Miketz
Genesis 41:1-44:17
Numbers 7:30-41
I Kings 3:15-4:1
Miketz, a Torah portion filled with drama and suspense, offers a profound message about regret, forgiveness and repentance.
When famine struck the land of Canaan, Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt to purchase provisions. Although they had no idea who this thoroughly Egyptianized Joseph was, he recognized them immediately. Joseph recalled the mockery his brothers had made of the dreams of his youth, and even his father’s annoyance at his imperious demeanor.
Joseph understood the irony of his dreams of mastery over the members of his family and painfully recalled how, years before, they held him down, bound his hands and feet with rope, and sold him to passing strangers in order to be rid of him — forever. He remembered how unmoved they were by his pleas and tears. Now, after waiting all these years for vengeance, he could plot his retribution.
Joseph considered how best to play his advantage and began to question his brothers in an accusatory tone: “Where did you come from? What do you want? How do I not know that you are not spies?”
Casting jittery glances at one another, Joseph’s brothers squirmed and tried to calm this lusty, arrogant, pretentious master: “Sire, truly we have come only to procure food.”
Joseph coerced his brothers into returning home and then journeying back to Egypt with Benjamin, now their father’s favorite, who had been left behind. The brothers were convinced that this misfortune was repayment for what they had done to Joseph so many years before. Reuven reminded them: “Did I not warn you back then, `Do no wrong to the boy?’ Now his blood comes back to haunt us.”
Joseph could not bear to hear all of this. He took leave for a few moments when he could not hold back his tears, and when his eyes were once again dry, he returned to continue the intrigue.
Once the brothers returned home, Jacob berated them: “Why did you tell the man that you had another brother?” They replied that the man kept asking about their father and if they had another brother, so they answered truthfully. This line of questioning seemed more than a curious coincidence, but no one knew what to make of it. As they departed from Jacob, Judah swore that he would protect Benjamin with his life.
Upon their return to Egypt, Joseph welcomed his brothers with a feast. As Joseph looked at Benjamin, again he took hasty leave when he could not hold back his tears.
As Joseph arranged for them to take more grain, he hid his personal gold goblet in Benjamin’s sack. After the brothers left, Pharaoh’s troops overtook them, searched their sacks, and found the gold treasure in Benjamin’s possession. Joseph ordered the boy to become his personal slave as punishment for the theft.
The brothers recalled when they cavalierly sold Joseph into slavery without thought of what effect their cruelty would have upon their father or Joseph. Only now, decades later, when faced with the loss of a second brother, also their father’s favorite, did they act differently. Judah pleaded with Joseph to be allowed to take Benjamin’s place.
Finally, Joseph, no longer able to control himself, began to weep loudly. Before his dumbfounded brothers, he blurted out: “I am Joseph.”
Why the elaborate deception, if in the end Joseph was going to reveal himself to his brothers? Ramban, the medieval commentator, provides sensitive insight into this puzzle. He asked:
What constitutes complete repentance? He who is confronted by an identical occurrence in which he previously transgressed, when (at another time) it is within his power to repeat the same wrongdoing, nevertheless restrains himself and does not succumb to temptation because of a wish to repent and not out of fear of authority…this is true penitence (Code, Teshuva 2, 1 on Yoma 86b).
Why, then, does Joseph produce an elaborate drama of intrigue? He maneuvered his brothers into once again having the opportunity to abandon their father’s favorite child. When Judah offered himself as a slave in place of Benjamin, it was clear that the brothers would never again be partners to a crime like the previous one. Only when it was apparent that the brothers regretted and repented their shameful deed, did Joseph reveal his true identity.