Torah Posting: ויגש
We last left the sons of Yisra’el at a cliffhanger. Yosef has sent his brothers back to their father with the food they came to request during this historic famine, but he has demanded that the youngest — his one full brother, Binyamin — stay with him as a bondsman in punishment for a “crime” Yosef staged: stealing his shiny cup. All last parashah, Yosef is holding back emotions that would blow his cover and reveal to his brothers that not only is he alive, he is governor of Egypt. All this trickery and maneuvering is clearly to set up some kind of dramatic outcome, but what is it? Does Yosef intend to teach his brothers a lesson for what they did to him?
Before they go, Yehudah approaches Yosef privately. Yosef recounts the whole situation to him and why it feels so precarious. Binyamin is so beloved of our father, you see, governor, because his brother is dead. Yehudah worries that if they return to their father without Binyamin, the old man will die of grief, and it will be his sons’ fault for overriding his wishes not to let Binyamin go down to Mitzrayim. Yehudah asks to stay instead of Binyamin, so this doesn’t happen.
This display is too much for Yosef. He bursts into tears in front of them. Then he sends out all the Egyptian servants and officials and whatnot and reveals himself to his brothers, weeping so loudly that the Mitzrim and the house of Pharaoh hear him anyway. “אני יוסף. העוד אוי חי” he says. “I am Yosef. Does my father still live?”
His brothers are too terrified to speak.
He draws them closer to explain. Yes, I am Yosef, your brother, whom you sold into slavery here. You don’t have to feel guilty or angry, for God sent me here for this exact purpose, to keep our family alive in this horrible famine. It was not you who sent me here. It was God.
Yosef makes a bold proposal. There are five years of famine left. Go back up to our father’s land and bring everyone — including the patriarch — down here to Mitzrayim. Yosef will settle them all in the land of Goshen, and he will provide for them with the full power of the state.
Yosef asks them to tell their father how glorious and powerful he has become, hoping Ya’akov will be proud of him and come down at once.
They kiss, and they weep, and they talk and catch up.
When word reaches Pharaoh that Yosef’s brothers have come, it pleases him. Pharaoh provisions Yosef’s brothers for the whole journey to Kena’an and back, promising them the fat of the land when they return.
His brothers depart with enormous gifts of goods and supplies (with a little extra for Binyamin). When they reach their father and tell him everything, he falls faint, but when he sees the riches they have brought with them, it revives him. “ויאמר ישראל רב עוד–יוסף בני חי אלכה ואראנו בטרם אמות” — “It is enough. Yosef, my son, lives. Let’s go and see him before I die.”
So they go down to Mitzrayim. Yisra’el makes sacrifices to the God of his father, Yitzhaq, on the way, and God speaks to him, calling him Ya’akov again. And God tells Ya’akov not to fear, to go down to Mitzrayim, for God will make a great nation of him there. “I will go down with you to Mitzrayim,” God says, “and I will also surely bring you up again, and Yosef will close your eyes for you when you die.”
So the whole tribe — willingly and with great bounty — goes down to Egypt. The text makes a great accounting of all their names, ending with Yosef’s two sons who were born in Mitzrayim. There are 70 in all.
Yosef decides to mount a chariot to go to Goshen to meet his father, an impressive display. Yisra’el says he is ready to die right then and there, but that is not Yosef’s vision. Yosef wants to present his family to Pharaoh himself.
He doesn’t bring all his brothers, just some of them. Pharaoh makes polite conversation. “What do you do?” “We’re shepherds, Your Majesty.” The brothers formally request permission to settle in Goshen, and Pharaoh grants it and requests that their men tend to the royal cattle as well.
Then Yosef brings Ya’akov, his father, before Pharaoh, and Ya’akov gives Pharaoh a blessing. “How old are you?” Pharaoh asks him. Ya’akov answers in the kvetchiest way possible, “I’m 130, my life has been pretty terrible, really, and my forefathers lived far grander lives than I have.”
This is such an important moment to me. Wherever the idea came to the West from that the “Biblical” heroes are pure, excellent, humble, enlightened beings of a caliber we could never attain but to which we should aspire anyway, it was not from the Bible. This is Yisra’el himself, the namesake forefather of the nation whose creation story we are reading, and what does he do when brought before the most powerful man in the world? He kvetches!
The Torah is the story of my family. This is how I know it’s the true story.
Ya’akov gives Pharaoh another blessing and departs. The family settles in Goshen, and Yosef provides richly for them as Pharaoh commanded. As they do so, the text names the land in the name of Pharoah — “ערץ רעמסס,” the land of Ramses — for the first time, making clear whose property it is upon which the children of Yisra’el are tenants.
The famine gets so bad the entire economy collapses, and this is Yosef’s problem to solve, of course. He collects all the money in the land for Pharaoh to pay to feed the people, and when that runs out, he takes their cattle instead, and then their flocks, and then their herds, and then their asses. The next year, they have nothing left to give, so they sell themselves and their land into Pharaoh’s holdings, so that they will not starve. Only the priests, who receive their portion from Pharaoh already, get to keep their holdings.
Yosef addresses the people, telling them what their (rather onerous) taxes shall be now that they belong to Pharaoh: one fifth of their produce. And the people are grateful; he saved their lives. And so the people of Yisra’el dwelt in the land of Goshen and multiplied exceedingly, thanks to the economic and political mastery of Governor Yosef.
There’s only one catch — Pharaoh owns them now — but it’ll be fine, right? He’s a nice guy.
🪙
