Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
48:1: VA YEHI ACHAREY HA DEVARIM HA ELEH VA YOMER LE YOSEPH HINEH AVIYCHA CHOLEH VA YIKACH ET SHENEY VANAV IMO ET MENASHEH VE ET EPHRAYIM
וַיְהִי אַחֲרֵי הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וַיֹּאמֶר לְיוֹסֵף הִנֵּה אָבִיךָ חֹלֶה וַיִּקַּח אֶת שְׁנֵי בָנָיו עִמּוֹ אֶת מְנַשֶּׁה וְאֶת אֶפְרָיִם
KJ (King James translation): And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
BN (BibleNet translation): And it came to pass after these things, that someone said to Yoseph, "Do you know that your father is sick?" And he took with him his two sons, Menasheh and Ephrayim.
Again he (or at least his sons) gets the blessings before the other brothers. Why? The tribal orders of precedence dictate otherwise. (And if, once again, the answer is, "this makes for better story-telling", then that is fine, but we cannot also take the document as a divinely written piece of literal and actual history from which legal precedents can be deduced.)
48:2 VA YAGED LE YA'AKOV VA YOMER HINEH BINCHA YOSEPH BA ELEYCHA VA YIT'CHAZEK YISRA-EL VA YESHEV AL HA MITA
וַיַּגֵּד לְיַעֲקֹב וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּה בִּנְךָ יוֹסֵף בָּא אֵלֶיךָ וַיִּתְחַזֵּק יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּשֶׁב עַל הַמִּטָּה
KJ: And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee: and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.
BN: And someone told Ya'akov, saying, "Be aware, your son Yoseph is on his way." And Yisra-El strengthened himself, and sat up in bed.
Note the constant interchanging now of Ya'akov with Yisra-El.
48:3 VA YOMER YA'AKOV EL YOSEPH EL SHADAI NIR'AH ELAI BE LUZ BE ERETS KENA'AN VA YEVARECH OTI
וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל יוֹסֵף אֵל שַׁדַּי נִרְאָה אֵלַי בְּלוּז בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתִי
KJ: And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me,
BN: And Ya'akov said to Yoseph, "El Shadai appeared to me at Luz in the land of Kena'an, and blessed me...
This is complex. First the place, Luz. In Genesis 28 we are told that Ya'akov left home, and came to Beit-El (we can ignore for the moment that he was instructed - Genesis 28:2 - to go to Betu-El, the person, not Beit-El, the place); but verse 19 informs us that "he called the name of that place Beit-El, but the name of the city was Luz at the first." It seems odd that he would use its former name, and not the name he personally changed it to. To which the answer is that he probably didn't change its name from Beit-El to Luz, because Beit-El and Luz are about a mile apart, and not connected as shrines, and this is simply a later misunderstanding. Genesis 35 then finds him returning home from Padan Aram; in verse 1 he is instructed "Arise, go up to Beit-El, and dwell there; and make there an altar to the god who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esav your brother". But in verse 6: "So Ya'akov came to Luz, which is in the land of Kena'an - the same is Beit-El - he and all the people that were with him."
There is of course a simple explanation to this, which is that the people of the time of the story would have known the place as Beit-El, and may not have known that it was once identified with Luz (or possibly vice-versa) - in the same way that a modern European might not know that Zimbabwe was once Rhodesia or Botswana Bechuanaland, that Myanmar was previously Burma, et cetera. But the time of the telling of the story in our version is the 5th century CE, and the contention of the orthodox is that the Torah belongs to YHVH and Mosheh, about a thousand years before then. What was the name of the place at that time? The answer to that seems to lie in the Book of Joshua 18:13, which tells us that "From there the border continued to Luz, to the side of Luz (that is, Beit-El) southward"; which clearly assumes that Beit-El is the known name, and Luz the former, confirming the change, though whether the change was made by Ya'akov or someone else remains uncertain - and still leaves us wondering why he continues to call it Luz if it was he who changed it.
Then the god, El Shadai. When Yitschak sends Ya'akov away to Padan Aram, in Genesis 28, he blesses him in the name of El Shadai (verse 3) for his fertility, but in verse 4 he blesses him in the name of Elohim for the land of his inheritance, and alludes to Av-Raham receiving that inheritance at Beit-El - though the Torah tells us it was Av-Ram, before his change of name. The text in question is Genesis 12; and "in question" is a deliberately chosen phrase, because it is neither Elohim nor El Shadai who sends Av-Ram there, but YHVH, and actually he doesn't go to Beit-El or to Luz, but, as we are told: "he moved on from there [Moreh] to the mountain on the east of Beit-El, and pitched his tent, having Beit-El on the west and Ai on the east; and he built an altar there to YHVH, and called upon the name of YHVH." YHVH, not El Shadai - and this despite the statement made by YHVH to Mosheh in Exodus 6:3 that "I appeared to Av-Raham, to Yitschak, and to Ya'akov, as El Shadai, but by my name YHWH I did not make myself known to them."
48:4 VA YOMER ELAI HINENI MAPHRECHA VE HIRBIYTICHA VE NETATICHA LIK'HAL AMIM VE NATATI ET HA ARETS HA ZOT LE ZAR'ACHA ACHAREYCHA ACHUZAT OLAM
וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי הִנְנִי מַפְרְךָ וְהִרְבִּיתִךָ וּנְתַתִּיךָ לִקְהַל עַמִּים וְנָתַתִּי אֶת הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת לְזַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ אֲחֻזַּת עוֹלָם
KJ: And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.
BN: "And he said to me, 'Here I am, the one who is going to make you fruitful, and multiply your numbers, and create whole nations out of you; and I will give this land to your descendants after you for an everlasting possession'...
All very well, but they are now in Mitsrayim (Egypt), and not much likelihood of a return. And a new covenant in the meanwhile, confirming he will become great in Mitsrayim, not Kena'an. This covenant tends not to be remembered when the covenants are listed, possibly because what came to pass was the very opposite of its promise. But the way it is phrased allows us once again to see the true nature of these covenants, which are really just a form of chanukat ha bayit, a self-giving of self-confidence to he who prays for it, in the face of uncertainty, and not in any sense a legal document validating the right to live in that particular piece of land as lord and master.
48:5 VE ATAH SHENEY VANEYCHA HA NOLADIM LECHA BE ERETS MITSRAYIM AD BO'I ELEYCHA MITSRAYEMAH LI HEM EPHRAYIM U MENASHEH KI RE'U-VEN VE SHIM'ON YIHEYU LI
וְעַתָּה שְׁנֵי בָנֶיךָ הַנּוֹלָדִים לְךָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם עַד בֹּאִי אֵלֶיךָ מִצְרַיְמָה לִי הֵם אֶפְרַיִם וּמְנַשֶּׁה כִּרְאוּבֵן וְשִׁמְעוֹן יִהְיוּ לִי
KJ: And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.
BN: "And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Mitsrayim before I came to you in Mitsrayim, they are mine, Ephrayim and Menasheh, even as Re'u-Ven and Shim'on are mine...
Meaning what precisely; that he accepts them into the tribe, despite their having a non-tribal mother? This is hugely significant, and provides a major challenge to Rashi's argument on the matter of "Who is a Jew?" - see my notes to Genesis 16:2/3. The next verse will confirm this.
The Friday night tradition in every Jewish household for centuries has been the placing of the father's, or the grandfather's hands on the heads of the children, and blessing them, "May you be like Ephrayim and Menasheh", without any sense within the prayer or the custom what being "like" might actually mean. Rabbis like to try to resolve this by contending that Menasheh and Ephrayim were the only brothers in the Bible who really got on well, though there is no proving evidence of this inside the text, only an absence of the opposite; but they are such minor characters, whose stories are barely told, that there is no reason for there to be any. The one and only thing that is known about them is that their mother was an Egyptian, the daughter of the High Priest of On: wrong tribe, wrong country, wrong religion.
Note the order in which he states them: Ephrayim first, then Menasheh, the wrong way round, previsioning the way that he will bless them. Is the blessing, accompanying their formal acceptance into the tribe, in fact a ceremony of adoption? He "accepts" the boys as his, precisely equal to Re'u-Ven and Shim'on, the first two sons of his first (regardless of the fact that she was not his favourite) wife. Yoseph, on the other hand, is being formally disinherited (see the following verse), both by Ya'akov now, and in the tribal structure later on. The adoption is necessary to save the boys from the consequences of Yoseph's disinheritance, and his disinheritance is necessary, not simply because he has married out, but because he has patently adopted the cults, practices and beliefs of his wife's religion, and so, like Yishma-El and Esav before him, he has actually disinherited himself by choosing to leave his tribe for his wife's. The adoption - of which Yoseph clearly approves; his actions and statements bear this out - are the grandfather's means of bringing the boys back in (and by good fortune, they also provide the Redactor with a way to acknowledge that Yoseph was probably never a part of the Beney Yisra-Eli family in the first place).
There is a futher significance to this, applicable in much later Jewish history. Your father was forced to convert to Christianity by the Inquisition, or to Islam by the Caliph, or to Communism by Joe Stalin; in his heart and even in secret, he managed to maintain some of his Judaism, but Kashrut was impossible, the synagogue was burned down, a minyan was too likely to include informers, and the penalty for being found out was burning at the stake or beheading. And forced to convert included being forced to practice it fully and publicly, so that there would be no scope for accusation. A non-Jewish wife then, inevitably. And children who, based on the insistence that the mother's religion was the one that counted, were themselves not counted as Jewish. And yet. And yet. On a Friday evening, in secret, a grandfatherly hand on each of the boy's heads, and "May you be like Ephrayim and Menasheh" - re-adopted, accepted back because it is understood that, just like Yoseph in his prison, departure from the faith had been an act of pragmatism, of expediency, of survival, not one of choice.
48:6 U MOLADET'CHA ASHER HOLADETA ACHAREYHEM LECHA YIHEYU AL SHEM ACHEYHEM YIKAR'U BE NACHALATAM
וּמוֹלַדְתְּךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹלַדְתָּ אַחֲרֵיהֶם לְךָ יִהְיוּ עַל שֵׁם אֲחֵיהֶם יִקָּרְאוּ בְּנַחֲלָתָם
KJ: And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance.
BN: "But any other children that you father after them, they shall be yours; they shall be called after the name of their brothers in their inheritance.
We have returned again and again to this discussion; at no point have we received information quite so clear-cut as this. It is not immediately obvious what this means, but it is likely part of the adoption process. If Yoseph is indeed already rejected, then the boys cannot be be given his tribal name: Menasheh ben Yoseph, Ephraim ben Yoseph; but allowing them to be called "after the names of their brothers in their inheritance - Menasheh ben Re'u-Ven, say, or Ephrayim ben Shim'on, confirms their belonging to the tribe, and to their having a clan-association. But what is really intended here is their naming as Ephrayim ben Yisra-El and Menasheh ben Yisra-El, by which they become full members of the tribe of the Beney Yisra-El, and from there the receipt of tribal lands in Kena'an.
The remaining question, though it can only be hypothetical, is: what if Yoseph, now reunited with his family, were to marry a second wife, within the tribe, and have children with her; what would Yoseph's status be then, and what would be the status of those children? Why hypothetical, and why still worth asking the question anyway? Not because, in the story as written, it does not happen. But because - at least in one of the several version amalgamated here, the "SARIS" version (see various notes in Genesis 40), it could not happen. For Yoseph to have attained the priesthood and the Viziership, he will have had to accept castration, and castration is an abomination in a fertility cult whose first commandment is Tehu u rebu ("Go forth and multiply"). Then is it the castration, and not the foreign wife, that causes Yoseph to be rejected, whether by Ya'akov now, or in the Mosaic and Joshuaic distributions of the tribes later?
48:7 VA ANI BE VO'I MI PADAN METAH ALAI RACHEL BE ERETS KEN'AN BA DERECH BE OD KIVRAT ERETS LAVO EPHRATAH VA EKBER'EHA SHAM BE DERECH EPHRAT HI BEIT LECHEM
וַאֲנִי בְּבֹאִי מִפַּדָּן מֵתָה עָלַי רָחֵל בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּעוֹד כִּבְרַת אֶרֶץ לָבֹא אֶפְרָתָה וָאֶקְבְּרֶהָ שָּׁם בְּדֶרֶךְ אֶפְרָת הִוא בֵּית לָחֶם
KJ: And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem.
BN: "And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died on me in the land of Kena'an on the way, when there was still some way to go to Ephrat; and I buried her there, on the way to Ephrat - you would know it as Beit Lechem."
Why is he telling this now? Does it really belong with his earlier request to be buried in Kena'an? Yoseph was old enough (seventeen) when his brothers sold him that he would have known where his mother was buried, so at most this is a reminder to tend the grave; and besides, he was there, though possibly too young to be fully aware of it, when it happened? Rachel is the only matriarch not buried at Machpelah.
The reference to Beit Lechem being Ephrat is hugely important, to both the King David and the Jesus stories; and especially to commentators who need evidence to support their hypotheses. In full it is Beit Lechem Ephratah - the house (shrine or Temple) of the Corn-God of the Euphrates, which is a sobriquet for Tammuz, the Babylonian equivalent of Osher (Osiris) in Egypt and Ba'al in Beit Anatot (Bethany). Tammuz was "born" every mid-winter's day (Sol Invictus) on the floor of the threshing-floor (manger), and harvested by winnowing (mythologically: crucified) at the spring (Pesach) and autumn (Sukot/Thanksgiving) festivals.
It is interesting that Ya'akov knows it as Ephrat, and not as Beit Lechem; but either he, or perhaps the Redactor for the benefit of their listener, feels the need to explain that it is Beit Lechem. And why did the name change? For the obvious reason that Tammuz-worship was anathema to the Beney Yisra-El of the era of monotheism, so dropping the reference to Ephrat allows, hopefully, forgetfulness of the now forbidden cult (though it never was forgotten; there are references to it throughout the Prophets - see Ezekiel 8:14 for example - and self-evidently the Christian story is a re-emergence or revival of Tammuz-worship in the wake of the collapse of Yehudah after the Roman conquest and the destruction of the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im).
He also calls it Padan, not the full Padan Aram.
Even odder, he speaks of Rachel, and not "your mother", as though, perhaps, in a different version of the story, she wasn't.
48:8 VA YAR YISRA-EL ET BENEY YOSEPH VA YOMER MI ELEH
וַיַּרְא יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת בְּנֵי יוֹסֵף וַיֹּאמֶר מִי אֵלֶּה
KJ: And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these?
BN: And Yisra-El saw Yoseph's sons, and he asked, "Who are these?"
Is he going senile, or does this verse belong at the beginning of this episode? There is also a subtle reminder of Ya'akov's last meeting with his own father, who asked a very similar question (Genesis 27:18).
Are we shocked or simply incredulous that Ya'akov has been in Egypt for seventeen years (see 47:28) and apparently this is his first meeting with these grandsons; who are not boys either, since Ya'akov himself commented that they were born before his arrival in Egypt (48:5), which means they are not less than 18. Is there perhaps a sense that Yoseph, being a busy man with affairs of state to deal with, doesn't manage to get out to Goshen very often, while the boys would rather spend their free time at court than have to go to grandpa's? How odd if that is so, given how much Yoseph wept when his father first arrived.
48:9 VA YOMER YOSEPH EL AVIV BANAI HEM ASHER NATAN LI ELOHIM BA ZEH VA YOMAR KACHEM NA ELAI VA AVARACHEM
וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל אָבִיו בָּנַי הֵם אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לִי אֱלֹהִים בָּזֶה וַיֹּאמַר קָחֶם נָא אֵלַי וַאֲבָרֲכֵם
KJ: And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them.
BN: And Yoseph said to his father, "They are my sons, whom Elohim has given me here." And he said, "Bring them nearer to me, please, so that I can bless them.
This is really a matter of literary device again. Having adopted them, the giving of the blessing no longer shocks the orthodox; the other way around and there would be gasps: you can't bless them, Ya'akov, they are the sons of an Egyptian woman, a shiksah: the boy married out; think back to Eli-Ezer and Esav.
As with Yitschak, the blessing will be done in the "wrong" order, the older son being replaced by the younger - overtones again of the ritual regicide and/or of ultimogeniture. The question that remains to be answered, given how often this tale of the supplanting of the elder by the younger occurs in the book: not "was it really deliberate, or accidental, as claimed in verse 12 below?" but "at what point in Yisra-Elite history did the switch from matrilineal to patrilineal descent, and from primogeniture to ultimogeniture, take place, and why was it so difficult to implement that it required an entire set of myths and legends to give it the weight of law by precedent?"
End of first fragment.
48:10 VE EYNEY YISRA-EL KAVDU MI ZOKEN LO YUCHAL LIROT VA YAGESH OTAM ELAV VA YISHAK LAHEM VA YECHABEK LAHEM
וְעֵינֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כָּבְדוּ מִזֹּקֶן לֹא יוּכַל לִרְאוֹת וַיַּגֵּשׁ אֹתָם אֵלָיו וַיִּשַּׁק לָהֶם וַיְחַבֵּק לָהֶם
KJ: Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced them.
BN: Now Yisra-El's eyes were dim with age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near to him; and he kissed them, and embraced them.
Yitschak too was blind when he gave the wrong blessing (Genesis 27:1); though this is not the same by detail as what happened then, even if it is the same outcome (and it may well be that Yitschak had the same intent). Here Ya'akov knows precisely what he is doing (though we also wondered if, perhaps, Yitschak also knew precisely what he was doing at the time, Ya'akov's voice especially... see my notes there). Ultimo v primogeniture.
48:11 VA YOMER YISRA-EL EL YOSEPH RE'OH PHANEYCHA LO PHILALTI VE HINEH HER'AH OTI ELOHIM GAM ET ZAR'ECHA
וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל יוֹסֵף רְאֹה פָנֶיךָ לֹא פִלָּלְתִּי וְהִנֵּה הֶרְאָה אֹתִי אֱלֹהִים גַּם אֶת זַרְעֶךָ
KJ: And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed.
BN: And Yisra-El said to Yoseph, "I hadn't thought to see your face, and lo Elohim has let me see your children too."
There is an implicit irony in this. He can't actually "see" Yoseph's face clearly at all, nor the grandsons - or if he can, then he isn't so blind as to mix up the blessings. The irony is also a play on Yoseph's "other" name - his official title, just as Ya'akov's is Yisra-El - Tsaphnat Pa'ne'ach, in Egyptian, and meaning "Saviour Of The Age" in the Egyptian language; but in the language of the Beney Yisra-El Pa'ne'ach is the face, and Tsaphnat Pa'ne'ach "the keeper of the secret". Ya'akov acquired his new name, his official title, at a place connected with the Pa'ne'ach too - at Penu-El, "the face of El".
ELOHIM: But El Shadai specifically in verse 3.
48:12 VA YOTSE YOSEPH OTAM ME IM BIRKAV VA YISHTACHU LE APHAV ARTSAH
וַיּוֹצֵא יוֹסֵף אֹתָם מֵעִם בִּרְכָּיו וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ לְאַפָּיו אָרְצָה
KJ: And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and he bowed himself with his face to the earth.
BN: And Yoseph brought them out from between his knees; and he fell down on his face on the ground.
Which makes them little more than toddlers, and in that case quite possible that Ya'akov hasn't seen them very often, that he isn't sure which one is which - but this only works if, yet again, we have more than one version, because in the other, as noted above, Ya'akov has been in Egypt seventeen years, and the boys were born before he got there. (And/or we have to rethink how we understand the calculation of time in the Tanach; perhaps 17 years in his world was only 4 in ours).
YISHTACHU again. What exactly is the difference between this and YISHTACHAVU? That is not a rhetorical question; I do not know the answer. I think it is the same as the difference between "disoriented" and "disorientated" in English, but I can't explain that either.
48:13 VA YIKACH YOSEPH ET SHENEYHEM ET EPHRAYIM BIYMIYNO MIS'MOL YISRA-EL VE ET MENASHEH VISMO'LO MIYMYIN YISRA-EL VA YAGESH ELAV
וַיִּקַּח יוֹסֵף אֶת שְׁנֵיהֶם אֶת אֶפְרַיִם בִּימִינוֹ מִשְּׂמֹאל יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת מְנַשֶּׁה בִשְׂמֹאלוֹ מִימִין יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיַּגֵּשׁ אֵלָיו
KJ: And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him.
BN: And Yoseph took them both, Ephrayim in his right hand towards Yisra-El's left hand, and Menasheh in his left hand towards Yisra-El'’s right hand, and brought them near him.
This verse, and the several that follow, are for the benefit of those among my readers who are skeptical of my commentaries, who think I am endlessly reading things into the text which just are not there, that I have points to prove, et cetera. The language here is not just extremely precise, it is an idiot's guide in the form of stage directions. Yoseph knows exactly where he is placing his sons, to get the blessings the way he wants them; Ephrayim to his right hand, to make sure he comes to Ya'akov's left, and vice versa with Menasheh. Ya'akov likewise knows which way he wants them, and can see enough to know which boy is which (even though he has apparently never met them before), and which one is the older, and therefore which one is going to get which blessing on his terms, not Yoseph's: because he deliberately crosses his hands over, which has nothing to do with the quality of his eyesight. And of course this left hand right hand business is precisely the meaning of the name of his other son Bin-Yamin.
48:14 VA YISHLACH YISRA-EL ET YEMIYNO VA YASET AL ROSH EPHRAYIM VE HU HA TSA'IR VE ET SMO'LO AL ROSH MENASHEH SIKEL ET YADAV KI MENASHEH HA BECHOR
וַיִּשְׁלַח יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת יְמִינוֹ וַיָּשֶׁת עַל רֹאשׁ אֶפְרַיִם וְהוּא הַצָּעִיר וְאֶת שְׂמֹאלוֹ עַל רֹאשׁ מְנַשֶּׁה שִׂכֵּל אֶת יָדָיו כִּי מְנַשֶּׁה הַבְּכוֹר
KJ: And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn.
BN: And Yisra-El stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephrayim's head, though he was the younger, and he placed his left hand upon Menasheh's head, guiding his hands in full awareness of what he was doing; for Menasheh was the first-born.
SIKEL (סכל): "guiding his hands wittingly" is the very accurate King James translation; this tells us that he knew exactly what he was doing; in this act, then, Ya'akov is acknowledging ultimogeniture, which is the way of all the stories to date in fact. It is also the first instance of a blessing by means of the laying-on of hands. We can presume that Yoseph as an adoptive Egyptian would have expected primogeniture. So important is this difference between Yisra-El and all other peoples of the time, it may be that this was what differentiated, and not the supposed monotheism that patently didn't come into the Yisra-Eli cult till many centuries later.
To do this he had to physically cross his hands over each other, left hand on head of boy on right, right hand on head of boy on left; it is physically impossible to do this unwittingly.
How will Menasheh feel about what has just happened? As if his birthright has been sold, his blessing stolen, his sacrifice refused? Then should we go back and re-read the Kayin and Esav and Yishma-El and Zerach stories in this light?
48:15 VA YEVARECH ET YOSEPH VA YOMAR HA ELOHIM ASHER HIT'HALCHU AVOTAI LEPHANAV AV-RAHAM VE YITSCHAK HA ELOHIM HA RO'EH OTI ME'ODI AD HA YOM HA ZEH
וַיְבָרֶךְ אֶת יוֹסֵף וַיֹּאמַר הָאֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר הִתְהַלְּכוּ אֲבֹתַי לְפָנָיו אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק הָאֱלֹהִים הָרֹעֶה אֹתִי מֵעוֹדִי עַד הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה
KJ: And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day,
BN: And he blessed Yoseph and said, "Ha Elohim, before whom my fathers Av-Raham and Yitschak walked, Ha Elohim who have been my shepherd all my life long until this day...
That dangerous word "shepherd" again; cf Psalm 23, and my notes to Genesis 46:32 and 34.
But also that even more dangerous expression "Ha Elohim"; dangerous in the world of Jewish orthodoxy anyway, because Ya'akov is telling us in no uncertain terms: I, like Av-Raham and Yitschak before me, I am a polytheist. Ha Elohim. The gods - plural.
48:16 HA MALACH HA GO'EL OTI MI KOL RA YEVARECH ET HA NE'ARIM VE YIKAR'E VA HEM SHEMI VE SHEM AVOTAI AV-RAHAM VE YITSCHAK VE YIDGU LA ROV BE KEREV HA ARETS
KJ: The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.
BN: "May the angel who redeemed me from all evil bless these boys; and let my name be named in them, and the name of my fathers Av-Raham and Yitschak; and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the Earth."
What "angel" - and let us be clear that Biblical angels are "messengers", generally understood to be the interpretable light from the stars, and not the winged fairies of Christian and Moslem tradition? There are only two occasions when angels appear in Ya'akov's story, and the second of those is a Christian mistranslation.
The first is at Beit-El, or Luz, as he prefers to name it in verse 3; but when he talks about that to Yoseph as a catalytstic moment in his life, it is the god (El Shadai) that he recalls, not the dream-vision of angels. So perhaps this isn't what he means now, and he is thinking of the second occasion, in Genesis 32:2, after he has agreed his treaty with Lavan, and the latter has turned for home, "And Ya'akov went on his way, and angels of Elohim met him", which leads to Ya'akov naming the place Machanayim, but nothing more than that, because they don't get mentioned again until he wrestles with a "man" (VA YE'AVEK ISH - וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ) at Penu-El; nothing in the text tells us that the "man" was an angel, let alone one of those angels, though this has become part of the erroneous memory of the tale.
Or is it erroneous? In Genesis 32:10/11, after sending his gifts to Esav through his own angels (the word for "angels" and the word for "messengers" is MAL'ACHIM - מַּלְאָכִים), and learning from them that Esav is on his way with four hundred men, Ya'akov prays:
So it would appear to be in the name of this "man", this "messenger of the gods", that Ya'akov is blessing his son and grand-children now. Why is there no scholarship anywhere, of any kind, nor any commentary of note, that discusses this extraordinary and Biblically unique event: a blessing, not in the name of a god, or even a goddess, but of an angel?
Once again it is a fertility blessing; this is not a hope for milk and honey, nor for the statue of liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness, nor for a future Messianic world of peace and goodwill, but specifically a hope for lots of children and grandchildren.
What is really interesting in this blessing is fundamental to many of these stories and to much of Judaism. Unlike Jesus and Buddha, who are übermenschen at the very least, humanised gods or deified humans, in the end Ya'akov (like all the Beney Yisra-Eli patriarchs) is extraordinarily human, full of flaws and faults and frailties, a sinner like the rest of us. He isn't exalted as a god or demi-god. What matters in these stories is not what Ya'akov does but what his god does, regardless of the frailty of his creation. His god has protected Ya'akov - and indeed the story verifies that - not because Ya'akov has kept his part of the bargain, but despite the fact that he hasn't.
AVOTAI: This tells us just how much the Beney Yisra-El then, and the Jews of today still, are a cult of ancestor-worship.
What is understood by GO'EL in this instance = redemption? This needs considerable explanation. Click here for a good starting point.
End of second fragment.
48:17 VA YAR YOSEPH KI YASHIT AVIV YAD YEMIYNO AL ROSH EPHRAYIM VA YERA BE EYNAV VA YITMOCH YAD AVIV LEHASIR OTAH ME AL ROSH EPHRAYIM AL ROSH MENASHEH
KJ: And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.
BN: And when Yoseph saw that his father was laying his right hand on Ephrayim's head, it displeased him, and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephrayim's head and place it on Menasheh's head.
So the right hand is the key hand, the first hand; in that case, does Bin-Yamin not in fact mean "the first son", what the Chinese would call "the number one son"? If Yoseph was displeased, then he can't have known the family tradition. If he was an Egyptian, he wouldn't have known it, because the Egyptians practiced primogeniture.
But on the other hand, this was also part of the Adonis and Tammuz legend, so might it also have been part of the Osiric, before the Hyksos brought a different culture? When Jesus is resurrected he goes to heaven and sits, or sometimes stands, "on the right hand" of his god (Mark 16:19, Acts 7:55).
Why does Jewish law not still maintain ultimogeniture? Savina Teubal would say, because it was an aspect of matriarchalism, and everything matriarchal was deliberately expurgated when Judaism became a patriarchy.
And then it suddenly makes sense; this is why his brothers hated Yoseph: as Kayin hated Havel, as Esav for a long while hated, or at least it was presumed that he would hate Ya'akov: because until the birth of Bin-Yamin he stood to inherit, both the birthright and the blessing!
48:18 VA YOMER YOSEPH EL AVIV LO CHEN AVI KI ZEH HA BECHOR SIM YEMINCHA AL ROSHO
KJ: And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.
BN: And Yoseph said to his father, "Not like that, dad. This one's the first-born. Put your right hand on his head."
English translations find colloquialisms in the Bible difficult to deal with, because they reduce to the banal what is required (on grounds of religious reverence, or literary reverence?) to be formal and exalted. But the truth is, the King James translation above is not what Yoseph is described here as saying.
48:19 VA YEMA'EN AVIV VA YOMER YADA'TI VENI YADA'TI GAM HU YIHEYEH LE AM VE GAM HU YIGDAL VE ULAM ACHIV HA KATON YIGDAL MIMENU VE ZAR'O YIHEYEH MELO HA GOYIM
BN: And his father refused and said, "I know it my son, I know it. He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great. However his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations."
Reflecting very closely the blessing that Yitschak had left for Esav (Genesis 26:39/40) after giving Ya'akov the main one, and the blessing given to Yishma-El after his expulsion (Genesis 17:20). Emphasising again that Ya'akov knows exactly what he's doing.
So that, yet again, a first born son is displaced by his younger brother - almost as if this were a tribal custom that Yoseph didn't know about. If we put together the full list of predominant second-borns, we should also include Av-Ram himself (his departure from Charan, we must presume, was a wandering in the land of Nod, because Nachor had the inheritance of Padan Aram and he therefore had no choice but to "Lech Lecha" in search of an alternative); also Mosheh, who dominates his elder brother Aharon, and in fact King David himself, who like Yoseph was the youngest of a number of elder brothers (at least eight according to 1 Samuel 16:10-11 , but only seven according to 1 Chronicles 2:13-15). Much the same issue has been a controversy inside Christianity for nearly two millennia - references to Jesus having older brothers, which don't simply undermine the Virgin Mary conviction, but also add him to this list.
Or is this simply a way of endowing Ephrayim's later political supremacy with a historic basis? This seems unlikely, especially as the later Kingdom of Ephrayim (after the division of Yisra-El into Yehudah and Ephrayim, following the death of Shelomoh and the civil war between his sons) was not named for the tribe but for a later individual of the same name. Though that supremacy is without doubt. The northern kingdom combining the Le'ahite and Zilpahite tribes was known collectively as Yisra-El or as Ephrayim for several centuries before its total disappearance in 700 BCE when Sennacherib devastated the northern kingdom. Ephrayim's tribal territory was the absolute geographical centre of the kingdom, to the degree that if you drew the whole of Biblical Kena'an as a circle, Ephrayim would be the large central dot.
YADA'TI YADA'TI is very emphatic. The Redactor wants us to understand that Ya'akov meant what he was doing, and that his blindness was not a factor.
48:20 VA YEVARACHEM BA YOM HA HU LEMOR BECHA YEVARECH YISRA-EL LEMOR YESIMCHA ELOHIM KE EPHRAYIM VE CHI MENASHEH VA YASEM ET EPHRAYIM LIPHNEY MENASHEH
KJ: And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.
BN: And he blessed them that day saying, "By you shall Yisra-El bless, saying, 'May Elohim make you as Ephrayim and as Menasheh.'" And he set Ephrayim before Menasheh.
As instructed in the verse, the blessing by Ya'akov of Menasheh and Ephrayim performed here is now a part of Jewish tradition; on Friday nights, every father or grandfather puts his hand on the heads of his sons and the blessing is: "YESIMCHAH ELOHIM KE EPHRAYIM VE CHI MENASHEH - May Elohim make you like Ephrayim and Menasheh". What is interesting is the Rabbi's other explanation of this (see my note to verse 5 for the other other): that, as sons of Yoseph, they had hereditary rights of nobility in Mitsrayim, and could have claimed them after his death; whereas in fact they joined their fellow Beney Yisra-El in slavery and in exile, and for this are exalted above all others. This is palpably false because the history of the Beney Yisra-El in Mitsrayim is not that of supremacy followed by slavery followed by Exodus, as told by the orthodox Hagadah, but something very different, as will be demonstrated in the commentary on Exodus; or it was as the orthodox tell it, and the new rulers gave them no choice. False, either way.
Or was this whole rigmarole simply the creation of an occasion to record a popular proverb? And if so, what did the proverb actually mean? After all, to be blessed like Menasheh doesn't give you a whole heap: loss of birthright, minority status to your younger brother, a central but actually rather unsatisfactory and divided portion of land later in Yisra-El (the swamps of the Yazar-El/Jezreel valley and the southern Golan Heights), and a total lack of halachic recognition because your mother wasn't Jewish and your father clearly didn't keep Judaism in anything like a conventional manner. Not to mention being wiped out from history in 720 BCE.
Ya'akov's blessings of his other sons, in the next chapter, are considerably more poetic, or should we say oracular. Note that he does not actually bless Yoseph at all – unless you count verse 6 as giving him a blessing through his sons, and the next verse, which is a great deal less even than Esav received from Yitschak. Is this a factor of exogamy? No, because Yehudah too has married out and committed incest, but still gets blessed. A further proof perhaps that Yoseph and Bin-Yamin were not his "sons" biologically, which would also explain why Rachel is not buried at Machpelah and why the adoption of Ephrayim and Menasheh was necessary - to the later creators of history, I mean?
48:21 VA YOMER YISRA-EL EL YOSEPH HINEH ANOCHI MET VE HAYAH ELOHIM IMACHEM VE HESHIV ETCHEM EL ERETS AVOTEYCHEM
KJ: And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.
BN: And Yisra-El said to Yoseph, "Behold I am dying; but Elohim will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your forefathers.
The only problem with this is that the land of their forefathers was Mesopotamia, not Kena'an.
Note that he is once again Yisra-El, not Ya'akov, and this his god is Elohim, not El Shadai.
48:22 VA ANI NATATI LECHA SHECHEM ACHAD AL ACHEYCHA ASHER LAKACHTI MI YAD HA EMORI BE CHARBI U VE KASHTI
KJ: Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.
BN: "'Moreover I have given to you one portion above your brothers which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow."
The understanding is that Yoseph has a double portion through his sons, but is himself disinherited. This is rather convenient for the later tribal confederacy, and therefore suggests that once again the Redactor has taken the opportunity to add a convenient last line to a chapter.
But this as a whole is a phrase which the commentators have left alone for centuries, unable to make head or tail of it. And why? Ah, indeed - because it is problematic.
SHECHEM ACHAD (שכם אחד): Problematic because extraordinary! New English Bible gives "one ridge of land"; in the synagogue versions, as quoted here, you will find "one portion"; yet SHECHEM (שכם) is clearly the name of the town which his sons took by deceit in the circumcision atrocity (Genesis 34), and this is what he means when he says "which I took out of the hand of the Emorite with my sword and with my bow". Indeed they did. And apparently he still held some authority over it, which he is passing on through Yoseph - and indeed, in the earliest days of the tribal confederacy, before they had a king, the effective capital was at Shechem.
But! A shechem (שכם) is a shoulder, the priest's portion, known also, here anyway, as a fifth, a Chomesh (חמש) – which just happens to be the same portion that Yoseph has taken from the Egyptians by way of tithe. So Yoseph's portion is the priestly portion, the town of Shechem which is precisely where Yehoshua will set up his capital and hold the covenant renewal ceremony and maintain the Ark; very much the priestly town until David moved it to Yeru-Shala'im. Thus Yoseph is linked to Aharon (Aaron), indeed in a sense is Aharon; which is why he has no political or secular entity; but is one above his brothers at the same time. He gets the priestly portion, which is Shechem in three senses.
However, if that is indeed the case, then the Beney Yoseph should have been the priestly caste - for which the young Yoseph was initiated and trained, and which craft he has practiced all his adult life, and the Levites should not have taken over the priestly portion – but they did so, because Mosheh and Aharon had the power to grab it - and obviously this is not something that later Kohanim and Leviyim would want to point out, in commentaries on this verse, and so it is exegised as "a mystery" and can be dutifully avoided.
Hertz, one of the most respected orthodox commentators of the 20th century, does at least venture on an explanation, suggesting that it means that the town of Shechem had fallen to the Emorites but been reclaimed by Ya'akov in battle. This is not recorded anywhere however (except the Dinah episode) which leaves it, at best, doubtful. And anyway, Ya'akov claiming that he took it with his sword and bow is a bit rich; Shim'on and Levi took it, and Ya'akov gave them hell for doing so at the time, and moved away from the area because he was a "stink" to the neighbours, and will give them hell for it again two chapters from now, when he gives his oracle/blessing.
End of third fragment; pey break; end of chapter 48.
Surf The Site
48:16 HA MALACH HA GO'EL OTI MI KOL RA YEVARECH ET HA NE'ARIM VE YIKAR'E VA HEM SHEMI VE SHEM AVOTAI AV-RAHAM VE YITSCHAK VE YIDGU LA ROV BE KEREV HA ARETS
הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגֹּאֵל אֹתִי מִכָּל רָע יְבָרֵךְ אֶת הַנְּעָרִים וְיִקָּרֵא בָהֶם שְׁמִי וְשֵׁם אֲבֹתַי אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק וְיִדְגּוּ לָרֹב בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ
KJ: The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.
BN: "May the angel who redeemed me from all evil bless these boys; and let my name be named in them, and the name of my fathers Av-Raham and Yitschak; and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the Earth."
What "angel" - and let us be clear that Biblical angels are "messengers", generally understood to be the interpretable light from the stars, and not the winged fairies of Christian and Moslem tradition? There are only two occasions when angels appear in Ya'akov's story, and the second of those is a Christian mistranslation.
The first is at Beit-El, or Luz, as he prefers to name it in verse 3; but when he talks about that to Yoseph as a catalytstic moment in his life, it is the god (El Shadai) that he recalls, not the dream-vision of angels. So perhaps this isn't what he means now, and he is thinking of the second occasion, in Genesis 32:2, after he has agreed his treaty with Lavan, and the latter has turned for home, "And Ya'akov went on his way, and angels of Elohim met him", which leads to Ya'akov naming the place Machanayim, but nothing more than that, because they don't get mentioned again until he wrestles with a "man" (VA YE'AVEK ISH - וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ) at Penu-El; nothing in the text tells us that the "man" was an angel, let alone one of those angels, though this has become part of the erroneous memory of the tale.
Or is it erroneous? In Genesis 32:10/11, after sending his gifts to Esav through his own angels (the word for "angels" and the word for "messengers" is MAL'ACHIM - מַּלְאָכִים), and learning from them that Esav is on his way with four hundred men, Ya'akov prays:
"O god of my father Av-Raham, and god of my father Yitschak, YHVH who said to me, 'Return to your country, and to your kindred, and I will do you good', I am not worthy of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which you have shown to your servant; for with my staff I passed over this river Yarden; and now I am become two camps..."which then leads, in verses 25ff, to the wrestling-match. Should we assume that one of the angels of verse 2 has now been sent by Elohim to be his alter ego in the wrestling-match, and that this is the angel to whom Ya'akov is now referring? In verse 27 the "man" begs to be let go "because the day is breaking", which suggests he is one of the Lilim or night-demons - but why not an angel, synonymously, all daemons and spirits and angels being "messengers" of the gods? Ya'akov's response in the same verse is to demand a blessing, and the one that he receives is the one that renames him as Yisra-El.
So it would appear to be in the name of this "man", this "messenger of the gods", that Ya'akov is blessing his son and grand-children now. Why is there no scholarship anywhere, of any kind, nor any commentary of note, that discusses this extraordinary and Biblically unique event: a blessing, not in the name of a god, or even a goddess, but of an angel?
Once again it is a fertility blessing; this is not a hope for milk and honey, nor for the statue of liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness, nor for a future Messianic world of peace and goodwill, but specifically a hope for lots of children and grandchildren.
What is really interesting in this blessing is fundamental to many of these stories and to much of Judaism. Unlike Jesus and Buddha, who are übermenschen at the very least, humanised gods or deified humans, in the end Ya'akov (like all the Beney Yisra-Eli patriarchs) is extraordinarily human, full of flaws and faults and frailties, a sinner like the rest of us. He isn't exalted as a god or demi-god. What matters in these stories is not what Ya'akov does but what his god does, regardless of the frailty of his creation. His god has protected Ya'akov - and indeed the story verifies that - not because Ya'akov has kept his part of the bargain, but despite the fact that he hasn't.
AVOTAI: This tells us just how much the Beney Yisra-El then, and the Jews of today still, are a cult of ancestor-worship.
What is understood by GO'EL in this instance = redemption? This needs considerable explanation. Click here for a good starting point.
End of second fragment.
48:17 VA YAR YOSEPH KI YASHIT AVIV YAD YEMIYNO AL ROSH EPHRAYIM VA YERA BE EYNAV VA YITMOCH YAD AVIV LEHASIR OTAH ME AL ROSH EPHRAYIM AL ROSH MENASHEH
וַיַּרְא יוֹסֵף כִּי יָשִׁית אָבִיו יַד יְמִינוֹ עַל רֹאשׁ אֶפְרַיִם וַיֵּרַע בְּעֵינָיו וַיִּתְמֹךְ יַד אָבִיו לְהָסִיר אֹתָהּ מֵעַל רֹאשׁ אֶפְרַיִם עַל רֹאשׁ מְנַשֶּׁה
KJ: And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.
BN: And when Yoseph saw that his father was laying his right hand on Ephrayim's head, it displeased him, and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephrayim's head and place it on Menasheh's head.
So the right hand is the key hand, the first hand; in that case, does Bin-Yamin not in fact mean "the first son", what the Chinese would call "the number one son"? If Yoseph was displeased, then he can't have known the family tradition. If he was an Egyptian, he wouldn't have known it, because the Egyptians practiced primogeniture.
But on the other hand, this was also part of the Adonis and Tammuz legend, so might it also have been part of the Osiric, before the Hyksos brought a different culture? When Jesus is resurrected he goes to heaven and sits, or sometimes stands, "on the right hand" of his god (Mark 16:19, Acts 7:55).
Why does Jewish law not still maintain ultimogeniture? Savina Teubal would say, because it was an aspect of matriarchalism, and everything matriarchal was deliberately expurgated when Judaism became a patriarchy.
And then it suddenly makes sense; this is why his brothers hated Yoseph: as Kayin hated Havel, as Esav for a long while hated, or at least it was presumed that he would hate Ya'akov: because until the birth of Bin-Yamin he stood to inherit, both the birthright and the blessing!
48:18 VA YOMER YOSEPH EL AVIV LO CHEN AVI KI ZEH HA BECHOR SIM YEMINCHA AL ROSHO
וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל אָבִיו לֹא כֵן אָבִי כִּי זֶה הַבְּכֹר שִׂים יְמִינְךָ עַל רֹאשׁוֹ
KJ: And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.
BN: And Yoseph said to his father, "Not like that, dad. This one's the first-born. Put your right hand on his head."
English translations find colloquialisms in the Bible difficult to deal with, because they reduce to the banal what is required (on grounds of religious reverence, or literary reverence?) to be formal and exalted. But the truth is, the King James translation above is not what Yoseph is described here as saying.
48:19 VA YEMA'EN AVIV VA YOMER YADA'TI VENI YADA'TI GAM HU YIHEYEH LE AM VE GAM HU YIGDAL VE ULAM ACHIV HA KATON YIGDAL MIMENU VE ZAR'O YIHEYEH MELO HA GOYIM
וַיְמָאֵן אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר יָדַעְתִּי בְנִי יָדַעְתִּי גַּם הוּא יִהְיֶה לְּעָם וְגַם הוּא יִגְדָּל וְאוּלָם אָחִיו הַקָּטֹן יִגְדַּל מִמֶּנּוּ וְזַרְעוֹ יִהְיֶה מְלֹא הַגּוֹיִם
KJ: And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.
BN: And his father refused and said, "I know it my son, I know it. He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great. However his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations."
Reflecting very closely the blessing that Yitschak had left for Esav (Genesis 26:39/40) after giving Ya'akov the main one, and the blessing given to Yishma-El after his expulsion (Genesis 17:20). Emphasising again that Ya'akov knows exactly what he's doing.
So that, yet again, a first born son is displaced by his younger brother - almost as if this were a tribal custom that Yoseph didn't know about. If we put together the full list of predominant second-borns, we should also include Av-Ram himself (his departure from Charan, we must presume, was a wandering in the land of Nod, because Nachor had the inheritance of Padan Aram and he therefore had no choice but to "Lech Lecha" in search of an alternative); also Mosheh, who dominates his elder brother Aharon, and in fact King David himself, who like Yoseph was the youngest of a number of elder brothers (at least eight according to 1 Samuel 16:10-11 , but only seven according to 1 Chronicles 2:13-15). Much the same issue has been a controversy inside Christianity for nearly two millennia - references to Jesus having older brothers, which don't simply undermine the Virgin Mary conviction, but also add him to this list.
Or is this simply a way of endowing Ephrayim's later political supremacy with a historic basis? This seems unlikely, especially as the later Kingdom of Ephrayim (after the division of Yisra-El into Yehudah and Ephrayim, following the death of Shelomoh and the civil war between his sons) was not named for the tribe but for a later individual of the same name. Though that supremacy is without doubt. The northern kingdom combining the Le'ahite and Zilpahite tribes was known collectively as Yisra-El or as Ephrayim for several centuries before its total disappearance in 700 BCE when Sennacherib devastated the northern kingdom. Ephrayim's tribal territory was the absolute geographical centre of the kingdom, to the degree that if you drew the whole of Biblical Kena'an as a circle, Ephrayim would be the large central dot.
YADA'TI YADA'TI is very emphatic. The Redactor wants us to understand that Ya'akov meant what he was doing, and that his blindness was not a factor.
48:20 VA YEVARACHEM BA YOM HA HU LEMOR BECHA YEVARECH YISRA-EL LEMOR YESIMCHA ELOHIM KE EPHRAYIM VE CHI MENASHEH VA YASEM ET EPHRAYIM LIPHNEY MENASHEH
וַיְבָרֲכֵם בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמוֹר בְּךָ יְבָרֵךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר יְשִׂמְךָ אֱלֹהִים כְּאֶפְרַיִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה וַיָּשֶׂם אֶת אֶפְרַיִם לִפְנֵי מְנַשֶּׁה
KJ: And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.
BN: And he blessed them that day saying, "By you shall Yisra-El bless, saying, 'May Elohim make you as Ephrayim and as Menasheh.'" And he set Ephrayim before Menasheh.
As instructed in the verse, the blessing by Ya'akov of Menasheh and Ephrayim performed here is now a part of Jewish tradition; on Friday nights, every father or grandfather puts his hand on the heads of his sons and the blessing is: "YESIMCHAH ELOHIM KE EPHRAYIM VE CHI MENASHEH - May Elohim make you like Ephrayim and Menasheh". What is interesting is the Rabbi's other explanation of this (see my note to verse 5 for the other other): that, as sons of Yoseph, they had hereditary rights of nobility in Mitsrayim, and could have claimed them after his death; whereas in fact they joined their fellow Beney Yisra-El in slavery and in exile, and for this are exalted above all others. This is palpably false because the history of the Beney Yisra-El in Mitsrayim is not that of supremacy followed by slavery followed by Exodus, as told by the orthodox Hagadah, but something very different, as will be demonstrated in the commentary on Exodus; or it was as the orthodox tell it, and the new rulers gave them no choice. False, either way.
Or was this whole rigmarole simply the creation of an occasion to record a popular proverb? And if so, what did the proverb actually mean? After all, to be blessed like Menasheh doesn't give you a whole heap: loss of birthright, minority status to your younger brother, a central but actually rather unsatisfactory and divided portion of land later in Yisra-El (the swamps of the Yazar-El/Jezreel valley and the southern Golan Heights), and a total lack of halachic recognition because your mother wasn't Jewish and your father clearly didn't keep Judaism in anything like a conventional manner. Not to mention being wiped out from history in 720 BCE.
Ya'akov's blessings of his other sons, in the next chapter, are considerably more poetic, or should we say oracular. Note that he does not actually bless Yoseph at all – unless you count verse 6 as giving him a blessing through his sons, and the next verse, which is a great deal less even than Esav received from Yitschak. Is this a factor of exogamy? No, because Yehudah too has married out and committed incest, but still gets blessed. A further proof perhaps that Yoseph and Bin-Yamin were not his "sons" biologically, which would also explain why Rachel is not buried at Machpelah and why the adoption of Ephrayim and Menasheh was necessary - to the later creators of history, I mean?
48:21 VA YOMER YISRA-EL EL YOSEPH HINEH ANOCHI MET VE HAYAH ELOHIM IMACHEM VE HESHIV ETCHEM EL ERETS AVOTEYCHEM
וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל יוֹסֵף הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי מֵת וְהָיָה אֱלֹהִים עִמָּכֶם וְהֵשִׁיב אֶתְכֶם אֶל אֶרֶץ אֲבֹתֵיכֶם
KJ: And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.
BN: And Yisra-El said to Yoseph, "Behold I am dying; but Elohim will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your forefathers.
The only problem with this is that the land of their forefathers was Mesopotamia, not Kena'an.
Note that he is once again Yisra-El, not Ya'akov, and this his god is Elohim, not El Shadai.
48:22 VA ANI NATATI LECHA SHECHEM ACHAD AL ACHEYCHA ASHER LAKACHTI MI YAD HA EMORI BE CHARBI U VE KASHTI
וַאֲנִי נָתַתִּי לְךָ שְׁכֶם אַחַד עַל אַחֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר לָקַחְתִּי מִיַּד הָאֱמֹרִי בְּחַרְבִּי וּבְקַשְׁתִּי
KJ: Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.
BN: "'Moreover I have given to you one portion above your brothers which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow."
The understanding is that Yoseph has a double portion through his sons, but is himself disinherited. This is rather convenient for the later tribal confederacy, and therefore suggests that once again the Redactor has taken the opportunity to add a convenient last line to a chapter.
But this as a whole is a phrase which the commentators have left alone for centuries, unable to make head or tail of it. And why? Ah, indeed - because it is problematic.
SHECHEM ACHAD (שכם אחד): Problematic because extraordinary! New English Bible gives "one ridge of land"; in the synagogue versions, as quoted here, you will find "one portion"; yet SHECHEM (שכם) is clearly the name of the town which his sons took by deceit in the circumcision atrocity (Genesis 34), and this is what he means when he says "which I took out of the hand of the Emorite with my sword and with my bow". Indeed they did. And apparently he still held some authority over it, which he is passing on through Yoseph - and indeed, in the earliest days of the tribal confederacy, before they had a king, the effective capital was at Shechem.
But! A shechem (שכם) is a shoulder, the priest's portion, known also, here anyway, as a fifth, a Chomesh (חמש) – which just happens to be the same portion that Yoseph has taken from the Egyptians by way of tithe. So Yoseph's portion is the priestly portion, the town of Shechem which is precisely where Yehoshua will set up his capital and hold the covenant renewal ceremony and maintain the Ark; very much the priestly town until David moved it to Yeru-Shala'im. Thus Yoseph is linked to Aharon (Aaron), indeed in a sense is Aharon; which is why he has no political or secular entity; but is one above his brothers at the same time. He gets the priestly portion, which is Shechem in three senses.
However, if that is indeed the case, then the Beney Yoseph should have been the priestly caste - for which the young Yoseph was initiated and trained, and which craft he has practiced all his adult life, and the Levites should not have taken over the priestly portion – but they did so, because Mosheh and Aharon had the power to grab it - and obviously this is not something that later Kohanim and Leviyim would want to point out, in commentaries on this verse, and so it is exegised as "a mystery" and can be dutifully avoided.
Hertz, one of the most respected orthodox commentators of the 20th century, does at least venture on an explanation, suggesting that it means that the town of Shechem had fallen to the Emorites but been reclaimed by Ya'akov in battle. This is not recorded anywhere however (except the Dinah episode) which leaves it, at best, doubtful. And anyway, Ya'akov claiming that he took it with his sword and bow is a bit rich; Shim'on and Levi took it, and Ya'akov gave them hell for doing so at the time, and moved away from the area because he was a "stink" to the neighbours, and will give them hell for it again two chapters from now, when he gives his oracle/blessing.
End of third fragment; pey break; end of chapter 48.
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