Episode #18 Sibling Rivalry

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes the rivalry among Jacob’s children and the plot that resulted in Joseph being sold into slavery.

Chapter Eighteen

Sibling Warfare

After Rebecca secured the role of patriarch for Jacob, she advised him to flee until Esau’s wrath subsided. She knew that Jacob would not go without taking leave of Isaac, and therefore, she suggested to Isaac that Jacob travel to Harran in Syria to seek a wife. He would be more likely to find an appropriate wife among her family there, she explained, than among the local young women. Isaac agreed. Rebecca did not tell Isaac she feared that Esau would kill Jacob as soon as he had the opportunity, probably because she did not think he would accept it.

In Harran, Jacob found employment with Lavan, Rebecca’s brother. Lavan had two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, the younger sister. He saw in her his soulmate, the potential matriarch who would be the perfect complement to him as patriarch. But Lavan, unwilling to give Jacob his younger daughter while his older daughter was still unmarried, tricked Jacob into marrying Leah instead. Once Jacob was married to Leah, however, Lavan agreed to give him Rachel as well.

Both sisters had difficulty conceiving, but after a while, Leah produced a son and then three others in succession. Their names were Reuven, Shimon, Levi and Yehudah. Rachel meanwhile remained barren.

According to Mesopotamian customs in deep antiquity, a barren woman could produce children vicariously by giving her handmaiden to her husband to serve as a surrogate; the children of that union would be considered her own. Rachel, therefore, gave her handmaiden Bilhah to Jacob, and she gave birth to two sons. Their names were Dan and Naftali.

Leah followed suit and gave Jacob her handmaiden Zilpah, and this union also produced two more sons. Their names were Gad and Asher. Leah then gave birth to two more sons, Yissachar and Zevulun, and a daughter named Dinah.

At long last, after much prayer, Rachel gave birth to a son. He was named Joseph, a name that expressed her prayers for more children, and six years later, she produced one more son. She died in childbirth, but the child survived. His name was Binyamin.

Twenty-two years after leaving his parents’ home, Jacob returned as a full-fledged patriarch with a house full of children. It was time for Abraham’s family to progress from a narrowly focused patriarchate and begin to produce a burgeoning population that would grow into a clan and then into a nation. The patriarchate was the tree trunk rising up alone from the ground, and the tribes were its flourishing branches. The descendants of these twelve sons would not blend into one amorphous population. Instead, each would found a distinct tribe with its own strengths, talents and responsibilities, and all the tribes would be joined in a federal system.

Jacob established his home in Chevron, where his father still lived; his mother had already passed away. The future of the fledgling nation looked bright, but from the beginning, fissures already began to appear. Leah’s biological sons relegated the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah to second class status. Although they undoubtedly included Joseph and Binyamin in the upper class, they had other issues with Joseph.

Rachel had been Jacob’s favorite wife, and Joseph, her firstborn, was his favorite son, the apple of his eye. Joseph was handsome, brilliant and charismatic, a willing student who hung on to his father’s every word. Unlike his brothers, he did not shun the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. He reported their rejection to his father, and he himself went out of his way to befriend them and make them feel included.

Jacob elevated Jospeh to the status of firstborn and memorialized his promotion by the gift of an embroidered coat of many colors. The brothers felt that Joseph had informed on them to curry favor with his father and attain a promotion to which he was not entitled, and their resentment simmered.

The final straw was Joseph’s declaration of primacy in the family when he told everyone he had dreamed the sun, the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to him. Jacob dismissed in public the dream as ridiculous, but in his own thoughts, he awaited its fulfilment with anticipation.[1] The brothers were furious. The coat had elevated Joseph to the status of firstborn, but the dream revealed that he sought to become king.

While tending to the sheep in the fields, the brothers conspired to rid themselves of Joseph. At first, they sought to kill him, but Judah dissuaded them. Instead, he suggested they sell him into slavery but tell their father that he had been killed by a wild animal. They sold him to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites on the way to Egypt, who then sold him to an Egyptian official. This was considered a grave sin, for which their descendants paid a price.

In the fullness of time, Joseph gained his freedom and rose to the position of viceroy to Pharoah, and when a famine struck, his dream was fulfilled when his brothers came to Egypt and stood before his throne. Their descent to Egypt would ultimately lead to their arrival at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah.

Several questions come to mind. Jewish tradition reveres all Jacob’s sons as great and righteous men. They were raised to be the heirs to the legacy of the patriarchs. They bore on their shoulders the burden of building a nation that would declare the unity of God to the world and be a light to the nations. They were not barbarians.

Why then did they condemn Joseph to death just because he dreamed he would one day rule over them? Why was that a capital offense? Even if Joseph considered this particular dream prophetic, maybe it was not. And if they also considered it a harbinger of the future, why didn’t they accept it as God’s will? After all, someone had to be the leader. Maybe God preferred Joseph, just as Jacob did.

Furthermore, after all the kindness Joseph had shown the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, why did they join Leah’s sons in the plot to eliminate him? After all, they knew the leader would not be one of them. Shouldn’t they have preferred Joseph as the leader to one of the others?

Finally, why did Jacob await the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream with anticipation? Even if the dream was prophetic, it probably foretold a future time when the kings of Israel would be descended from Joseph. It surely didn’t occur to him that it would be fulfilled during his lifetime with Joseph sitting on the Egyptian viceroy’s throne.

In order to understand the issues at stake in these events, we have to go back to the selection of Isaac as the second patriarch and the selection of Jacob as the third patriarch. Abraham had two sons, but only Isaac succeeded him. Ishmael, the other son, received a separate blessing, but he would not be part of the Jewish people. Isaac had two sons, but only Jacob succeeded him. Esau would not be part of the Jewish people. At this point in the construction of the Jewish people, each patriarch concentrated on his own growth and on preparing his successor for his work. The chain of transmission was by necessity one to one. Jacob, as the last patriarch, could begin the work of disseminating the ideas of Judaism on a wider scale.

Although we know from the Gemara that there are only three patriarchs, Jacob could not be sure that he would have no successor, and he wondered if perhaps Joseph would be that successor. He, therefore, invested all his efforts into Joseph’s growth and development, and he showed him special favor. But he could not be sure if there would be a fourth patriarch, and if so, who it would be. After all, they were all righteous and worthy.

Abraham had received a prophecy that Isaac was to be his successor. Rebecca had received a prophecy that Jacob was to be the next patriarch, as explained in the previous chapter. But Jacob had received no prophecy about a successor patriarch. When Joseph had his dreams, Jacob suspected that they were the first divine indications that Joseph would be the fourth patriarch, and he waited with anticipation for an explicit prophecy.

Jospeh’s brothers sensed that Jacob was contending with this uncertainty, and they were also convinced that Joseph was manipulating their father to appoint him as the fourth patriarch, that he was reporting their supposed misdeeds to show their father that they were not worthy. The brothers were convinced that they all deserved to be part of the Jewish people. But if Jospeh were to be successful, then he would become the patriarch and the others would be eliminated from the Jewish future. He was clearly a mortal threat to all of them and all their future generations, including the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah whom he had befriended. He had to be eliminated.

We cannot know if Joseph thought he’d be the fourth patriarch, as his brothers believed he did, but history proved them all wrong. Jacob never received a prophecy instructing him to appoint a successor. He remained the final patriarch, and all his children were included in the Jewish people. God agreed with their assessment that the time for patriarchs had passed, but He did not agree with the method they chose to rectify the situation. Their attempt to eliminate Joseph was a grave sin. What else should they have done? This is a question for a separate discussion.

[1] Rashi, Bereishis 37:11.