 VA YA'AVRU ANASHIM MIDYANIM SOCHARIM VA YIMSHECHU VA YA'ALU ET YOSEPH MIN HA BOR VA YIMKERU ET YOSEPH LA YISHME-ELIM BE ESRIM KASEPH VA YAVIY'U ET YOSEPH MITSRAYEMAH
וַיַּעַבְרוּ אֲנָשִׁים מִדְיָנִים סֹחֲרִים וַיִּמְשְׁכוּ וַיַּעֲלוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף מִן הַבּוֹר וַיִּמְכְּרוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים בְּעֶשְׂרִים כָּסֶף וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף מִצְרָיְמָה
KJ: Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.
BN: Then some Midyanim, merchantmen, passed by, and they tugged and dragged Yoseph out of the pit, and sold Yoseph to the Yishma-Elim for twenty shekels of silver. And they brought Yoseph to Mitsrayim.
MIDYANIM (מדינים): the Midyanim are a trifle obscure here - are the Yishma-Elites themselves Midyanim, and the word Midyanim being used generically, the way we might say "Arabs" today, and mean any group or tribe or nation from Bahrain to Morocco? Or are two stories yet again being momentarily confused? Patai holds that the Genesist confused two manuscripts; an Ephrayimite (northern kingdom) document from before the destruction of Yisra-El, and a Yehudan (southern kingdom) one from after the exile: since he doesn't have those documents physically to demonstrate the hypothesis with, it can only be regarded as speculation: the Ephrayimite has him sold to Midyan with Re'u-Ven as his protector; the yehudan version sells him to Yishma-Elim, with Yehudah as his protector. A logical enough theory, despite its unproveability.
However we explain it, there is no question that the sentence is odd. As it stands, we can't really tell whether it's the brothers or the Midyanites who pull him from the pit, and whether the brothers (or indeed the Midyanites) then sell him on to the Yishma-Elites, or vice versa, or neither. And why does it need these Midyanites in the story anyway, if it was the Yishma-Elites have bought him and take him to Mitsrayim (Egypt)? Ah, but now look at verse 36, where it turns out that it was the Midyanites who took him to Egypt and sold him there. So maybe it was the Yishma-Elites who took him out of the pit, and sold him back to his brothers, who created a hedge fund, and took out insurance against the possibility of slave-in-Egypt sales not being so lucrative this week, and then they sold him on to the Midyanites...
37:29 VA YASHAV RE'U-VEN EL HA BOR VE HINEH EYN YOSEPH BA BOR VA YIKRA ET BEGADAV
וַיָּשָׁב רְאוּבֵן אֶל הַבּוֹר וְהִנֵּה אֵין יוֹסֵף בַּבּוֹר וַיִּקְרַע אֶת בְּגָדָיו
KJ: And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes.
BN: Then Re'u-Ven came back, going by way of the pit; and behold, Yoseph was not in the pit; and he tore the edges of his garments.
Where was he then in verses 25 -29? The logic of the tale simply falls apart here. Or could it be that the Midyanites, or perhaps the Yishma-Elites, saw Yoseph in the pit, and stole up without the brothers noticing, and took him... but of course, if that had happened, then the brothers could simply go home and tell dad that his favourite son has been kidnapped or abducted, and not mention that he was ever in a pit, and not need to go through the whole pantomime of the goat and the blood that is about to follow. And we are told, unequivocally and unashamedly, that the all-knowing and all-wise Jewish God wrote this story himself, in exactly the muddled, confused, poorly edited and ultimately unintelligible form that we have it here. Amen.
VA YIKRA ET BEGADAV: The traditional response in Judaism, when one hears of a family death (click here). The inference is that he assumes they have ignored his advice during his absence. and killed the boy.
37:30 VA YASHAV EL ECHAV VA YOMAR HA YELED EYNENU VA ANI ANAH ANI VA
וַיָּשָׁב אֶל אֶחָיו וַיֹּאמַר הַיֶּלֶד אֵינֶנּוּ וַאֲנִי אָנָה אֲנִי בָא
KJ: And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?
BN: And he went back to his brothers and said, "The boy isn't there; and as for me, where shall I go?"
Because he is the eldest, and therefore bears the responsibility? Not the inheritance, just the responsibility. He will make exactly the same assumption with respect of Bin-Yamin later on.
What a stunning piece of word-play: Ayneynu, va ani - anah ani va? The English simply cannot render it.
37:31 VA YIK'CHU ET KETONET YOSEPH VA YISHCHATU SE'IR IZIM VA YITBELU ET HA KUTONET BA DAM
וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת כְּתֹנֶת יוֹסֵף וַיִּשְׁחֲטוּ שְׂעִיר עִזִּים וַיִּטְבְּלוּ אֶת הַכֻּתֹּנֶת בַּדָּם
KJ: And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;
BN: And they took Yoseph's coat, and killed a he-goat, and dipped the coat in the blood.
So they are goatherds rather than shepherds? No, they are both, and as we have seen before, sheep and goats were not that easily distinguishable in Biblical times, and generally both were flocked together; a great deal of hybridisation and husbandry has gone on down the centuries to create the creatures that we know today, though they were always two different species, with different chromosomes etc. Click here for a fuller scientific explanation.
SE'IR (שעיר): Extraordinary that the irony of this action has been so far ignored by the commentators. They dip Yoseph's coat in goat's blood - the very word used is Se'ir (שעיר); exactly as Rivkah (metaphorically speaking) dipped Ya'akov's clothes in goat's blood when he went to steal Esav's blessing - the pun on Se'ir is at Genesis 27:11, the dressing in Esav's garments at 27:15. Esav is Edom, and the founding father of Edom was named Se'ir the Chorite; and Esav married Yishma-Elites, to whom Yoseph may have just been sold (if they were Midyanites, these were Mosheh's matrilocal family, so the mythological effect is identical). Perhaps the brothers don't know their father's full story, but what a poignant moment, when they bring the coat home, and Ya'akov must think the wheel of his own wickedness has come full circle.
37:32 VA YESHALCHU ET KETONET HA PASIM VA YAVIY'U EL AVIYHEM VA YOMRU ZOT MATSA'NU HA KER NA HA KETONET BINCHA HI IM LO
וַיְשַׁלְּחוּ אֶת כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶל אֲבִיהֶם וַיֹּאמְרוּ זֹאת מָצָאנוּ הַכֶּר נָא הַכְּתֹנֶת בִּנְךָ הִוא אִם לֹא
KJ: And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.
BN: And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father, and said, "We found this. Know now whether it's your son's coat or not."
VA YESHALCHU...VA YAVI'U: "And they sent...and they brought..." One or the other, but surely not both.
"Your son's coat": they are only half-brothers to him, and through the father not the mother, so in a sense they are not even as much as that. But "your son" also distances them from the events, psychologically and emotionally. Very cruel to their dad nonetheless.
37:33 VA YAKIYRAH VA YOMER KETONET BENI CHAYAH RA'AH ACHALAT'HU TAROPH TORAPH YOSEPH
וַיַּכִּירָהּ וַיֹּאמֶר כְּתֹנֶת בְּנִי חַיָּה רָעָה אֲכָלָתְהוּ טָרֹף טֹרַף יוֹסֵף
KJ: And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
BN: And he recognised it, and said, "It's my son's coat; some wild animal has devoured him; Yoseph is without doubt torn in pieces."
Echoes of the Adonis-Osiris-etc legend perhaps, torn to pieces by a wild boar, the eighteen parts of his body scattered in the eighteen holy places. And of course he was wearing his priestly garments at the time. The key difference is that one brother-killer turns into ten. And that this father does recognise his own son by his clothing.
Why the use of the highly emotive word "evil" in the King James? Would "wild" not have done?
We have witnessed a great deal of wickedness already in this book; but none on quite this scale; and even putting it in the context of the bad things that Ya'akov has done in his life, he doesn't deserve this.
TAROPH TORAPH: See my notes to Genesis 31:34 and 31:39.
37:34 VA YIKRA YA'AKOV SIMLOTAV VA YASEM SAK BE MATNAV VA YIT'ABEL AL BENO YAMIM RABIM
וַיִּקְרַע יַעֲקֹב שִׂמְלֹתָיו וַיָּשֶׂם שַׂק בְּמָתְנָיו וַיִּתְאַבֵּל עַל בְּנוֹ יָמִים רַבִּים
KJ: And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
BN: And Ya'akov rent his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
Tearing his clothes, as Re'u-Ven did in verse 29, and as Yoseph's have just been torn; this traditional mode of mourning is called Keri'a (קריע) and would be well worth a paragraph explaining against the laws of mourning that we now have. Do they derive from this passage? Click here.
Note that he is called Ya'akov again, not Yisra-El.
YIT'ABEL: From the root EVEL, which will recur when Ya'akov himself is taken for burial, in Genesis 50:11 - to Evel Mitsrayim (though in fact there is some dispute over the name, which may in fact be AVEL Mitsrayim, "the meadow of Egypt").
SAK: The source of the English word sackcloth, which really ought to be written Sak-cloth, without that confusing "c" in the first part - the reason why most people, incorrectly, think it means clothes made out of the same material from which sacks are made. It doesn't. It means "mourning garments", and they can be of any material you please, even your very best clothes, provided you have made the approapriate tear - see my link at verse 29.
YAMIM RABIM (ימים רבים): at what point did the 7-day and the 30-day rules come in? Genesis 50:3 has them mourning for 40 and then 70 days - or possibly 40 and then 30, making 70 in total - and describes this as the tradition in Mitsrayim. When they reach Evel Mitsrayim they will keep the shiv'a - 7 days.
37:35 VA YAKUMU CHOL BANAV VE CHOL BENOTAV LENACHAMO VA YEMA'EN LEHITNACHEM VA YOMER KI ERED EL BENI AVEL SHE'OLAH VA YEVCH OTO AVIV
וַיָּקֻמוּ כָל בָּנָיו וְכָל בְּנֹתָיו לְנַחֲמוֹ וַיְמָאֵן לְהִתְנַחֵם וַיֹּאמֶר כִּי אֵרֵד אֶל בְּנִי אָבֵל שְׁאֹלָה וַיֵּבְךְּ אֹתוֹ אָבִיו
KJ: And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
BN: And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, "No, but I will go down to the grave to my son in mourning." And his father wept for him.
Daughters! Plural! Of Ya'akov! This is the second time that there has been a suggestion of other daughters beside Dinah? Or are daughters-in-law and grandchildren intended?
SHE'OLAH (שאלה): surprising to find this so early; the abode of the dead.
37:36 VE HA MEDANIM MACHRU OTO EL MITSRAYIM LE POTI-PHAR SERIM PAROH SAR HA TABACHIM
וְהַמְּדָנִים מָכְרוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל מִצְרָיִם לְפוֹטִיפַר סְרִיס פַּרְעֹה שַׂר הַטַּבָּחִים
KJ: And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.
BN: And the Medanim sold him into Mitsrayim, to Poti-Phar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard.
MEDANIM (מדנים): Is that right? Have the Midyanim suddenly changed into the Medanim? Has the Masoretic editor simply omitted a Yud? Do we have yet another version, yet another text, being synthesised into this one? Check other Yehudit texts than the Sar Shalom, the Mechon-Mamre, the Sefaria, the ORT... no, they all have Medanim... the Hertz Chumash too (but see Hertz's footnote if you have a paper copy - it isn't available online); are these the same people as Mosheh's in-laws? Check their lineage as well... and anyway, was it not Yishma-Elites to whom the brothers, or possibly the Midyanites, sold him in verse 28?
EL MITSRAYIM: The concept is a little strange. That they sold him "BA MITSRAYIM - in Egypt" would not be worrisome, but this says "EL = into". The inference is that he wasn't just sold in any slave market, but specifically to Pharaoh.
POTI-PHAR (פוטיפר): literally "the gift of Ra" according to Hertz, but this is either a) patently wrong, as the name of Ra is not present in the word; b) quite correct, for the following reason... that we recognise that the Poti-Phar referred to here as captain of the guard (but see my note below) at Yoseph's prison is precisely the same man later referred to as Poti-Phera (פוטי פרע), the High Priest of On (Greek Heliopolis), the religious capital of Mitsrayim under Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), the same man whose daughter Yoseph married, and whom he served in the role of junior priest before his elevation to the high priesthood and viziership in Poti-Phera's place. Grammatically the second version, with the final Ayin on Phera that is absent on Phar, is the more correct. Phera (פרע) is in fact the genitive form of Pharaoh (פרעה); the meaning of Poti (פוטי) in ancient Egyptian is less clear, though the western part of Lower Egypt - the area we now think of as Libya - was for many millennia known as Phut (פוט), or possibly Put, so it may well mean "lower", which makes sense in the context. Livy however believed Phut to be Mauretania (HN v1). The name occurs in Genesis 10:6, Jeremiah 46:9, Ezekiel 27:10 and 38:5 and in Nachum 3:9. The Septuagint invariably translates Phut as Libya, as does the Latin Vulgate.
SERIM (סרים): or SERIS (סריס)? It is necessary to go back and check this against the earliest texts. There are variations in all modern Yehudit versions of the text. Most prefer SERIM (סרים), despite the fact that it is clearly ungrammatical, and both 39:1 and 40:2 et al make it quite clear that SERIS is intended. Translations invariably make Poti-Phar an "officer", and explain in footnotes that there is an erroneous pluralisation. But Sar (סר) with a Samech (ס) does not mean "officer", rather Sar (שר) with a Seen (ש) does, as we discover just two words later when he is called Sar Ha Tabachim (שר הטבחים), for which even worse solecism see the following note. SERIS (סריס), on the other hand, having a final Samech (ס) and not a final Mem (ם) would root in the unused Yehudit verb - unused for obvious reasons - SARAS (סרס) = "to castrate". Seris thus being "a eunuch". We know from Egyptian records that all court and religious officials in ancient Egypt were eunuchs, as indeed - and this is the key point - Yoseph would himself have had to be in order to take the position that he obtained later. At what point though was he castrated? Before or after he "fathers" Ephrayim and Menasheh? The latter is feasible if they were not his natural sons, but "adopted" in the way the Roman emperors adopted their chosen successor? Poti-Phar would certainly have been a eunuch (which may explain why his wife went boy-chasing the way she did), as part of his priestly situation, corroborating the previous remark that he is the same man as the later Poti-Phera of On. But:-
SAR HA TABACHIM (סר הטבחים): See the jail stories later (39:1 et al), where it is once again the Sar Ha Tabachim into whose charge Yoseph is placed. Are there yet again two versions? TABACH (טבח) = "sacrificer" as we shall see when Mosheh builds his altars later on; it was also used to mean "executioner", in the sense of public hangman, which may be why Hertz translates the word here as "chief of the executioners"; but he is almost unique in getting even this close. The role that Poti-Phar would have had - public hangman or sacrificial high priest – has already been answered above. The High Priest does not usually man the gallows or the guillotine; the most likely explanation is that an originally Egyptian tale entered the folk-lore of the Beney Yisra-El, adapted at different times and in variant ways to fit the culture of the tellers and listeners, with Yoseph (originally Osher/Osiris) serving his initiation period as a priest with the High Priest, then descending into the Underworld (the pit with his brothers, the prison here), undertaking the Eucharist (in prison now, but also with the Kiddush cup later), delivering oracles (to his brothers, to the butler and baker, to the Pharaoh) from the Underworld, and then ascending to sit at the right hand of the worldly sovereign.
All of which is the best example of "critical enquiry" you will find; and why this more than any other? Because the book was supposedly written at the time of Mosheh, by YHVH, or possibly by Elohim – so you would expect it to be precise and correct on matters pertaining to contemporary Egyptian life; where it might get things wrong about social customs in earlier Padan Aram or liturgical practices in previous Babylonia. And yet here it is, in a complete mess about the most basic elements of Egyptian life: the equivalent of a modern American thinking that the "Secretary of State" was the person who answered the telephone in the White House.
End of chapter 37; pey break.
The general story that follows, his youthful beauty, attempted murder, resurrection from the pit (for a second time!) and eventual provision of bread to the starving, links him with Osher (Osiris) and as we shall see the butler and the baker will become eucharistic, less themselves than the anthropomorphisation of the wine and bread, the Hebrew Kiddush, whose cup Yoseph will arrange for Bin-Yamin to "steal". Much for Christians to ponder - including his three days in the pit at the beginning, and his time in the underworld later with the purveyors of the Eucharist, before being "resurrected" from Death Row and sitting literally on the right hand of Pharaoh.
However, before we resume, there is an immense digression:-
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