How a Book Ends: The Genesis of Hatred Parshat Vayechi

Fear of Vengeance

Suddenly, there emerges a last-minute qualm. For the first time, the brothers articulate a fear of Joseph’s vengeance for that long-buried day in the pit. What brings this fear to the surface is that they “saw that their father was dead.” Again, the repeated reference to the departure of the father makes one wonder what symbolic meaning this has for the brothers. In this vein, Rashi responds to the apparent banality of the observation: What is the meaning of “they saw …”? They realized the meaning of his death in Joseph’s behavior. Previously, they used to dine at Joseph’s table and he used to receive them with open arms out of respect for his father; after Jacob’s death, however, he no longer treated them in a friendly manner. Rashi’s scenario explains the brothers’ sudden eruption of fear. Joseph’s behavior has changed ominously since Jacob’s death. Death—even burial—is not necessarily closure: on the contrary, this death seems to open up unnerving possibilities.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep (p. 317). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The text makes it as plain as possible that the story they told Joseph was a lie. If Jacob had really said those words he would have said them to Joseph himself, not to the brothers. The time to have done so was on his deathbed in the previous chapter. The brothers’ tale was a “white lie.” Its primary aim was not to deceive but to ease a potentially explosive situation. Perhaps that is why Joseph wept, understanding that his brothers still thought him capable of revenge.

The sages derived a principle from this text. Mutar le-shanot mipnei ha-shalom: “It is permitted to tell an untruth (literally, “to change” the facts) for the sake of peace.”[1] A white lie is permitted in Jewish law.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z'l, https://rabbisacks.org/permitted-tell-lie-vayechi-5775/

In this final scene, Joseph weeps his most enigmatic tears. “He wept be-dabram eilav”—lit., “at their speaking to him.” Perhaps he weeps at the distance of suspicion that still divides him from his brothers; sure of his own good intentions, he weeps at their fear. Or perhaps he weeps at the manner of their addressing him. For, actually, they are not speaking to him: they communicate through a messenger, who reports a fabricated message containing deathbed instructions, in their father’s name and words, to ask Joseph for forgiveness. If one were to write the verse, the core of the message—the confession and plea for forgiveness—would be hedged about with a forest of quotation marks. In other words, the brothers’ plea is indirect and equivocal to the point of absurdity. This is the only way, it seems, that they can speak to him. Joseph weeps, then, at the failure of language to maintain itself in the family after Jacob’s death.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep (p. 322). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The word for “hatred” here is the unusual yistemenu, rather than yisnenu. This rather rare expression occurs three times in Genesis. The first occasion is immediately after Esau loses his blessing to his brother Jacob: “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing which his father had given him, and Esau said to himself, ‘Let but the mourning period of my father come, and I will kill my brother Jacob’ ” (Gen. 27:41). Esau’s resentment is not at all allayed by the alternative blessing that he has received from his father; on the contrary this blessing seems to trigger his hatred, as though reminding him of Jacob’s usurpation. He waits only for his father’s death to vent this by killing Jacob. This is revenge-hatred, unappeasable, biding its time till the father dies. The second time this hatred appears is in Jacob’s blessing of Joseph: “The archers hated him” (Gen. 49:23). This refers to the brothers’ hatred of Joseph and uses the metaphor of archery for their malicious language (Rashi). From these three uses of sitma in Genesis, a particular genre of hatred emerges: sibling hatred, repressed in the father’s lifetime, biding its time for the fratricidal moment. The brothers clearly assume that Joseph has been nursing his hatred against the day he will be free to express it. This is the dreaded implication of Jacob’s death. Midrash Tanchuma, in fact, translates the term to refer to the “repressed malice in Joseph’s heart.”11 And it requires nothing more sinister than a cooling in Joseph’s behavior to stir up his brothers’ worst apprehensions.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep (p. 318). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

...the brothers’ shame remains unresolved because of the secrecy, silence and judgment that surround their crime. They never move from the sense of shame to guilt, confession, and resolution. Joseph can no more rebuke his brothers than they can openly confess to their sin. His awareness of the divine plan and, perhaps, his own impulse to protect them from shame, precludes the resolution of their guilt. So it becomes, in Zornberg’s reading, “the original sin” which we collectively atone for in each generation.

Rachel Adelman, https://hebrewcollege.edu/blog/brothers-on-the-edge/

It is striking that “speaking upon the heart” occurs only once more in Genesis, in the story of Dinah and Shechem: the prince first rapes Dinah, then speaks upon her heart. There, too, Rashi comments: “words that found ready entrance to her heart” (Gen. 34:3). He seduces her with promises of benefits to her family. The narrative conveys Shechem’s impassioned sincerity, but does not blur the grotesqueness of a seduction that follows a rape. Here, too, Joseph’s seductive words cannot disguise the power imbalance and the fact of the pit. Even his promise to sustain their “little children” only reminds them of their infantile status, as indeed the expression “He spoke upon their heart” reminds the reader of his superiority. Ambiguity—reassurance and intimidation both— hovers over his speech.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep (p. 324). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Like the “Never mind” response to an apology, Joseph’s providential speech disturbs even as it purports to soothe. A hope of redress withers. The narratable anguish of the past is subsumed in a fiction of closure. And precisely here is the core of the irony: in his anxiety to reveal the end, to resolve the narrative in full meaning, Joseph suppresses the conflicts in his family and within himself. Stridently humble, he asserts a superiority that makes him untouchable and his brothers unredeemable.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep (p. 333). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Sources:

1. The Meaning Behind Jacob's Mysterious Blessings

What Was Jacob's Final Blessing To Joseph Really About? by Immanuel Shalev

https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/meaning-of-jacobs-blessing

2. Parashat Vayechi- Fearing the Past, Facing the Future: Joseph's final encounter with his brothers by Sara Sapadin

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/288974?lang=bi