Brian Somers Torah: Genesis 37:1 – 40:23
Haftarah: Amos 2:6 – 3:8
New Testament/Brit Chadassah: Matthew 1:1-6, 16-25
The scene opens on Israel’s family several years later after the events related in Parashah vaYishlach. Israel has moved his family to Hebron where his father Isaac dwelt for many years before his death.
By this time, Joseph is a young man, a “youth” of seventeen (17) years of age. Of course, other than Benjamin, his brothers are all older than he is. He has followed his brothers into the family trade of shepherding.
Before we consider the events covered in chapters 37-40, let’s use Joseph’s succinct summary of these years after he and his brothers have buried their father, Israel, at the family burial cave of Machpelah, to gain the proper perspective.
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to keep many people alive
Genesis 50:20
What evil there was in the family was taken by YHVH for good.
Another insight that we need to keep in the back of our minds as we read these chapters is YHVH’s statement in several places that the family of Jacob could be viewed as two sisters that He married in Egypt. But how did one family be divided into two, such that they could be sisters? For convenience, we’ll read Ezekiel 23:1-4 although Jeremiah also makes this statement (see Jeremiah 3:6-10; 31:31-32).
23 The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, 2 “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother; 3 and they prostituted themselves in Egypt. They prostituted themselves in their youth; there their breasts were squeezed and there their virgin breasts were handled. 4 Their names were Oholah the elder and Oholibah her sister. And they became Mine, and they gave birth to sons and daughters. And as for their names, Samaria is Oholah and Jerusalem is Oholibah.
Ezekiel 23:1-4
Samariah was the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel and within the territory of Ephraim, son of Joseph. Jerusalem was the capital of the kingdom of Judah, even though it was within the territory of Benjamin; Judah was the dominant tribe.
Therefore, with these insights, we are now better equipped to look deeply into the family dynamics, particularly those related to Judah and Joseph.
Returning to Joseph at age 17, he was the beneficiary of his father Israel’s obvious favoritism when Israel bestowed on him a coat of many colors. That did not go over well with his brothers and they started to resent and hate him.
To make matters worse, he was showing some childish traits. First, prior to being given his many-colored coat, he was a “tattle-tale” by giving his father a bad report about his brothers that he was working with, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Second, later on, he was blessed with two dreams of the future and shared them to his family, colored with a sense of importance and a lack of empathetic consideration with how they would receive his dreams.
The first dream was agriculturally based. Joseph and his brothers had been reaping grain and stacking their sheaves. His brothers’ sheaves bowed down to Joseph’s sheaf. The second dream used the heavenly bodies, and this time, the sun, moon and stars bowed to him. While his father Israel rebuked him, he yet kept the matter in mind.
Israel was right to rebuke Joseph. The son bows to the father, not the other way around. But Israel was himself familiar with dreams and he was wise enough to wonder at what might be happening or would yet happen.
Looking ahead again, Joseph’s dreams about his brothers bowing down to him did come true. He did become the second most powerful man in Egypt after Pharaoh, and everyone bowed to him as to Pharaoh. But, in the blessing that Judah received, his father told him that the brothers would bow to him, not Joseph. Moreover, Judah received the sceptre from his father, but Joseph, though ruler in Egypt, did not receive the sceptre in Israel. Why was that?
After Joseph shared his dreams with his brothers, his father sent him to join his brothers who were shepherding the flocks in Shechem. But when he arrived in Shechem, his brothers were nowhere to be found. A helpful man (“messenger”?) directed him to Dothan where he found his brothers.
However, while he was still a distance away, the other brothers plotted to kill Joseph. Reuben, the eldest, put a stop to that, and proposed instead that they throw Joseph into a pit. Joseph was stripped of his many-colored coat and dropped into the pit. Reuben wandered away on some business of his own. Seeing a Midianite caravan, the rest of the brothers, led by Judah, seized an opportunity to sell Joseph into slavery. They deceived their father by tearing the cloak and staining it with goat’s blood and showing it to him, letting him think that a wild animal had killed Joseph. Meanwhile, Joseph was sold to Potiphar, the captain of the bodyguard to Pharaoh.
While Joseph was separated from his brothers due to being a slave in Egypt, so too did Judah separate from his brothers. He took a wife from a Canaanite man who was named Shua. Therefore, his wife is known to Bible readers as Bat-Shua (“daughter of Shua”). She bore Judah three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah.
Judah took a girl named Tamar and gave her to Er as his wife. Er sinned and incurred the wrath of YHVH who personally executed him. We are not told by Moses what Er did, though I understand that the rabbis have their thoughts on the matter.
Judah then told his second son, Onan, to perform the duty of a levirate husband to raise seed to his dead older brother. This duty is described in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. Onan refused to do his duty and wasted his seed on the ground, and he in turn was executed by YHVH.
Judah sent Tamar back to her father to live as a widow until Shelah grew up, for he was afraid that Shelah would also die if he were ordered to perform the act of levirate marriage for Er and Onan with Tamar.
Some time went by and Judah’s wife died, but he still had not given Tamar to Shelah. Tamar took matters into her own hand. She dressed as a harlot and went to a spot where her father-in-law would see her. Judah did turn aside and the two negotiated the business transaction. Judah agreed to give her a baby goat or kid from the flock, but he gave her a pledge of his seal, cord and staff against such time as he could redeem them with the kid.
After Judah went in to Tamar, he left, and sent a kid back with his friend, but Tamar had already left to return to her father’s house and removed her disguise.
Three months later, her pregnancy was obvious and people jumped to the logical conclusion that she had committed harlotry. Judah ordered her brought to him for execution for harlotry. Her father did not protest in any way, as she remained under Judah’s authority, mostly because she was a widow of two of his sons and was supposed to be given to Shelah.
In effect, Judah put Tamar on trial. But Tamar was prepared for this and asked Judah to identify his own pledge of seal, cord and staff, which he did. He judged Tamar as more righteous than him because he had not given her to Shelah, as he was supposed to do. So she went free and gave birth to twin sons, who effectively replaced Er and Onan.
In this 38th chapter of Genesis, we see Judah exercising authority and applying the law of levirate marriage for two of his sons and failing to do the same for his third son, Shelah. His failure resulted in the strange situation where Tamar had to come to him to lie with her to conceive twins to replace his first two sons. But Judah also exercised the power of life and death wisely. His failures as a father perhaps enabled him to be more sympathetic to his own father’s shortcomings.
In the next chapter of the story, chapter 39, we see Joseph’s varied experiences as a slave in Egypt. He soon proved himself an able administrator and overseer to Potiphar. Potiphar soon placed his entire household under Joseph’s administration, and all was going well until Potiphar’s wife took a liking to Joseph and wanted to lie with him. Joseph refused because that was adultery (see Exodus 20:14; Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). Because Potiphar accepted his wife’s claim against Joseph, the latter was thrown into prison, but not executed. As with Potiphar, Joseph earned the confidence and trust of the prison administrator.
One day he overheard two men talking. One was Pharaoh’s cupbearer and the other was a baker to Pharaoh. They both had dreams, and Joseph demonstrated that he could interpret dreams. He told them that both of their dreams would be fulfilled in three days, the cupbearer to be restored to his position, but the unfortunate baker would be executed. He asked that the cupbearer would intercede for him but that didn’t happen right away.
Before Joseph served with Pharaoh, he served Potiphar as his house administrator and served the prison warden as an administrator as well. Joseph demonstrated knowledge of YHVH’s laws and followed them, plus the gift of interpreting dreams. He was a very able administrator, but he was not a ruler with the power of life and death within his family like Judah.
The next two parashiot will further illustrate the abilities and behavior of the two men and how their blessings from their father Israel matched the content and manner of their walk. Their other brothers were submerged into a group and did not really distinguish themselves.