Vayeshev
Genesis 37:1-40:23
Numbers 7:30-41
Zechariah 2:14-4:7
“Reuven returned to the pit, and look, Joseph is not in the pit, and he tore his clothes. And he returned to his brothers and he said, `The boy is not there, and I, where shall I go?'” (Gen. 37:29).
Reuven feels astonished, shocked, appalled, that the boy is not in the pit where his brothers have thrown him. What could have happened to Joseph? As eldest brother, Reuven bears the responsibility of returning Joseph to their father, but now Reuven does not even know where to find Joseph, or what has happened to him, and so now Reuven realizes, in utter despair, that he cannot fulfill his responsibility.
But wait a second. Why should Reuven expect to find Joseph in the pit? Judah has just told the brothers to sell Joseph as a slave to a passing caravan, and the brothers, apparently, have given their assent (Gen. 37:27). If the brothers have just sold Joseph into slavery a few minutes ago, Reuven ought to remember the transaction, and he ought to expect to find the pit empty. He has no reason to feel surprised. And yet the text clearly describes his surprise.
Maybe Reuven has missed the meal where his brothers decided to sell Joseph. After all, when a party of shepherds sits down to eat, at least one of them has to stay with the sheep. Or maybe Reuven has gone off on some other errand. So while all the other brothers know about the sale of Joseph, Reuven has missed the key discussion and that explains his surprise. This, however, seems a weak answer, since the biblical text does not mention Reuven’s absence at the decisive dinner.
Apparently a difficult problem. Among the modern commentators on Genesis, I have found an extremely careful reader who uncharacteristically gives up at this point, and decides that Reuven’s absence belongs to a different version of the story, a version that has somehow illogically crept into our text. Eight hundred years ago in France, though, there lived a scholar who did know how to answer to this question.
Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam, grandson of the great commentator Rashi and a great biblical commentator in his own right, loved to stick close to the meaning of the words of the biblical text. And look what it says here:
The brothers threw Joseph into a pit (verse 24), and then they sat down to eat (verse 25). During their meal, they noticed an approaching caravan, which emboldened Judah to argue for selling Joseph into slavery (verses 27-28). Meanwhile, Midianite merchants passed by, “and they pulled him, and they took Joseph up out of the pit, and they sold Joseph to Ishmaelites for twenty weights of silver, and they brought Joseph into Egypt” (verse 28).
Rashbam says that they, the Midianites, took Joseph out of the pit, and they, the Midianites, sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites. The Midianites sold Joseph. Joseph’s brothers discussed selling him; they may even have decided to sell him. But while they were deliberating, the Midianites did sell him.
On grammatical grounds, Rashbam seems completely correct. “The Midianites” look like the only possible subject of the verb “and they sold”; Joseph’s brothers do not even appear in the sentence. Rashbam envisions Joseph’s brothers sitting down to eat (verse 25) a little distance away from the pit, so as not to have their meal so near to their distressed victim. Perhaps they do not want to hear his cries. Perhaps for this reason, says Rashbam, they do not even notice when the Midianites take Joseph away.
Now we can see why Reuven feels astonished when he cannot find the boy.
Many years later, when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, he does say, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold” (Gen. 45:4), but then, when the Midianites pulled Joseph out of the pit, he had no way of knowing whether or not they had paid for him.
Everyone knows that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery — everyone except Rashbam.