The Genesis of Justice (25 page)

that she grabbed him by his garment saying:

Lie with me!

But he left his garment in her hand and fled, escaping outside.

Now it was, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside
, …

Now she kept his garment beside her, until his lord came back to the house
.

Then she spoke to him according to these words, saying:

There came to me the Hebrew servant whom you brought to us, to play around with me;

but it was, when I lifted up my voice and called out
,

that he left his garment beside me and fled outside
.

Now it was, when his lord heard his wife’s words which she spoke to him
,

saying: According to these words, your servant did to me!—

that his anger flared up;

Yosef’s lord took him and put him in the dungeon house, in the place where the king’s prisoners are imprisoned
.

G
ENESIS
39:7-20

[Joseph was made second in command to Pharaoh, after he was taken from prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. In the meantime,
Jacob sent his children to Egypt in quest of food.]

Now [Joseph] commanded the steward of his house, saying:

Fill the men’s packs with food, as much as they are able to carry
,

and put each man’s silver in the mouth of his pack
.

And my goblet, the silver goblet, put in the mouth of the youngest’s pack, along with the silver for his rations
.

He did according to Yosef’s word which he had spoken.

At the light of daybreak, the men were sent off, they and their donkeys;

they were just outside the city—they had not yet gone far—when Yosef said to the steward of his house:

Up, pursue the men.…

[A]nd the goblet was found in Binyamin’s pack!

They rent their clothes
,

each man loaded up his donkey, and they returned to the city
.

Yehuda and his brothers came into Yosef’s house

he was still there—

and flung themselves down before him to the ground
.

Yosef said to them:

What kind of deed is this that you have done!
…

So now
,

pray let your servant [Yehuda] stay instead of the lad, as servant to my lord
,

but let the lad go up with his brothers!

For how can I go up to my father, when the lad is not with me?

Then would I see the ill-fortune that would come upon my father!

G
ENESIS
44:1-34

Yosef could no longer restrain himself in the presence of all who were stationed around him, …

Then Yosef said to his brothers; I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?

But his brothers were not able to answer him,

for they were confounded in his presence.

Yosef said to his brothers:

Pray come close to me!

They came close.

He said:

I am Yosef your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.

But now, do not be pained
,

and do not let upset be in your eyes that you sold me here!

For it was to save life that God sent me on before you
.

G
ENESIS
45:1-5

J
oseph is best known as the interpreter of dreams and the economic genius—the Alan Greenspan—who saved Egypt from famine and
reunited his family in Egypt. But Joseph is also a victim who overcomes his victimization and turns it into triumph. Most
of Genesis’s other victims—Abel, Sarah, Lot, Isaac, Dina, Shechem—are quickly forgotten or relegated to a passive role in
the narrative. Joseph, on the other hand, emerges triumphant, gets back at his treacherous brothers, and emerges as the family
hero. (Tamar, as well, fits into the category of a victim who overcomes.)

The story of Joseph, like that of his father, is partly about symmetrical justice—payback. Joseph is sold into bondange by
his own jealous brothers—a slight improvement over the fratricide of Cain—and his father is deceived into thinking that his
favorite son has been torn apart by a wild beast. The means of deception is a garment smeared with animal blood. Then Joseph
is framed for a crime he did not commit by the woman—Potiphar’s wife—who sought to seduce him into adultery. She also uses
physical evidence against him (in much the same way Iago plants evidence against Desdemona in Shakespeare’s
Othello
) and falsely accuses him of attempted rape.
¹
Joseph remains silent and is placed in prison. A midrash says that Potiphar knew Joseph was innocent but had to find him
guilty in order to spare his children the stigma of being born to a harlot. Joseph’s punishment—imprisonment instead of death—is
given as proof of this interpretation.
²
Another imaginative midrash has Potiphar buying Joseph “for a lewd purpose, but the angel Gabriel mutilated him in such manner
that he could not accomplish it.”
³
In any event, Joseph ends up in prison, where his dream interpretations—really prophecies—bring him to the attention of Pharaoh.
Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams to predict seven years of good harvests followed by seven years of famine. He proposes
a solution to the coming crisis and is appointed overseer of all of Egypt. A midrash declares that “God never allows the pious
to languish in distress longer than three days!”
⁴
If only that were so.

Years later, when his starving brothers come to Joseph for food, the overseer behaves a bit as his father, Jacob, had done
when his starving brother, Esau, begged for porridge. Joseph decides to play games with his brothers as part of a grand retributive
scheme. He gets them to bring their youngest brother, Benjamin—who had remained at home with their father—to Egypt, promising
that no harm will come to the lad. When Benjamin is brought to him, Joseph arranges to frame his younger brother for stealing.
He plants a goblet in Benjamin’s pack, in much the same way Potiphar’s wife misused physical evidence against him. A midrash
relates Joseph’s hiding the goblet to his mother’s secreting her father’s idols and to his brothers’ selling of him:

He searched all the sacks, and in order not to excite the suspicion that he knew where the cup was, he began at Reuben, the
eldest, and left off at Benjamin, the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. In a rage, his brethren shouted
at Benjamin, “Oh thou thief and son of a thief! Thy mother brought shame upon our father by her thievery, and now thou bringest
shame upon us.” But he replied, “Is this matter as evil as the brethren that sold their own brother into slavery?”
⁵

Joseph’s macabre joke works; the brothers—even the innocent Benjamin—are terrified for their lives. Only then does Joseph
pull back the curtain and reveal himself as their missing brother. A dramatic midrash says that “Joseph bared his body” to
show that he was circumcised.
⁶
Whatever means he used to prove who he was, the brothers are relieved to learn that they had been the victim of nothing more
than a retaliatory prank. From then on, the story progresses to a happy ending, as Jacob is brought to Egypt for a reunion
with his long-lost son.

Jacob can now die relatively happy, but not before he blesses his children and grandchildren. Jacob saves his greatest blessing
for Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, commanding his progeny to bless all of Israel in the following way: “May God
make you like Ephrayim and Menashe.” Why was this special blessing saved for the children of a marriage between an Israelite
and the daughter of an Egyptian priest? Was Jacob a social climber who favored Ephraim and Manasseh because they had more
material wealth and higher civil status than any of his other grandchildren? Did Jacob grant this favor to children close
to the king in order to secure Pharaoh’s protection of his entire family? Surely Joseph’s children were not more Jewish; indeed,
by current Jewish halakah they were not Jews at all, since their mother was an idol worshiper and they were brought up as
part of the Egyptian nobility.

Some of the defense lawyers argue that their mother must have converted to her husband’s faith and brought up the children
pursuant to the covenants God had made with Abraham and Jacob. But there is little textual evidence to support this theory
or to suggest that even Joseph lived in Egypt as an Israelite. Indeed, the very last words of the Book of Genesis describe
how Joseph was buried, not as an Israelite (in a simple grave with only a shroud), but as an Egyptian (embalmed and placed
in an ark). His father, Jacob, had also been embalmed by physicians,
⁷
but his body was brought back to the burial ground of his ancestors. Joseph’s body, on the other hand, remained in Egypt
until the Israelites made their Exodus, and then his “bones” were taken along by Moses for burial in the Jewish homeland.
Since Joseph had been embalmed, the question arises: What happened to the rest of his body; why were only his bones taken
out of Egypt? Perhaps the symbolic message is that although Joseph died as an Egyptian (embalmed) he was eventually buried
as Jew (unembalmed, with only his bones surviving).
⁸
A midrash criticizes Joseph for embalming his father’s corpse:

Joseph ordered the physicians to embalm the corpse. This he should have refrained from doing, for it was displeasing to God,
who spoke, saying: “Have I not the power to preserve the corpse of this pious man from corruption? Was it not I that spoke
the reassuring words, Fear not the worm, O Jacob, thou dead Israel?” Joseph’s punishment for this useless precaution was that
he was the first of the sons of Jacob to suffer death.
⁹

Perhaps these stories of Jews living among Egyptians—and assimilating some of their ways but not others—are intended to convey
a message about choice. Ephraim and Manasseh, alone among Jacob’s grandchildren, had the choice whether to follow the covenant
of their ancestors or adopt the ways of the foreign nation where they had been born. Jacob’s blessing, “May God make you like
Ephrayim and Manasseh,” was the patriarch’s way of recognizing that Jews throughout history will be presented with similar
choices. Ephraim and Manasseh chose the way of the covenant, as did Abraham and Jacob—despite the availability and material
benefits of other alternatives. It was the act of choosing to be a Jew, rather than merely being born into that heritage,
that Jacob found deserving of special praise. A fantastic midrash tried to make Joseph’s wife a Jew, despite the biblical
text. It claimed that Joseph’s wife was the daughter of his sister, Dina, by the murdered Shechem. “An angel carried the babe
down to Egypt, where Potiphar adopted her as his child, for his wife was barren.” Joseph “became acquainted with her lineage,
and he married her, seeing that she was not an Egyptian, but one connected with the house of Jacob. . . .”
¹⁰
This is an example of a midrash seeking to conform the biblical narrative to later halakic rules, such as the matrilineal
descent of Jewishness.

Jacob and Joseph elected to have their remains removed from Egypt and taken to the Jewish homeland. That decision too is praised
by God. A midrash says that Jacob did not want to be buried in Egypt because he knew that Egypt would be inflicted with plagues,
“and it revolted him to think of his corpse exposed to such uncleanliness.”
¹¹
But then what about Joseph, whose corpse remained in Egypt during the plagues? A midrash, as usual, has a creative answer:
Joseph was buried in a “leaden coffin.”
¹²

Choice is rewarded over status because it entails a thoughtful weighing of options and a renewal of the covenant, which—after
all—is an arrangement of mutual choice and agreement. Jacob’s blessing can be seen, therefore, as a step in the direction
of elevating contract, which is a matter of choice over status, which is beyond the control of the actor.

The themes of deception and false accusation, which recur throughout the Jacob and Joseph narratives, contribute to the development
of justice in the Book of Genesis. Those who are falsely accused remain silent in the face of the accusation, since there
is nothing they can say to clear themselves of guilt based on damning physical evidence. When Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph,
the innocent young Jew does not try to cast the blame on her. When Joseph later falsely accuses Benjamin, the brothers do
not try to defend themselves. Yehuda implores Joseph, “How can we speak? How can we clear ourselves?” Their frustration in
the face of the planted evidence is palpable. They cannot defend themselves without accusing their prosecutor and judge. Finally
Yehuda pleads for mercy and proposes a plea bargain: He will remain a slave in place of his younger brother.

It is ironic that Yehuda (Judah) should emerge not only as the advocate for justice, but also as the volunteer hostage. It
was, after all, the very same Yehuda who had come so close to executing his daughter-in-law Tamar for a sin in which he himself
had participated. Tamar had saved herself by preserving the evidence of Yehudah’s complicity. Yehudah had apparently learned
from Tamar several important lessons—both tactical and moral—about advocacy and justice. The tactical lesson he had learned
was not to confront authority directly. Tamar simply produced the signet and staff, without accusing Yehuda. This led Yehuda
to recognize the injustice of his hastily imposed sentence. Now it is Yehuda who is the victim of an injustice. He does not
accuse Joseph of planting the goblet, though he must have suspected as much. Instead he recognizes Joseph’s unchallenged authority
over him and his brothers—an authority parallel to that which he had exercised over Tamar—and implores Joseph to do the right
thing. Joseph was, of course, going to do the right thing regardless of the nature of his brother’s plea, but not until he
had taught them a lesson about how it feels to be victimized by those more powerful than you.