SYNOPSIS: As
the story reaches its climax, Joseph dramatically sends all his staff
out of the room to give them privacy, then reveals his identity, weeping
so loudly that it can be heard "in all of Egypt and even in the
Pharaoh's house". He sobs: "I am Joseph!! Does my father still live?"
The brothers are stunned, and he tells them to come closer to him, then
makes his speech. "I am the brother whom you sold to Egypt. Don't feel
bad! It wasn't you, it was God who sent me here so that I could save the
country from famine. It was all meant to be! And thanks to God's
designs, I can also save all of you from hunger. Hurry home and tell my
father: Joseph is alive. Bring him here, I will give you all land to
settle in the region of Goshen where there is room for your flocks and
your cattle. I will look after you here and get you through the five years
of famine still to come."
The author chooses this point of maximum tension to come to the dramatic climax, which takes the form of a speech by Joseph in which, after getting privacy by sending all his attendants out of the room, he gives his brothers the game-changing news that he is their lost brother, the one who they assume "is no more": ani yosef ha‛od avi xay 'I am Joseph, is my father still alive?' It is a moment of high and mixed emotions for all present. Joseph himself is overcome and can no longer hide his feelings, but has the presence of mind to remain concerned about their possible reaction to the shocker. He anticipates their misgiving by assuring them that it was God's plan for them to sell him into Egypt so that he could make arrangements to "keep them alive" before the great famine hit. He repeats that it wasn't their but God's doing and that thanks to this he is more powerful than anyone except Pharaoh himself, as they can see. He wants them to tell Jacob everything they have seen and bring him to Egypt, where he and his family can reside in the land of Goshen. They then hugged and kissed and wept, and when they were done with that they all talked.
45:3 ha‛od avi xay
'Is my father still alive?' Is this a real question (i.e. a request for information) or a rhetorical exclamation? If the former, it seems to be redundant as they have already talked about this - unless, of course, the mixing of sources is to blame. But whatever the historical origin of the presence of the question at this point in the text, synchronically (i.e. simply as a literary composition) I think the question "works" as a powerful stroke of the author's brush, conveying many things, love, anguish and longing among them. Of all the things he might have said after ani yosef, surely this is the most poignant choice, so let's not analyse it to death! Regarding the word form avi 'my father', we can if we like read something into Joseph's choice rather than avínu 'our father', but for all we know it may just have been idiomatic to say avi here as the least marked option. Modern Hebrew speakers would probably choose to say abba here, but in BH, where that was not used, avi was perhaps the closest pragmatic equivalent - which raises the question of how to translate it. While omitting 'my' has a certain rationale, it also deprives the translation of the connotations intrinsic to the possessive form!
45:8 waysiméni l'av l'far‛o
'He [i.e. God] has made me a father to Pharaoh.' Is this to be read as a figure of speech or was this the designation of an Egyptian title? Commentators disagree: acc. to CB it might be either one, we don't know; but Speiser assures us that "this phrase is applied to Viziers as far back as the third millennium", yet the Etz Hayim notes: "No such title is known from ancient Egypt"!
umoshel b'khol éretz mitzráyim
'...and ruler over the whole land of Egypt.' The verb root m-sh-l 'to rule, govern', of which moshel is the participle, last occurred at the beginning of the Joseph story as part of a rhetorical question (37:8): wayyom'ru lo exaw hamalokh timlokh ‛alenu im mashol timshol banu 'His brothers said to him: Are you to reign over us? Are you to rule us?' If this is not just a coincidence, the text is saying here that in fact Joseph's destiny was not merely to rule his brothers, but a whole country!
45:9-11
As Speiser points out, this is in epistolary style, as if Joseph were dictating a letter and employing the routine formulae for the purpose at the time when this was written. These would include the introductory instructions to the messengers (maharu w'‛alu el avi w'amartem elaw ko amar binkha yosef), a "status update", that is, a brief initial statement in suitably devout terms of his present situation (samáni elohim l'adon l'khol mitzráyim) and then the substance of the message, framed as an invitation but worded as an imperative: 'Come to me without delay and stay etc. etc.' Notice that these verses address a singular addressee (r'da, al ta‛amod, w'yashavta, w'hayita, atta uvanékha uv'ne vanékha etc.).
45:10 w'yashavta v'éretz góshen
'and dwell [rather than "you will dwell"] in the region of Goshen.' This is the first occurrence of the name Goshen, an oft-repeated name in the final chapters which is thought to have referred to a region of Egypt to the east of the Nile delta.
45:12 w'hinne ‛enekhem ro'ot w'‛ene axi vinyamin ki...
Here he is no longer dictating, but addressing the brothers (in the plural).
45:14 wayyippol ‛al tzawre vinyamin axiw wayyevk etc.
Standard idiomatic expression referring to friendly hugging in BH, cf. also 33:4 and 46:29.
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