I. "But We Are Guilty"
And they said one to another: But we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he pleaded before us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuven answered them, saying: Did I not speak to you, saying: Do not sin against the child, and you would not hear? Therefore also his blood is required. (Bereishit 42:21-22)
The Torah tells us in our parasha that Yosef's brothers regret having sold him, and that they see the trouble befalling them from the ruler of Egypt as a punishment for their sin.
This reaction, however, is puzzling. What made the brothers think their predicament was punishment for the sale of Yosef? Are they privy to God's ways? After all, other troubles befell the sons of Yaakov after the sale of Yosef, such as the years of famine. Why then is it precisely here that Yosef's brothers see the hand of God punishing them for selling Yosef? We, the readers of the story, surely know that this is true, that it is Yosef standing there against his brothers. But the brothers, who are yet unaware that the ruler of Egypt is Yosef – how could they know that the hand of God is operating here?!
Several answers can be given to this question.
It is possible that their troubles with the Egyptian ruler, in contrast to the hunger affecting the world at large, were perceived as a personal punishment. Many people came to Egypt to buy grain, but it was only the brothers of Yosef that the ruler took to his house! When ill-treatment is administered in a personal way, it makes more sense to connect it with the personal actions of those affected by it.
It is also possible to connect their attribution of punishment to the sale of Yosef to the preceding, rather obscure, conversation between Yosef and his brothers:
And Yosef remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said to them: You are spies; to see the nakedness of the land you are come. And they said to him: No, my lord, but to buy food are your servants come. We are all one man's sons; we are upright men; your servants and not spies. And he said to them: No, but to see the nakedness of the land you are come. And they said: We your servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not. And Yosef said to them: This is it that I spoke to you, saying: You are spies. Hereby you shall be proved; as Pharaoh lives, you shall not go forth from here, unless your youngest brother come here. (Bereishit 42:9-15)
According to the plain meaning of these verses, what we have here is a dialogue of the deaf. Yosef makes a claim: You are spies, and the brothers deny it ("no, my Lord," "we are upright men," "we are your servants, and not spies"), and they add a detail which at first glance seems to be irrelevant: "We are all one man's sons." Yosef vehemently repeats his claim, and the brothers continue to detail their family lineage. It is not clear why the brothers thought that their family details would convince Yosef of their righteousness, nor why Yosef accused the brothers of spying in the first place.
Midrashim and commentators fill in the gap with details that connect these seemingly distinct topics:
"Yosef's brothers went down" (Bereishit 42:3). The verse should have said: "The children of Israel." It is that initially, they did not treat him with brotherhood, and sold him, but ultimately they had regrets and were saying: "When will we go down to Egypt and return our brother to his father?" When their father told them to descend to Egypt, they all came to a consensus to return him.
Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon said: Yosef, too, knew that his brothers were going down to Egypt to buy food. What did he do? He positioned guards at all the entrances and said to them: "See each one who enters to buy food, and write his name and his father's name." In the evening, they would bring the notes to him. This is what they did. When Yaakov's sons came, each one entered through his own gate, and they wrote their names. In the evening, they brought [Yosef] the notes. This one read "Reuven son of Yaakov," another read "Shimon son of Yaakov," and another "Levi," and likewise, all the gatekeepers, each one brought his own. Immediately, Yosef said: "Seal all the storehouses and keep open one storehouse." He gave their names to the proprietor of the storehouse. He said to him: "See, when these people come to you, apprehend them, and send them before me." Three days passed and they did not come. Immediately, Yosef took seventy mighty men from the king's palace and dispatched them to the marketplace. They went and found them in the marketplace of harlots. What was the nature of their presence in the marketplace of harlots? It is that they said: "Our brother Yosef is fair of form and fair of appearance; perhaps he [was sent to] a tent [of harlotry]." They apprehended them and brought them before Yosef. (Bereishit Rabba 91,6)
Later, the midrash goes on to explain the obscure dialogue between Yosef and his brothers line by line, suggesting that it was their entrance by different gates that seemed suspicious, as well as their presence in a place of harlotry; they try to explain their behavior by sharing details of their family. In this understanding, Yosef's brothers had come from the outset with the goal of finding their brother – and so it is understandable that they would view what was happening to them as a consequence of that sin.
In many cases the midrashim of Chazal, which appear as deviating from the plain meaning of the verses, are based on solid foundations in the simple meaning of the text. In addition to the above-mentioned gap in the conversation, which every reader senses, it seems there is another element here that also suggests the brothers' intentions included finding Yosef. Two interesting points may be noted in the Torah's account of the delegation going down to Egypt to buy food:
Now Yaakov saw that there was corn in Egypt, and Yaakov said to his sons: Why do you look one upon another? And he said: Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt. Get you down there, and buy for us from there; that we may live, and not die. And ten of Yosef's brothers went down to buy corn from Egypt. (Bereishit 42:1-3)
The first point is linguistic: Yaakov turns to "his sons" and asks them to go down to Egypt to buy grain, but when the Torah describes the descent itself, it chooses to call the sons of Yaakov "Yosef's brothers."
The second point refers to a question of reality. Why were all of Yosef's brothers needed to buy the grain? According to the plain meaning of the verses, even Binyamin would have gone too, except that Yaakov held him back – which strengthens the question. Why was it necessary for all the brothers to go down to Egypt, something that seems to be more of a symbolic gesture than a real need? Would it not have been possible, for example, to send some of the brothers and their children?
Many commentators saw in these two points a basis for the idea that Yosef's brothers went down to Egypt to search for him.
Thus Rashi writes:
It does not call them "the sons of Yaakov," thus suggesting that they regretted having sold him and that they had made up their mind to behave towards him in a brotherly manner and to redeem him at whatever price people might fix for them to pay. (Rashi, Bereishit 42:3)
Rashi sees in the term "Yosef's brothers," which is used for the first time in the Torah to describe the brothers' relationship to Yosef, as a symbol of the change that the brothers underwent. From now on, they are not only Yaakov's sons (as they are described, for example, in the story of Dina), but also Yosef's brothers. They have decided to redeem him and bring him home.
Rabbeinu Bachye offers an even more creative explanation:
Or it may be explained: Scripture informs us of their good intention, that ten [brothers] went down to pray on [Yosef's] behalf in a quorum [of ten worshipers], for the minimum number of adult males required to form a holy congregation is ten, as it is stated: "I will be sanctified among the children of Israel" (Vayikra 22:32). (Rabbeinu Bachya, Bereishit 42:3)
When the brothers stand before Yosef, too, they state outright: "We your servants are twelve brothers"; perhaps here too there is an allusion to the purpose of their descent to Egypt, namely, to find Yosef.[1]
Thus, according to this understanding as well, it is clear why the brothers attributed the punishment for looking for Yosef to the act of selling him.
II. Measure for Measure
These perspectives, however, present some difficulty when we examine the order of the verses in our parasha. Looking closely at the verses preceding the brothers' moving confession, we see that Yosef's harsh treatment of the brothers, as the ruler of Egypt who claimed to suspect them of being spies, consists of two stages. In the first step, Yosef puts all his brothers together in the jailhouse:
He placed them into custody for three days. (Bereishit 42:17)
In the second stage, the Egyptian ruler decrees that one brother will remain in prison, and the rest will be released in order to bring Binyamin to Egypt:
If you be upright men, let one of your brothers be bound in your prison-house; but go you, carry corn for the famine of your houses; and bring your youngest brother to me; so shall your words be verified, and you shall not die. And they did so. (Bereishit 42:19-20)
The Torah tells us about the confession of Yosef's brothers only after the second stage. Why? After all, if the brothers' goal from the outset was to search for Yosef, then as soon as their search ran into a problem, they should have seen it as the hand of God punishing them for selling Yosef. This is also the case if we explain that the punishment inflicted upon them as a group was interpreted as a punishment for the sale of Yosef – this interpretation should appear after the first punishment, not only three days later.
The Or Ha-Chaim, in his commentary on these verses, suggests that we can learn a very important spiritual principle from the question we have examined so far. First, the Or Ha-Chaim suggests that the brothers' confession in fact occurred already during the three days of their group imprisonment:
These words were stated when they were put into custody. The reason that Scripture arranges their words at the end is that it did not want to interrupt the words of Yosef. (Or Ha-Chaim, Bereishit 42:21)
According to this understanding, the explanations that we proposed above are indeed satisfactory.
After that, the Or Ha-Chaim goes in a slightly different direction:
But if we say that these words of theirs were stated after they agreed that one would remain in prison and the rest would go in peace, in accordance with the order of the verses, we must explain why the feeling of guilt for what they had done to their brother did not stir in them until then. Perhaps, earlier they did not feel guilty, and they thought that a person has the free choice and will to do evil, and it was not the sin involving Yosef that caused them to be punished, for in their opinion, he was accountable to them, as we explained in its place.[2] This was no longer the case when he said to them: "Let one of your brothers be bound in your jailhouse… And they did so." That is to say, they singled out one of them [to remain in prison]. With this they woke up from thinking that it was Yosef's sin. Just as they had acted cruelly to their brother, so they were undergoing pain in this manner, that they were leaving one of their brothers in the hands of a stranger. I already noted in several places that sin has consequences in its own form and its own image. This is what it says: "You render to every man according to his work" (Tehillim 62:13). So too here, they underwent a painful experience because of the distress they had caused their brother.
This is the meaning of "But we are guilty." That is, had our experience been different, we would not have acknowledged that the punishment befell us because of what we had done to Yosef. But now we are certainly guilty, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he pleaded before us. (Ibid.)
The Or Ha-Chaim reveals a fundamental principle of God's governance of His world: that He chooses a punishment for a person in such a way that it will pain the person at the very point where he sinned. The basis for this idea is found in the verse: "You render to every man according to his work" (Tehillim 62:13).
We find this idea the halakhic world in connection with eidim zomemim, "conspiring witnesses," whose punishment is that which they conspired to inflict upon the person they tried to incriminate: "Then you shall do to him, as he had conspired to do to his brother" (Devarim 19:19). On the spiritual level, we must try to understand why this is so. Why does God choose to punish a person in the area in which he sinned?
The first possibility that comes to mind is the rule of measure for measure. A person who sinned must "pay" for his sin, the most obvious payment being to harm him as he harmed his fellow. This is the plain sense of the verses dealing with one who injured another person:
And if a man will maim his neighbor – as he has done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has maimed a man, so shall it be rendered to him. (Vayikra 24:19-20)
The Tannaim expounded these verses as obligating monetary payments only (see Bava Kama 83b), and nowadays this seems to be clear: What justice is there in harming the person who caused his fellow an injury? It is true that we would be causing him pain and he would suffer the same pain suffered by the injured party, but how would this help the process of repentance?
The Or Ha-Chaim discusses this spiritual principle elsewhere in his commentary, and offers a completely different meaning.
Parashat Bechukotai contains a lengthy description of the curses from which Israel will suffer if they sin and veer from the ways of God. Within this passage are several introductory verses, to each set of curses, and one can see in them a rising scale from the lighter curses to the more severe ones:
And if you walk contrary to Me, and do not want to hearken to Me, I will continue to smite you seven times according to your sins. (Vayikra 26:21)
And if you are not disciplined to Me with these, and you walk contrary to Me, then even I will walk contrary to you, and I will smite you, I too, seven times upon your sins. (vv. 23-24)
And if you will not hearken to Me with this, and you walk contrary to Me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury; and I will chastise you, even I, seven times upon your sins. (vv. 27-28)
Besides the fact that there are seven punishments in each stage of curses, it is evident that there is a hierarchy in the language God uses to describe His action in the wake of the deeds of Israel. The Or Ha-Chaim explains the hierarchy as follows:
"Then I will also walk contrary to you" – that is, He will not bring upon them afflictions directed toward their sins, as He did earlier when He brought afflictions "according to" their sins, as it is stated: "You render to every man according to his work." For that will arouse a sleeping heart and teach him to improve his actions, in correspondence to which the evil had befallen him. God said that if they walk contrary to Him, and they do not learn from the action of God that [should] arouse their hearts through afflictions that correspond to their sins, He too will walk contrary to them and bring upon them afflictions that have no similarity to their evil deeds, namely, the sword, siege, plague, being handed over to the enemy, and hunger, which includes three afflictions, for a total of seven. (Or Ha-Chaim, Vayikra 26:26)
The Or Ha-Chaim explains that the purpose of punishing measure for measure is to open a door to repentance. When the punishment corresponds to the sin, the person can draw a connection between them and say: This punishment comes to me for this sin. When the person does not take the hint, God moves to a punishment that does not enable the same opening for repentance.
In our parasha,it is very reasonable to say that Yosef's whole intention was to "bring out" the brotherhood inherent in the brothers and to examine whether they in fact repented from their evil treatment of their brother and are prepared to sacrifice themselves for one of their brothers (first Shimon and afterwards Binyamin). The brothers, who do not know it is Yosef who is speaking to them, see this as an act of heaven precisely because of the great similarity between their sale of Yosef and the punishment that removed Shimon from them. They understand that there is a connection and that they must repent for what they had done to Yosef. This is indeed what they do: they bring Binyamin, and do not agree, later, to leave him in Egypt and give up on him.
We too can learn from all this to examine what happens to us in our daily lives to see if there might be a heavenly hint and an opening to repentance.
(Translated by David Strauss)
[1] It should be noted that the Or Ha-Chaim sees the sending of all ten sons as a technical matter necessitated by the need to collect food, not necessarily an indication that they went down to Egypt to look for Yosef, though his commentary implies that he too understood it in this manner because of the change in terminology from "Yaakov's sons" to "Yosef's brothers":
The ten of them went, perhaps because of the fear that is common in years of famine, that people will be miserly with each other, and commit robbery and even murder to secure a piece of bread. This is why all the brothers went down to Egypt, so that they could help one another… It further seems that Yosef was selling a fixed amount of grain to each purchaser, with two objectives, one obvious and one secret. The obvious objective was to prevent speculating in grain, which was beneficial both to him and to the purchasers. Beneficial to Yosef, because he could profit whenever a rise in price occurred. And beneficial to the purchasers, since Yosef did not raise prices unreasonably. The secret objective was to force all of the brothers to come to him, as indeed happened, for they each came to purchase the fixed amount. (Or Ha-Chaim, Bereishit 42:3)
[2] Editor's note: This appears to be a reference to the Or Ha-Chaim's comments on Bereishit 37:20, where he suggests the brothers believed Yosef was guilty of conspiring against them through his reports to their father: he said they had committed capital crimes, thus he was deserving of the death sentence they would have received.
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