Notes 60: The brothers are tested (42:15-38)

SYNOPSIS: To test whether their story is true, Joseph tells his brothers he will hold in Egypt all but one of them who must go back home and bring their little brother of whom they have spoken. He puts them all in jail for three days, then summons them again and modifies his proposal: only one brother need stay in Egypt and the rest are to go back home, but must come back with Benjamin if they want to redeem their brother. The brothers despair because they know Jacob won't want to part with Benjamin, and they start to think they are being punished for the sins they committed with their brother Joseph. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph is eavesdropping; they believe he is an Egyptian and don't dream that he can understand their language. He is overcome with emotion and turns away so that they will not see his tears. Joseph imprisons Simeon and sends the others on their way with the provisions they have purchased, but has the money they have paid for them placed in the sacks. They find the money when they interrupt their journey to stop somewhere for the night. When they reach home they tell Jacob all about their eventful trip. Jacob expresses his consternation: first Joseph was killed (he believes), now Shimon is a prisoner, and even Benjamin is under threat.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

42:19 exad ye'aserThere seems to be a contradiction between what Joseph said in v. 16 (shilxu mikkem exad... w'attem he'as'ru 'Let one of you go... while the rest of you remain') and what he now commands: 'Let one of your brothers be held... while the rest of you go', unless of course this was Joseph's plan all along and he was using scaring tactics or simply punishing them. Of course it could also be a narrative device, creating maximum tension but also maintaining a cogent plot.

42;24 wayyissov me‛alehem wayyevk wayyáshov alehem waydabber alehem
'He turned away from them and wept. But he came back to them and spoke to them.' In this way the text adds a deeper narrative dimension by showing us the external (although hidden) signs of the emotional experience that Joseph underwent in the course of this already dramatic scene. The words used for this are as simple as they possibly could be! The description's starkness is commensurate with the melodramatic intensity of this high-powered situation.

42:25 saqqo
This word for 'sack, bag' occurs three times in this chapter: here, ul'hashiv kaspehem ish el saqqo, v. 27, wayyiftax ha'exad et saqqo and v. 35, b'saqqo and saqqehem. But another word for the same thing is also found, as in amtaxti 'my sack', amtaxto 'his...', construct amtáxat (no absolute is attested), which appears to mean the same thing (see. vv. 27 and 28, plus numerous occurrences in ch. 44). They may just be synonyms. Source critics have used these to argue for separate sources; for Whybray, that is a good example of why their methods are unsound, because there is nothing to stop a single author from alternating between two synonyms where they exist. As for saq, the word appeared in 37:34 in the sense 'sack cloth.' The Eng. word sack and cognates in other European languages are ultimately borrowed from H via Greek and Latin (EK).

42:27 latet mispo laxamoro bammalon
JPS: 'To give feed to his ass at the night encampment.' The malon might have been either a lodging or just a place to camp for the night; the word derives from l-w-n 'spend the night', and might simply refer to a place (cf. maqom).

42:33 ra‛avon
This word actually means 'hunger', but of course that is not what Joseph is telling them to take home. Either an idiomatic usage or a mangled text must be involved here.

42:36-38
A well-written dramatic dialogue which rings true completely: the father laments, the eldest son tries his hardest to reassure, the father rebuffs him with scepticism and defiance. This brief exchange raises many of the complex points of contention between the two men, while with the narration it conveniently sums up the matters of concern for the audience's benefit: Jacob's suffering for his sons' plight which they repeatedly seem to him to be bringing on themselves putting more and more of the brothers at risk (oti shikkaltem...), Reuben's promises (t'na oto ‛al yadi...) and assumption of responsibilities (et sh'ne vanay tamit...) which sound hollow to the father (uq'ra'áhu ason baddérekh...); Jacob, emphasising his heartache for the losses already incurred (ki axiw met) and his fears for the rest (w'hu l'vaddo nish'ar), combines a stubborn refusal (lo yered b'ni ‛immakhem) with a final warning about his own vulnerability as a broken old man (w'horadtem et sevati b'yagon sh'óla).

42:38 w'horadtem et sevati b'yagon sh'óla
Lit. (JPS) 'You will send my white head down to Sheol in grief.' On Sheol see my note on 37:35. The noun seva (שיבה) means 'old age' (from s-y-b 'to grow old', apparently) though it is also translated as 'grey (or white) hairs', and it has occurred twice already in the collocation b'seva Tova (15:!5 and 25:8). In the present context the meaning wouldn't be quite 'you will send my old age down to Sheol' but rather 'you will send me...', of course, with me symbolized by sevati 'my old age' in the same sort of way as it can be symbolized by nafshi 'my soul', etc.

Notes 59: The brothers arrive (41:53 - 42:14)

SYNOPSIS: As Joseph predicted, seven years of plenty are followed by a great famine which also affects Canaan, and Jacob sends his sons down to Egypt where he has heard that there is grain available. Only the youngest son, Benjamin (Joseph's only full brother), stays behind because he is Jacob's favourite, as the only remaining son of Rachel, and he is afraid of losing him. In Egypt the brothers have an interview with Joseph himself, but they don't recognise him although he recognises them. He accuses them of being spies. Protesting their innocence, they tell him about their family, but Joseph pretends not to believe them.

• Text of the passage

Here the main drama begins in earnest. With swift strokes, the narrative takes us through time and space, through the seven years of plenty when Joseph had the foresight to implement a plan to store up supplies and up to the beginning of the long famine that he had predicted in which he administered the distribution of the stored grain to Egyptians and its sale to foreigners whose countries were also affected by the drought. And then away we go to Canaan where many families have been brought to their knees by hunger, amongst them that of Joseph's father and brothers. Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy grain since he has heard that food may be bought there (little does he know that this is thanks to his lost son's doings!), and off they all go, all except Jacob's youngest, Benjamin, who is Joseph's only full brother. And so we find ourselves back in Egypt, where the ten arrive and go to see the man in charge of everything there: Joseph. Now, fulfilling Joseph's childhood dreams, he has absolute power over his brothers for two reasons: (1) they need food, he has it to sell; (2) they don't know his true identity, but he knows theirs! What is more, he happens to be the most powerful man in Egypt, other than the king himself. In storybook manner, the tables are turned and now Joseph has all the cards. How will he play them?

Joseph strikes out boldly, going on the attack. What do you want? We have come to buy grain. Of course he knows that, but let's make them squirm: "No you haven't," he counters: "you've come to find out what the situation is like in Egypt: you are spies." In alarm, his brothers plead innocence, threatened by a double danger: not obtaining food for their father and family, and being unjustly imprisoned or worse for something they haven't done (I wonder what that feels like!). "No, no!" they start to blurt out, "we're innocent! We're all from one family. We're brothers. There's ten of us here, and two more, making twelve altogether. Well... eleven. The youngest stayed at home with our father. And the other one... ummmm... something happened to him." Joseph, listening to their explanations, cannot have missed any of the irony. But he keeps his poker face: "Nope, I don't believe you," he retorts, "you're spies."

A comment in EH provides some interesting background regarding the years of plenty and want in Egypt, and also raises an unexpected problem. Egyptian agriculture was dependent on the ebb and flow of the waters of the all-important River Nile. It was not rains in Egypt that watered the Egyptian fields, it was the river, and the river was fed by rains at is source in sourthern Sudan. If it didn't rain enough there, the effect in Egypt was often devastating, and seven-year droughts were not unheard-of. The problem is this: Canaan wasn't affected by what the Nile did. Its agriculture depended on local rainfall, and famine in Canaan was caused by the lack of it. Thus while it is not impossible that both Egypt and Canaan had famines, the two events could hardly have been causally related: it must have been a coincidence.




41:55 l'khu el yosef
'Go to Joseph!' Pharaoh orders that whoever wishes to obtain grain must appear before Joseph. In terms of plot, this establishes a link which will force Joseph's brothers into his presence.

41:56 wayyiftax yosef et kol asher bahem wayyishbor l'mitzráyim
'Joseph laid open all that was within, and rationed out grain to the Egyptians.' As regards meaning there seem to be two homonymous verbs sh-b-r: the most common one which means 'to break', and the one occurring here and often in this story, which means 'buy, sell or ration grain.' EK's conjecture that the second meaning is denominal from shéver 'fracture, fraction, grain [for sale]' which in turn comes from the verb root in its first meaning seems plausible. Speiser, who suggests that the real meaning of shéver is 'emergency supplies', would derive it from the verb 'to break' in the specialized sense of 'break the fast.' Anyway, here wayyishbor l'mitzráyim means that he provided Egypt with grain (or emergency supplies) or that he rationed it/them out to them, but there is a syntactic difficulty in the preceding clause: wayyiftax yosef et kol asher bahem lacks an antecedent for bahem, though we can imagine that it refers to the stores of grain previously referred to. Lit. 'Joseph opened [up] everything that was in them' (??).

42:1 wayyar ya‛aqov... lámma titra'u
There seems to be here a playful double use of the root r-'-h 'to see', first in its simplest (qal) form as Jacob observes the situation that they have no food but there is grain to be had in Egypt, and then in the reciprocal-iterative (hitpael) form meaning literally 'look at each other' or 'look around', perhaps both of these simultaneously ('look around at each other'), but meaning by this 'stand around doing nothing like idiots' or something of the sort, which is what he accuses his sons of doing.

42:6 wayyavó'u axe yosef wayyishtaxawu lo appáyim ártza
'And Joseph's brothers came and bowed low to him, with their faces to the ground.' Cf. 37:7 (w'hinne t'subbéna alummotekhem wattishtaxawéna la'alummati), 37:9 (w'hinne hasshémesh w'hayyaréax w'axad ‛asar kokhavim mishtaxawim li) and 37:10 (havo navo ani w'imm'kha w'axékha l'hishtaxawot l'kha ártza). Joseph's childhood dreams are coming true.

42:7 wayyakkiram wayyitnakker alehem
'He recognized them but he acted like a stranger towards them.' There is an interesting interplay of words in the H, based on a dual use of another verb root, n-k-r (cf. note on v. 1 above). According to the observations in EK it would seem that scholars are not entirely clear about the etymological relationships among the forms and between them and the nouns nekhar 'foreign land' and nokhri 'foreign, strange, alien.' The central question would seem to be whether all the verb's different forms and meanings are derived from or cognates of these, or whether there has been a merger of two originally different roots. In any case, the forms and meanings are as follows, acc. to CHALOT: (1) *nikkar (niphal) 'dissemble, pretend; be recognized'; (2) nikkar (piel) 'misrepresent; disfigure, deface; deliver over; consider carefully'; (3) hikkir (hiphil) 'investigate, recognize, know; (4) *hitnakker (hitpael) 'disguise oneself, keep one's identity from; make oneself known.' The forms preceded by asterisks are not themselves attested but inflected forms of them are. Looking at this array of senses it is no wonder that scholars are confused, and so are we! But of course, etymology is one thing; whatever the historical explanation, when words appear to form a single family Genesis is not averse to playing around with that resemblance - chance or not - for rhetorical effect. In the present instance it is (3) and (4) that are juxtaposed, the hiphil and the hitpael, and we might paraphrase the sentence: 'He knew who they were but he didn't let on to them as to who he was.' Only it manages this without a negation! Perhaps: 'Aware of their identity, he kept his own identity to himself.' In case that is lost on anyone in the audience, the same idea is spelt out in the simplest, most direct fashion possible in v. 8, using the hiphil (the most common binyan of this verb root) in two successive clauses, the first positive and the second negative: wayyakker yosef et exaw w'hem lo hikkirúhu 'Joseph reconised his brothers but they didn't recognise him.' Got it.

42:9 wayyizkor yosef et haxalomot...
'Recalling the dreams...' Joseph seems here to perceive the same irony to which the audience became privy three verses back.

42:12 lo ki...
The brothers protest that they are not spies, to which Joseph says, basically: 'Oh yes you are!' Compare the same use of lo in 18:15.

Notes 58: Pharaoh puts him in charge (41:39-52)

SYNOPSIS: Joseph tells Pharaoh the meaning of both dreams: seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of famine. He also advises Pharaoh about what he should do about it. He must locate a very wise man and put him in charge of all Egypt, and grain should be stored in all the cities throughout the years of plenty, to be distributed to the people in the time of hunger which will follow. Pharaoh is impressed.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

41:39 en navon w'xakham kamókha
'There is none [so] discerning and wise as you.' These words of Pharaoh repeat and allude to Joseph's words in v. 33: w'‛atta yere far‛o ish navon w'xakham 'Now let His Highness (lit. Pharaoh) designate (lit. see) a man discerning and wise.' As simple as that, Joseph gets the job. But his reason for concluding that Joseph has discernment and wisdom is the fact that he was able to interpret his dreams, while also recognising that this ability was God-given: axare hodía‛ elohim ot'kha et kol zot 'after God caused you to know all this' (hodía‛ is the causative of y-d-‛ 'to know.') Perhaps the reasoning was: if God is on your side to such an extent that he gives you all this discernment and wisdom, then you are the man needed for the job!


41:40  w'‛al píkha yisshaq kol ‛ammi
Literally this says: 'and on your mouth all my people shall kiss.' There is a deafening silence of some commentaries on this. The LXX and the Vulg. say here something to the effect of 'all my people shall obey [the word of] your mouth' while in English we have (KJV) 'according to thy word shall all my people be ruled', (ESV) 'all my people shall order themselves as you command', and so on; even Everett Fox gives 'to your orders shall all my people submit' with the laconic footnote "Hebrew obscure." Acc. to Speiser, though, there is nothing obscure about it: "Heb. cons. yšq, as now pointed (yiššaq, preceded by ‛al pīkā), can only mean 'shall kiss you on the mouth.'" But he goes on: "By repointing the verb to yāšoq..., we obtain the sense here indicated [namely, 'all my people shall submit to your orders']." Thus all the translations cited implicitly reject the word's Masoretic pointing. All the English language bibles included on Bible Hub's "parallel verses" page for this verse follow suit save the New American Standard Bible which has 'and according to your command all my people shall do homage', and Young's Literal Translation which has this to offer: 'and at thy mouth do all my people kiss.'

raq hakkisse egdal mimmékka
The verb form egdal means 'I shall be great'; followed by mi- 'from, than' (in mimmékha) it means 'I shall  be greater than you.' This egdal mimmékha, however, is modified by hakkisse 'the throne', hence: 'I shall be greater than you by virtue of the throne.' The raq means 'only': It is only by virtue of the fact that I am on the throne that I am greater than you.'

41:41 wayyómer par‛o
Without anything intervening between Pharaoh's last words and those that follow, the second 'Pharaoh said' is merely a punctuation in the narrative that signals that his next statement sums up the gist of his whole brief speech: You're the boss now.

41:42
Here Pharaoh performs three gestures that symbolize Joseph's investiture (note the eymological meaning of investiture: 'clothing the person being installed in the insignia of rank or position'). The symbols are Pharaoh's signet ring (Tabba‛to), robes of fine linen (bigde shesh) and the gold chain (r'vid hazzahav).

41:43 wayyarkev oto
To conclude, Pharaoh installs Joseph on his second chariot. The H word for 'chariot', merkava (cons. mirkévet), a vehicle used for travel and war, is derived from the verb root r-k-b 'to ride'. In the causative, as here, the verb means 'to cause to ride.' 

avrekh
He was to be treated as a governor, someone so important that men preceded him calling out avrekh to the people, i.e. "Make way!" This word of unknown origin could have an Egyptian source.

w'naton
The infinitive absolute occurs in place of a finite verb: 'And he placed him over all Egypt.'

41:44 ani far‛o
This looks like a formal pronouncement. It is worth observing that the opening formula, 'I am X', is just what God says when making formal pronouncements to important personages in the Old Testament: cf. the beginning of the Ten Commandments for a well-known example. Obviously, Joseph and anyone else listening would know perfectly well that he was Pharaoh, so the function of the utterance is not informative.

44:45 wayyiqra... wayyitten lo...
Lastly, Pharaoh gives Joseph a new name (and here once more the parallel with God's solemn dealings with the patriarchs is striking) and a wife. The meanings of the names mentioned are uncertain but they have an Egyptian ring. On, the place of which his father-in-law Potiphera is the priest, was a city near present-day Cairo.

44:49 
This verse contains two conventional idioms both of which are hyperboles expressing great abundance: k'xol hayyam 'like the sand of the sea' and ‛ad ki xadal lispor ki en mispar 'until he stopped counting for it was innumerable (lit. there was no number).'

44:50f. 
Joseph's two sons, Menasseh and Ephraim, bear the names of two later Israelite tribes. The following two verses contain name games regarding these. As Speiser puts it: "The aetiological explanations of the names are, as usual, independent of correct etymology."

Notes 57: The meaning of Pharaoh's dreams (41:14-38)

SYNOPSIS: Joseph is summoned and without hesitation he tells Pharaoh the meaning of both dreams: seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of famine. He also advises Pharaoh about what he should do about it. He must locate a very wise man and put him in charge of all Egypt, and grain should be stored in all the cities throughout the years of plenty, to be distributed to the people in the time of hunger which will follow. Pharaoh is impressed.

• Text of the passage

41:14 wayyishlax par‛o wayyiqra et yosef
Here begins Joseph's final ascent to power and glory. The first sentence starts with Pharaoh initiating an action whereby Joseph is taken - indeed, rushed (wayritzúhu, causative of r-w-tz 'to run') - from the place where he has been imprisoned, referred to here for the last time as habbor (cf. note on 4:15), shaved, changed, and he walks in (it doesn't even say he was brought: wayyavo, not wayvi'úhu) to Pharaoh. It is the same Joseph as in the last sentence, where the ungrateful cup-bearer is recalling his wisdom and kindness among the prisoners, yet in the blink of an eye, from this point on Joseph will be a hero full of wisdom and dignity, and as we shall see, more generous than ever.


41:18 w'hinne min hay'or ‛olot shéva‛ parot etc.
Pharaoh's relation of his dreams is essentially similar to the narration of his dreams given in the last passage, although there are minor differences in the way they are told each time.

41:34 w'ximmesh et éretz mitzráyim
The assumption that the meaning of w'ximmesh is to take one-fifth (or what CB calls a "double-tithe") goes back as far as LXX (apopemptôsatôsan) and is also supported by the Vulg. (quintam partem fructuum). One objection to this reading is that it seems to contradict the suggestion in the next verse w'yiqb'tzu et kol ókhel etc. 'Let all the food...' (except that this could also be explained as a difference between sources). Speiser suggests a different root x-m-sh and translates it as 'to organise, regiment.'

Notes 56: Pharaoh's dreams (41:1-13)

SYNOPSIS: One morning Pharaoh is very concerned about what two dreams he had that night could possibly mean, and none of the kingdom's wise men can tell him. Pharaoh's embarrassed cup-bearer suddenly remembers his encounter with Joseph in jail, and tells Pharaoh how Joseph had correctedly predicted his fate and that of the unfortunate baker.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

EAS, p. 316: "No appreciable progress has been made in the effort to establish the historical setting of the episode, and with it the identity of the Pharaoh 'who knew Joseph.'" CB goes further (p. 354): "Probably neither the author of the original story nor any of the editors of the Pentateuch identified this Pharaoh with any particular king of Egypt. Many theories on the subject have been current at various times." However, this is not to say that the basis for the whole story is of necessity completely fictional. EAS again:

On the other hand, the incidental detail is authentically Egyptian. Pharaoh elevates Joseph to the typically Egyptian post of Vizier (43). This is corroborated by the transfer to Joseph of the royal seal (42), inasmuch as the Vizier was known as the "Sealbearer of the King of Lower Egypt" as far back as the third millennium... The gift of the gold chain is another authentic touch. The three names in vs. 45 are Egyptian in type and components; so, too, in all probability, is the escorts' cry of "Abrek" (43).

41:2 hay'or
This is the BH name for the River Nile.

ba'axu
'In the reeds.' An Egyptian loanword (CB).

41:8 kol xarTumme mitzráyhim
Concerning xarTummim, CB: "The word... is only found (a) of Egyptians, here and in Exod. vii-x, and (b) in Daniel, where its use is due to imitation of the story of Joseph."

41:9 mazkir
The meanings of this causative verb (from z-k-r 'to remember') include 'make known.' This would be behind Speiser's 'I must make confession' and JPS's 'I must make mention', which are preferable to the 'I remember' found in KJV, ESV and others. The latter may have been influenced by the LXX anamimnêiskô (despite the Vulg. confiteor) and also, perhaps, by 40:23 w'lo zakhar sar hammashqim et yosef wayyishkaxéhu 'The chief cup-bearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.'

Notes 55: Interpreter of dreams (40:1-23)

SYNOPSIS: Still in Potiphar's jail, Joseph displays a talent for interpreting dreams. Pharaoh's cup-bearer and baker, who have both been sent to jail by an irate Pharaoh, have disconcerting dreams one night, and Joseph tells their meaning: the cup-bearer is going to get his job back, and the baker is going to be executed. Three days later, as Joseph predicted, these things happen. The cup-bearer promises he will put in a good word for Joseph with Pharaoh but he forgets, and Joseph continues to languish in prison.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

This is a key episode for the development of the narrative of the Joseph story. The present passage provides the latter, understood as a literary work, with both character development and a good plot. 

The important way this episode contributes to the development of the plot is that this is where we learn, and what is more, somone in Egypt learns, that Joseph can interpret dreams. This skill will be the key that gets him out of prison and into Pharaoh's presence when Pharaoh himself is troubled by his dreams and needs an interpreter. And once he has Pharaoh's attention, he manages to impress the ruler so much that instead of being sent back to prison to rot, he embarks on a great new career which will change not only his own life course but that of his entire family and even, it might be argued, world history. None of that would have happened if Joseph didn't know a lot about dreams, and that is why this episode is key to the plot of Joseph's story, because this is the place where his special talent surfaces.

Now for the episode's relevance to character development. When Joseph was sold into slavery he was still an immature youth; the episode with Potiphar and his wife showed him developing into a man and suffering a "growing pain"; here, on the other hand, after the passage of some time (we know not how much, possibly many years), we are observing him for the first time as a man. Once a dreamer, Joseph is now an interpreter of other people's dreams, though he has the custom of insisting that only God possesses that information, except when He wishes to share it with somebody, and that he himself has no wish to attribute to himself a divine power, but is simply God's mouthpiece.

So when the cup-bearer complains to Joseph that nobody has been able to tell him the meaning (pitron, from p-t-r 'to interpret or explain a dream') of his dream, Joseph prefaces his reply with the words (v. 8) halo lelohim pitronim 'Are not pitronim of God?', that is, surely you know that only God is in charge of the meanings of dreams; but having said this, he invites them to tell their dreams: sapp'ru na li 'Go ahead and tell me.' A little further on in the story, when Pharaoh has Joseph brought to him to tell him the meaning of his own dreams, he begins by telling Joseph much the same thing as the cup-bearer and the baker (41:15): xalom xalámti ufoter en oto 'I have had a dream and nobody knows its meaning', adding: wa'ani shamá‛ti ‛alékha lemor tishma‛ xalom liftor oto 'I have heard about you that as soon as you hear a dream you can tell its meaning', to which Joseph counters (41:16): bil‛aday elohim ya‛ane et sh'lom par‛o 'It has nothing to do with me! It is God who will respond for your (lit. Pharaoh's) well-being', and then he listens to Pharaoh's dreams and tells him what they mean. To a modern reader, this makes it look like Joseph is very resourceful but is careful not to take credit personally for his gift: if he knows the meaning of these dreams, it can only be because God wants him to.

While this makes Joseph seem a very devout man, it is a different kind of relationship with God that he seems to have than that of his father Jacob and great-grandfather Abraham, the patriarchs, who sometimes had quite lengthy chats with God (not Isaac). We are never told of any one-on-one communication between God and Joseph (or any of his brothers); we don't even see Joseph pray to God. All we see is that in his dealings with men, Joseph is careful not to take credit personally for all that he achieves: it is God doing it. 

But coming back to the dreams, in this story it is evident that a lot more store was set by them in the cultures of the ancient world (and not only that of the patriarchs) than in our own culture today (where we have something called science instead), and therefore the ability to interpret the "meaning" of dreams was a revered skill which certain special people were believed to possess. Those who possessed such skills used mysterious methods to perform them which the Israelites refused to believe in, calling them hocus-pocus or magic, which they loathed. To them, such procedures were tantamount to idol worship, the worship of false gods. It was not that they didn't believe in the importance of dreams and the possibility that they carry meanings; but what they could not admit was that magic was any good at revealing the meaning, because there was no such thing as magic, only the one God who is the only source of such knowledge, and He will give that knowledge to whomever He sees fit, when and if He pleases. They would have argued that you can't force God to reveal the meaning of a dream, anymore than you can force Him to make it rain by doing a dance. A man like Joseph who understands this and relies on God to learn the meaning of people's dreams, then, is to them not a magician, he is merely a man who has wisdom. Genesis resists calling Joseph a pitron, calling him instead a xakham.

Some modern commentators conclude, because they believe the material in the present passage comes from a different source than that which tells of Joseph's imprisonment, that in the original version of the episode we are now reading Joseph was not a prisoner. Rather, he was Potiphar's slave whose job it was to look after the needs of the prisoners under Potiphar's responsibility. True, the passage contains a few allusions to Joseph's condition as prisoner; these, it is argued, could have been added later. Even if there is any truth in the theory, it refers to the sources of the material, not to the shape of the narrative as we find it in the extant book of Genesis.


40:1 wayhi axar hadd'varim ha'élle 
Lit. 'After these things...', i.e. 'some time later', but this common opening phrase (cf. 15:1, 22:1, 22:20, 39:7) does not specify how much later and often, as here, leaves the exact chronology open. Thus we do not know how long it is since the business with Potiphar's wife happened, or how long Joseph had been in prison when the present episode took place.

xaT'u
'Gave offence', not 'sinned'. On the meaning of the verb x-T-' see my note on 20:6 here.

40:4 yamim
Another extremely unspecific indication of time; we have no idea how many days!

40:10-11
I quote CB:

In his dream the chief butler sees the whole process of wine-making pass before his eyes in a few seconds. The buds appear upon the vine branches, they unfold into blossoms, and ripen into grapes. He gathers them; presses them forthwith into Pharaoh's cup; they become wine; and, as the royal cup-bearer, he serves the wine to Pharaoh. The ordinary interpretation is that the king drank the fresh grape-juice; but as the butler sees the natural process of the growth of the grapes take place with dream-like swiftness, so probably it is taken for granted that the juice became wine in similar fashion.

40:13 yissa far‛o et roshèkha
Lit. 'Pharaoh will raise your head.' This is an idiomatic expression; the meaning is: 'Pharaoh will pardon you', as is clear from what follows: wahashiv'kha ‛al kannèkha... 'and he will restore you to your post etc.'

40:15 ki gunnov gunnavti
Pual (i.e. piel passive) of g-n-b 'to steal' in the sense of 'kidnap' or something similar.

babbor
Curiously, here and in 41:14 the same word is used, bor, to refer to the prison where Joseph is being held as was used in ch. 37 to refer to the pit in which he was placed by his brothers at Dothan. Here Joseph uses the term and in the next chapter is is employed by the narrator.

40:16 sh'losha sale xori
The meaning of xori is uncertain and there are various conjectures: 'three baskets of white bread', 'three wicker baskets'...? I am doubtful of the 'white bread' idea, since in v. 17 we are told what the top basket (hassal ha‛elyon) contained. The implication seems to be that the other two baskets were empty, which would be much more practical if they are balanced on his head! But in that case, they are not "three baskets of white bread."

40:19 yissa far‛o et rosh'kha me‛alékha
Lit. 'Pharaoh will lift (or raise) your head off you.' A cruel word-play by the narrator, because cf. v. 13. In the present case the expression is meant literally, not as an idiom meaning to pardon: Pharaoh is actually going to cut of his head! Again, the following words disambiguate.

40:20 wayyissa et rosh sar hammashqim w'et rosh sar ha'ofim b'tokh ‛avadaw
This is yet a third use of the collocation n-s-' et rosh X lit 'to raise someone's head' (cf. vv. 13, 19), and with it the word play apparently continues. Either it is a way of reiterating the pun (Pharaoh did indeed raise both their heads - though in very different ways!), or else, as suggested in EAS, perhaps the author playfully uses it here in yet a third sense, 'to single out.'


END OF SECTION 9

So that's the end of Part I of Joseph's story. In it we have seen Joseph, the firstborn son of his doting father's most loved wife and a "child of his old age", grow up as a rather special child in more ways than one: disliked by his older brothers (the bullied schoolboy comes to mind), favourited by his father (the gift of the k'tónet passim), and a child who has unusual dreams (which signalled him as special according to the mentality of ancient times). At the tender age of seventeen his life "spins out of control" and thereafter moves from drama to spectacular drama: he is nearly murdered by his own brothers, is carried away to Egypt and becomes a slave there, becomes the most trusted man of an Egyptian nobleman, falls victim to his master's lusting wife, is thrown into jail, is put in charge of all the prisoners, interprets their dreams and his interpretations come true. Yet as the curtain falls Joseph is still a prisoner in Egypt. Even the cup-bearer whose return to grace Joseph correctly predicted forgets to help him out when he has the chance. But the biggest thrills are yet to come, after the break. Ice lolly?

Notes 54: Chez Potiphar (39:1-23)

SYNOPSIS: Meanwhile back in Egypt, Joseph is sold to the Pharaoh's employee, Potiphar, who quickly gains trust in him and puts him in charge of his own household. A good-looking young man, Joseph falls into a trap. Potiphar's wife lusts after him, and when Joseph loyally refuses her advances, she turns against him and through lies gets Joseph put into the prison on Potiphar's compound. But Joseph finds his way into the jailer's good books and gets put in charge of the other prisoners. Thus a pattern emerges, despite all the calamities that happen to him, God is on Joseph's side and he always comes out on top.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

Another saucy story! If this were Hollywood we would put it down to the usual ploy of making sure there are a couple of sex scenes to keep audiences happy. And to be honest, I don't think we can say with any certainty that it didn't work that way with early audiences of Genesis: who's to say? (Though of course later generations of straight-laced bible teachers would never admit that.) Is it just a coincidence that after the Tamar story, when Genesis resumes the telling of Joseph's story, near the beginning of "Act II" there is yet another "bed scene"? Or was it a calculated crowd pleaser? None of the above?

The business between Potiphar's wife and Joseph is positioned in the centre of the present passage (consisting of the twenty-three verses of ch. 39) and takes up most of the chapter, basically verses 7-18. This anecdote is preceded by six introductory verses (1-6) and followed by another five (19-23), and extends for twelve verses which is just over half the chapter. In other words, the "story of Potiphar's wife" is the centrepiece of the chapter and the passage in narrative terms. In comparison with the majority of narrative segments in Genesis, this may be considered fairly drawn out and detailed, as if the audience is being invited to imagine the scene and dwell on its images: the wife trying to seduce Joseph, Joseph's very correct attempts at tactful refusal in what must have been a tremendously delicate situation and his attempt to explain his reasons diplomatically, her continued insistence and their physical confrontation, the wife's fury at having her advances spurned, her angry, obstinate behaviour, Joseph's anxious eagerness to get away and the wife's final move to obtain revenge by falsely accusing Joseph of attempted rape: a dozen verses tell all that.

But it is what comes before (vv. 1-6) and after (vv. 19-23) the scene that frame it narratively and thematically: narratively, in that those verses place the anecdote in the context of the continuing vicissitudes of Joseph's career, and thematically by pointing out that, in spite of the downs that keep alternating with the ups, God is always on his side and repeatedly makes sure that, come what may, Joseph is invincible and will always come out on top, and this is something that the rest of his story will go much further to demonstrate. So this is the essential drift of the main story: Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers' treachery but, though God's help and his own ability, he ends up in a very good position on the house of one of the king's officials, Potiphar; despite it all, Potiphar's wife turns on him and through another display of treachery he ends up out of grace with his master and in prison, and yet, lo and behold, once more his fortune begins to improve and he is given another position of trust, respect and responsibility even though he is still in prison for something he didn't do: and with the passage concluding there, we will have to wait and see what is going to happen next, but we can already expect, having got this far, that it will be something special. And if that is all too dry and edifying for some of the audience, there is always the entertainment provided by the fun and games that go on in madam's bedroom. Who needs Hollywood script writers?

By now we will not be surprised to find that, according to modern bible scholars, the story of Potiphar's wife no doubt started life as a separate tale, which the authors of Genesis managed to integrate very satisfactorily into the Joseph story-line. In its earlier version, the story might not have been told about Potiphar, and if we look closely, we shall see that the only place in this chapter where he is referred to by name in in the first verse, while there is only one other place in Genesis where the name occurs, and that was in the last verse of the passage preceding the Tamar story (37:36). In the body of the story, Joseph's master is always referred to just that: adonaw 'his master.'

The way Potiphar is brought back into the story here is by appending to his name the explanation (JPS) s'ris par‛o sar haTTabbaxim ish mitzri 'a certain Egyptian... a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward', which is a repetition of information we already knew because in the first occurrence he was also described as s'ris par‛o sar haTTabbaxim 'a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward.' Now of course we are free to make what we like of the repetition. It may just be there in order to jog the audience's memory, in case we have forgotten who Potiphar is (and where we were in the story) given that Potiphar was only mentioned the one time right at the end of the passage prior to the jump to Judah and Tamar. Or perhaps, as suggested in EH, it is to draw our attention to points worth emphasising because they are central to the story that is about to unfold: we need to understand that Joseph's master is an Egyptian and that he is an important person who is close to Pharaoh. Alternatively, we might want to go with CB (p. 347) and EAS (p. 304) which both express the opinion that the naming and description of Potiphar at the start of the present passage are "an insertion of the editor" into a story which otherwise would have continued to stand as an autonomous narrative, serving precisely to link them together as part of the same saga.


39:1 poTifar
Potiphar is an authentic Egyptian name (EAS).

39:2 wayhi YHWH et yosef
'The Lord was with Joseph.' This phrase occurs again in v. 21, underlining its fundamental theme; and see also v. 3. As people in some cultures phrase it: Things happen for a reason (Por algo suceden las cosas).

wayhi b'vet adonaw hammitzri
'He stayed in the house of his Egyptian master.' As a bought slave, Joseph might have been sent to work in the fields. That he remained to work in his master's house was the first stroke of good luck.

39:3 wayyar adonaw ki YHWH itto w'khol asher hu ‛ose YHWH matzlíax b'yado
'His master saw that the Lord was with him [i.e. Joseph] and and [in] whatever he did the Lord made him successful'. Apparently Joseph was good at everything he did, but the merit is attributed in the text to God who is "with him."

39:6 wayya‛azov kol asher lo b'yad yosef w'lo yada‛ itto m'uma ki im halléxem asher hu okhel
JPS: 'He left all that he had in Joseph's hands and, with him there, he paid attention to nothing save the food that he ate.' Some complicated alternative ways of understanding this have been suggested (both CB and EAS refer to a possible connection between the mention of "the food that he ate" and Egyptian dietary laws), but I don't see much need for it: it probably means what it looks like it does, namely that all Potiphar had to do was come to the table and eat (if they had tables), because Joseph was in charge of the rest.

39:7 wattomer shikhva ‛immi
'She said: Lie with me.' The EH commentary notes the apparent abruptness: "There are no preliminaries, no words of love. Her demand reflects her awareness of Joseph's slave status." I am not sure this is warranted. To begin with, at the best of times Genesis tends to be terse and to the point. Secondly, remember that there is no indirect speech in BH, so this would be the normal, indeed pretty much the only way to say what in English can be said like this: She told him to sleep with her. Thirdly, the verb form used is not the simple imperative, which would have been sh'khav, but the extended form shikhva which might, if translated as direct speech in English, be rendered as: Come sleep with me! rather than a raw: Sleep with me.

39:8-9
Joseph's little speech to Potiphar's wife in which he gives his reasons for declining her invitation consists of three sentences: hen adoni lo yada‛ etc. (I have the responsibility of looking after my master's household), enénnu gadol babbáyit hazze mimménni... (you are the only thing in this house I do not have a right to) and w'ekh e‛ese... w'xaTáti lelohim (how could I sin to God so?). Or as EH puts it: "First he points to the abuse of trust that would be involved, then to the violation of the husband's proprietary rights over his wife, then to the religious and moral nature of the offense."

39:12 wayyános wayyetze haxútza
Lit. 'he fled and he went outside.' Acc. to EH, this refers to two acts in sequence: first he makes a dash to get away, and then he walks out in a dignified manner so as not to attract attention. I really doubt it: my guess is that both verbs refer to the same action and are well translated as something like 'he fled outside' in English or salió corriendo or salió huyendo in Spanish. The same formula is used in v. 15, where from the context it is even more obvious what it must mean.

39:14 ‛ivri
On the overtones of this term, see my comments on ch. 14. 


39:20 wayyiqqax... wayyitt'néhu
Lit. '(Joseph's master) took (him) and put him (in the prison).' Inconsistently, the same commentators of EH who insist (see note on v. 12) that wayyános wayyetze describes a sequence of two discreet actions have no objection to translating wayyiqqax wayyitt'néhu, a similar chain of two verbs, as a single action: 'So Joseph's master had him put in prison.'