The Ties that Bind

Parashat Vayigash, Genesis 44:18–47:27

Rabbi Paul L. Saal, Shuvah Yisrael, Windsor, CT

It has been said that blood is thicker than water. This proverbial wisdom would suggest that family ties, though frequently tried, are stronger than any other relational bonds. After all, no judge would allow the sibling of a defendant to sit on the jury empowered to impartially try him or her. And which of us would not suspect a miscarriage of justice if such a situation were to be allowed? Even if the verdict were to go against the defendant, it might suggest severe animosity between the siblings. For, as many of us have observed, when the strong knots of family ties are broken, they are often the most difficult to repair.  

Such is the prologue to the profound theater of today’s parasha. Joseph, Israel’s favorite son, sits in judgment of his brothers. These same brothers had many years earlier sold Joseph into slavery, as a jealous response to their father’s privileged treatment of him. Though Joseph suffered many years of hardship, providence elevated him to a position of authority, vizier over all of Egypt and second only to Pharaoh. His position was a reward for his God-given wisdom, insight, and vision that saved Egypt and in effect the surrounding nations from the deadly results of a great famine. After correctly interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph had urged the ruler to prepare for seven years of famine during seven prior years of prosperity. How could he have known that his own brothers would seek audience with him in an effort to purchase food to sustain the lives of themselves, of their father Jacob and their youngest brother Benjamin? And how could they have known that the great man who controlled their very lives was their brother whom they had betrayed a lifetime ago? 

At first glance it seems odd that they would not recognize Joseph. But it was a boy, after all, which the sons of Israel had sold to a passing caravan, not a fully matured man. Before them stood a middle-aged cosmopolitan Egyptian, not a young nomadic Hebrew. His clothes would have been the soft raiment of pampered wealth, not the course garb of a shepherd. His soft bathed skin and shaved face would never have betrayed his true pedigree.  

Yet Joseph remains their brother. The filial bonds are not dependent upon their recognition or acknowledgement of him. Joseph like them is a son of Israel, and has been chosen by God to be their deliverer, not their judge. It is not surprising that they fear him more when he reveals himself to them as their forgotten brother than when he is disguised as a foreign ruler. And this fear will not pass easily. Years later upon the death of Jacob they will still fear his vengeance, and appeal to him for continued mercy. Yet he assures and consoles them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Gen 50:19–21). 

In a strange economy of mutual blessing, Joseph the deliverer of Israel is hidden among the gentiles and becomes the provider of their salvation as well. But some 400 years later when the new Pharaoh forgets Joseph and oppresses the children of Israel, the Holy One, the God of Israel will break the back of Egypt. Egypt as the prototypical nation learns that you cannot receive blessing from the God of Israel if you do not honor the children of Israel.  

Another strange and somewhat ambivalent relationship exists between Joseph and Judah. It was Judah years before who had devised the plan to fake Joseph’s death and sell him into slavery. He did so to prevent his brother’s from killing Joseph. And it is also Judah who becomes the protector of Benjamin, offering himself in slavery so the youngest of Jacob’s sons might be spared from the wrath of the vizier prior to Joseph revealing himself. Judah is truly a prince among his brothers; the one whose descendants Jacob prophetically announces will continue to carry the scepter of Israel. Judah is the ancestor of Jesse, the father of David, who was the quintessential King of Israel, the forbearer of the Prince Messiah. Judah is the ruler among his brothers. Joseph on the other hand is a ruler among the gentiles, a suffering servant for the sake of his brothers. Joseph is to Judah as the dark side of the moon is to its bright face.  

It is no wonder then that when the sages wished to reconcile the disparate pictures of the Messiah in scripture, the lowly servant who would arrive on the foal of a donkey, and the victorious king who would come upon the clouds, they looked to the strange interrelationship between Judah and Joseph. The rabbis of old determined that if Israel were meritorious, we would receive the victorious Messiah, Mashiach ben David. But if we were not, we would receive the suffering Messiah, Mashiach ben Yosef—two messiahs each coming once—one to suffer, one to reign. Never could they have imagined one Messiah who would embody both, Yeshua, Israel’s greatest son, both suffering servant and conquering King.  

When Yeshua was resurrected he still bore the wounds of crucifixion. Before he ascended to the right hand of God’s throne his disciples asked him, “Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Yeshua affirmed that the restoration of Israel’s glory was a divine appointment—but one that would have to wait. Instead, he commissioned them to go among the nations as his body, the quintessential sons of Israel to suffer as he did and to announce the great deliverance that is to come.  

Throughout history, the pain of the Jews, like the suffering of Joseph and the martyrdom of Yeshua, has paradoxically been contributing to the redemption and reconciliation of humanity. Sholem Asch, the famous Yiddish playwright and novelist, paints a compelling comparison in his controversial monogram One Destiny: An Epistle to the Gentiles. 

Hemmed in by a ring of death with bayonets and rifles on the streets of the ghetto, huddled in burning synagogues along the crusaders’ paths, and on the way to the inquisitors’ stakes, Jewish martyrs prayed, sang and cried out to God. The same outcry that was heard on the cross from he who gave his life to save the world, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?”—“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

We Messianic Jews are a remnant of Israel, partners in the historical suffering, and messengers for the world. We may at times be made to feel outside the family, not always recognized by others within the family of Israel, but we are part of the family, nonetheless. We are brothers of Messiah, redeemed by his sacrificial acts; therefore, we must bear the marks of his suffering. So, we become servants for the sake of our brothers, as Joseph did, as Yeshua did. We must neither condemn our brothers, blame them, nor separate ourselves from them.  

The great Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber wrote,

From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand. . . . My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel’s history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.

Sometimes it can feel difficult to live out such a thankless and misunderstood identity. To the Nations we are Jews, and worthy of the misunderstanding and scorn that they often inappropriately feel for Jews. To our brothers we are often unrecognizable as family. We don’t embrace this identity because it’s easy, and certainly not for the lavish rewards it provides. Rather we do so because we are compelled to. Still, we can take heart in the words of Rav Sha’ul, “It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain” (Acts 28:20). 

To our brothers, though, we can echo Joseph’s words of assurance, a precursor of Yeshua’s promise “God sent me ahead of you to preserve you for a remnant on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance” (Gen 45:7). 

As servants of a blessing, we stand in the place of the King—sons of Israel, brothers of Messiah, children of the covenant, an aristocracy of humility.

 Scripture citations are from the New International Version, NIV.

Photo: rosovconsulting.com