Hebrew Myths (42 page)

(
f
) Joseph dismissed his attendants and, weeping unashamedly at last, asked the brothers in Hebrew: ‘Is our father truly still alive?’

They did not know how to answer, thinking him mad.

Joseph beckoned them closer. Terror-stricken, they obeyed. ‘I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt,’ he said. ‘But, pray, feel no undue remorse: because God Himself prompted your designs. There have now been two years of famine in Egypt, and five more must follow, without ploughing or reaping. God sent me ahead and appointed me Viceroy to provide for you all. Hurry home, and tell our father that I am alive! Beg him to come without delay, bringing his flocks, herds, and possessions to the Land of Goshen, which lies near this city. Neither you nor my brother Benjamin can doubt that I am speaking the truth. So do as I ask!’

With that, Joseph embraced Benjamin, after which he and the others exchanged fraternal kisses.
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***

1
. This is historical fiction, but accounts for certain Hebrew shepherds, settled north-east of the Delta, who had given their townships such un-Egyptian names as Succoth, Baal-Zephon, and Migdol. Goshen, between the Pelusian branch of the Nile and Lake Timsah, was a district which, in Joseph’s day, lay too far from the Nile floods to be arable, though providing good pasture. Some generations later, however, Rameses II irrigated Goshen by digging a canal, and built the cities of Rameses and Pithom with Hebrew labour (
Exodus
I. 11). Rameses II seems to have been the Pharaoh who ‘knew not Joseph’ (
Exodus
I. 8), and against whom Moses rebelled.

2
. Joseph here anticipates the well-known modem technique of extorting confessions by first frightening the victim, then reassuring him, then frightening him again, until he grows confused and breaks down.

3
. Shaking the edge of one’s cloak for ‘I will have nothing to do with this!’ remains a common gesture in the Middle East. Joseph’s enigmatic message to Jacob: ‘The rope has followed the bucket into the well,’ means: ‘This is the consequence of your sons’ having lowered me into the dry well at Dothan.’

(
a
) Hearing that Joseph’s brothers had arrived, Pharaoh told him: ‘If your father Jacob should bring his entire household here, he can count upon my royal welcome. Provide wagons for the women and children; and since I have placed all the wealth of Egypt at his disposal, persuade him to leave behind whatever possession may prove cumbersome.’

Joseph gave each of his brothers, except Benjamin, a handsome new robe; Benjamin received five such, also three hundred pieces of silver. Besides wagons and bales of fodder, he sent Jacob twenty asses laden with valuables and all manner of rich foods. His parting words were: ‘No harsh thoughts on the journey, pray!’
⁴¹⁵

(
b
) The brothers were still debating how they should break their good news to Jacob, when Serah, Asher’s daughter, a modest girl though an accomplished musician, came to meet them near Hebron. They handed her an Egyptian harp, saying: ‘Go at once to your grandfather Jacob, pluck this instrument and sing as follows:

Serah did as she was told, singing the words softly to him over and over again, until she was certain that they had lodged in his heart. Suddenly Jacob recognized the truth. He blessed Serah, sighing: ‘Daughter, you have revived my spirit. May the shadow of death never disquiet you! Come, that song again I It is sweeter than honey to my ears.’
⁴¹⁶

(
c
) Thereupon the brothers arrived, clad in royal garments. They announced loudly: ‘Joseph is alive, alive! He has become Viceroy of Egypt!’ Jacob saw the wagons and laden asses, and cried: ‘O joy! Glory be to God! It is true then? Shall I after all be restored to my favourite son?’

He now shook off the ashes of mourning, washed, trimmed his beard, dressed in the royal garments which had been brought him, and invited every king in Canaan to a three-day banquet; after which he set out for Egypt with his flocks, herds, possessions, and a household of seventy souls, not counting wives and servants.
⁴¹⁷

(
d
) At Beersheba, Jacob offered burned sacrifices, and God spoke in a dream: ‘Fear not, Jacob, to visit Egypt under My protection! I will make Israel a great people. Afterwards I will bring you back again, and Joseph shall close your dying eyes.’
⁴¹⁸

(
e
) On hearing the news from Judah, who had ridden ahead, Joseph at once harnessed his chariot horses and drove down to Goshen. He and Jacob embraced tearfully, and Jacob sobbed: ‘I am ready to die, my son, now that we have met again!’

Joseph told his brothers: ‘I shall inform Pharaoh of your arrival. If he inquires about your occupation, admit that you are shepherds. Although Egyptians regard shepherds as unclean, no harm will attend you here in Goshen.’
⁴¹⁹

(
f
) He presented five of his brothers to Pharaoh, who appointed them overseers of the royal flocks, herds and droves in that region; then presented Jacob also. When Pharaoh politely asked his age, Jacob answered: ‘Unlike my immediate ancestors, I have aged rapidly. Few and evil have been the years of my life; a mere one hundred and thirty in all.’ With that, he blessed Pharaoh and went back to Goshen. But God reproached him: ‘Jacob, I saved you from Esau and Laban; I saved Joseph from the pit and made him Viceroy of Egypt; and I saved this entire household from starvation! Yet you dare complain that your days have been few and evil! For this ingratitude I will shorten them by thirty-two years.’
⁴²⁰

(
g
) At Pharaoh’s orders, Joseph settled his father in the district of Rameses, and provided food for all Israel while the famine lasted. Jacob lived another seventeen years—thirty-two less than God had granted his father Isaac.
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***

1
. Midrashic additions to this story, reflecting Israel’s two heroic revolts against the power of Rome, make Joseph’s brothers show warlike defiance when Benjamin is arrested, and rout Pharaoh’s entire army. Judah grinds iron ban to powder between his teeth, and utters so terrifying a shout that all the women who hear it miscarry, and the heads of Pharaoh’s guards twist sideways and stay fixed—a memory, perhaps, of Egyptian reliefs in which soldiers’ bodies face to the front, though their heads are in profile. He also burns the chariot given him by Pharaoh, because of its idolatrous decorations.

Jacob is credited with prescience of the Mosaic Law: he introduces the Feast of First Fruits before leaving Canaan, and fells the sacred acacias at Migdal beside Lake Gennesaret for Moses’ use when the Ark of the Covenant should be built.

2
. The chronicler of
Genesis
records that Jacob’s household consisted of seventy souls, exclusive of the patriarchs’ wives; but even if Jacob himself is counted, the names given add up to no more than sixty-nine. Commentators offer several irreconcilable explanations of this apparent error; one of these, by analogy with
Daniel
III. 25, reckons God as the seventieth soul. The only two women listed are Dinah, and Serah daughter of Asher. Serah, like Dinah, may have been a matriarchal clan.

3. There is no discrepancy between the famine caused by the Nile’s failure to rise, and the provision of grazing in Goshen. Nile floods depend on heavy snows in Abyssinia, not on local rainfall. Jacob would hardly have starved at Beersheba while he could still pasture his flocks, none of which seem to have died there from drought. Perhaps southern Palestine depended on Egypt for its com supply even in good years, and Hebrew pastoralists had come to treat bread as a necessity rather than a luxury.

(
a
) Jacob, aware that his death was approaching, summoned Joseph to Goshen and said: ‘Swear that you will lay me to rest not among Egyptians, but in the Cave of Machpelah at Hebron.’

Joseph answered: ‘Am I a slave, that you demand an oath from me?’

‘Nay, but put your hand beneath my thigh, and swear!’

‘It is unseemly for a son to touch his father’s circumcision. Nevertheless, I swear by the Living God that you shall be buried at Hebron.’
⁴²²

(
b
) Joseph brought Ephraim and Manasseh to Jacob’s death-bed. Jacob sat up with great difficulty, and said: ‘God once blessed me at Luz in Canaan, promising that my sons should become tribes and hold Canaan as their everlasting possession. Though these sons of yours, Ephraim and Manasseh, were born before I visited Egypt, I count them no less my own than Reuben and Simeon. But let your younger children rank as their sons.’ Then his mind wandered: ‘When I left Padan-Aram, my wife Rachel died in Canaan, at some distance from Ephrath…’ He was evidently grieved that his body would lie next to Leah’s, not to his beloved Rachel’s; but saw no help for it.
⁴²³

(
c
) Noticing Ephraim and Manasseh, he asked forgetfully: ‘Who are these?’

‘They are my sons; born, as you say, in Egypt.’

‘I will bless them.’

Joseph brought the lads forward, and Jacob sighed: ‘I never thought to see your face again, let alone your sons’. God has indeed been very merciful!’
⁴²⁴

(
d
) Bowing reverently, Joseph set Ephraim to Jacob’s left, and Manasseh to the right. But Jacob, crossing his arms, rested the right hand on Ephraim’s head, and the left on Manasseh’s. He said:

When Joseph tried to alter the position of Jacob’s hands, protesting: ‘Not so, my father; because Manasseh is the first-born. Pray set your right hand on his head, not on Ephraim’s,’ Jacob replied obstinately: ‘I know, my son, I know! But though Manasseh will become great, Ephraim will become greater still.’

Having blessed them both with: ‘May it always be fortunate in Israel to wish: “God prosper you like Ephraim and Manasseh!”’, Jacob told Joseph: ‘He will bring you safely back to inherit, in Canaan, the royal portion which I have denied your brothers: a Shoulder seized from the Amorites with my sword and bow.’
⁴²⁵

(
e
) Jacob summoned his other sons, and said: ‘I will now disclose the fates of all your posterity. Gather around, and listen!’ Each of them expected a blessing; yet he punished Reuben for the lasciviousness that had prompted him to lie with Bilhah, by denying him his rights as the first-born; he also lamented the massacre done at Shechem by Simeon and Levi, cursing instead of blessing them—their fate, he said, was to be divided and scattered in Israel. Nevertheless, he praised Judah’s lion-like courage, promising him a royal sceptre and an abundance of wine and milk. Zebulon, he announced, would become a tribe of merchants and seafarers. He compared Issachar to a strong pack-ass, cheerfully labouring in a pleasant land; Dan, to a serpent lurking by the highway, that stings passing horses and un-seats their riders; Naphtali, to a swift doe running with fawns at her heels; Benjamin, to a hungry wolf. He told Gad: ‘You will raid and be raided, but come off victorious in the end’; and Asher: ‘You will harvest good corn and bake fine bread.’ His chief blessing was reserved for Joseph, whom he compared to a strong young bull beside a fountain, scornful of sling-stones and arrows. God would destroy Joseph’s enemies, and bless him with abundant rain, perpetual springs, rich flocks, fertile wives, and ancestral pride. Jacob did not, however, reveal the whole future—because God made him forget his promise. He merely repeated what he had told Joseph: that he must be buried in the Cave of Machpelah beside Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and his own wife Leah.
⁴²⁶

(
f
) Joseph had Jacob’s body embalmed, which took forty days; and ordered seventy days of public mourning throughout Egypt.
Having asked and obtained Pharaoh’s permission to visit Canaan and bury Jacob there, he marched off at the head of a vast mourning train—not only his brothers and the Viceregal household, but representatives from every city in Egypt—attended by a heavily armed escort.
⁴²⁷

(
g
) They entered Canaan, followed the highroad into Gilead, where they wailed and wept seven full days at Atad’s threshing floor. Because the wondering Canaanites cried: ‘This is indeed a solemn
mourning of the Egyptians!
’, the place was ever afterwards known as Abel-Mizraim. Thence the cortège circled back towards Hebron, laid Jacob to rest in the Cave of Machpelah, mourned seven days more, and returned across the frontier.
⁴²⁸

(
h
) Some say that Jacob’s brother Esau was still alive, and that his Edomite household accompanied Joseph on the progress through Canaan. At Hebron, however, they blocked the approach to Machpelah, and Esau shouted: ‘I shall never let Jacob be buried in this cave, which is mine by right!’ Fighting broke out, and Dan’s deaf-and-dumb son Hushim beheaded Esau with a sword. The Edomites fled, carrying off his trunk to Mount Seir, but leaving the head behind for burial.
⁴²⁹

(
i
) Jacob being now dead, the brothers feared that Joseph would take tardy vengeance on them, and sent a message: ‘Our father, before he died, told us to beg your forgiveness. You will, we trust, respect his wishes.’

Joseph called them to the Palace, and when they once more abased themselves, crying ‘We are your slaves!’, answered: ‘Have no fear! Though you plotted against my life, God turned this evil act to good account: saving innumerable lives through me. I shall therefore continue to provide for Israel.’ They went away reassured.
⁴³⁰