WARNING: The text
used for my commentary is my own paraphrase and must not be
considered
“a translation” or authorative in any way. It is, in fact, simply my commentary.
Maps, when used, are from
BibleAtlas.org. Created
using BibleMapper 3.0.
Additional data from OpenBible.info. Source of Dates Used
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית • B'resheet
(“In Beginning” or “At First”)
The First Book of Moses,
Commonly Called
Genesis
Blessed are You, O Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
Who has chosen us from all peoples
and given us His Torah.
Blessed are You, O Lord, Giver of the Torah.
IX.Parashah 9: Vayeshev
(“He continued living”) 37:1–40:23
A. Joseph’s Dreams (37:1–11)
[1699 BCE]
(i) 1Ya'akov continued living in the land where his father had lived
as a stranger, the land of Kena'an.
2This is the history
of Ya'akov. When Yosef was seventeen years old he was tending the flock with
his brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. He brought
their father a bad report about them.
3Now Israel[3a] loved Yosef more than all his children, because he was
the son of his old age,[3b] and he made him
a long-sleeved tunic.[3c]4When his brothers saw that their
father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and couldn’t
even speak
peaceably[4] to him.
5Then Yosef had a
dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.
6He said to them, “Listen to
this dream I had!
7Hinneh[GN], we were
binding sheaves of grain in the field. Hinneh, suddenly my sheaf stood up
and, hinneh, your sheaves gathered around and
bowed down to my sheaf!”[7]
8“Are you
actually going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him, “Are
you actually gong to rule over us?”
They hated him all the more for his dreams and for his boasting.
9Then Yosef had another dream,
and told it to his brothers. “Hinneh,” he said, “I have
had another dream, and hinneh, this time the sun and the moon and eleven stars
were bowing down to me.”
10He told it to his father and brothers,
but his father rebuked him. “What is this dream
that you have had?” he said. “Are your mother, your brothers, and I
all going to come
and bow down to the ground before you?”
11His brothers envied him, but his
father kept this saying in mind.
(ii) 12Some time later, his brothers had gone to
pasture their
father’s flocks near Shechem.
[MAP]13Israel said to Yosef, “Your brothers,
you know, and pasturing the flocks near Shechem. Get ready; I’m sending you to
them.”
14Then Isra'el
told him, “Go see how your brothers and the flock are doing, and let me know.”
So he sent him off out of the valley of Hebron,
[MAP] and he went to Shechem.
[MAP]15A man found him
wandering in the field there, and asked him, “What are you looking
for?”
16He said, “I am
looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are pasturing their flocks?”
17“They have
moved on from here,”
the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’”
[MAP]
So Yosef set out after his brothers and found them at Dothan.[17]18Yosef’s brothers saw him
in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
19“Look, here comes that dreamer!”
they said to one another.
20Come on, let’s kill him,
and throw him into one of the pits. We’ll say, ‘A wild animal
ate him.’ Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams.”
21When Re’uven
heard it, he tried to save him. He said, “Let’s not
take his life.”
22Re’uven said to them,
“Don’t shed blood. Throw him into this pit in the wilderness,
but don’t lay a hand on him” — in order to rescue him from their
hands and return him to his father.
(iii) 23When Yosef came to
his brothers, they stripped him of his tunic, the tunic with long
sleeves that was on him;
24and they took him, and
threw him into the pit. Now the pit was empty, with no water in it.
25Then they sat
down to eat a meal. They looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites
that was coming from Gilead.
[MAP] Their their camels were bearing spices,
balm, and myrrh, on their way down to Egypt.
26Y’hudah said to his
brothers, “What will it profit us to kill our brother and
cover up his blood?
27Come, let’s sell him
to the Ishmaelites, and not lay a hand be on him; for he is our
brother, our own flesh.” His brothers agreed.
28When some Midianite[28a]
traders passed by, they hauled Yosef up out of the pit, and
sold him for twenty shekels of silver[28b] to the Ishmaelites,
who took him into Egypt.
29When Re'uven
returned to the pit and saw that Yosef wasn’t there, he
tore his clothes.[29]30He returned to his
brothers, and said, “The boy is gone! What am I going to do?”
31Then they took Yosef’s
tunic, killed a young goat, and dipped the tunic in its blood.
32They took the long-sleeved
tunic to their father and said, “We found this.
Examine it; is it your son’s tunic or not?”
33His father
recognized it and said, “It is my son’s tunic. A wild animal
has eaten him. Yosef has surely been torn to pieces.”
34Ya'akov tore his clothes,
and put sackcloth[34] around his waist, and mourned for his son for many days.
35All his sons and all his
daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.
“No,” he said, “I will go down to Sheol[GN] to
my son, mourning.”[35] His father
wept for him.
36Meanwhile, the Midianites
sold Yosef in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, the captain
of the guard.
3a. It’s interesting how the
Scriptures alternate between his two names, Ya'akov and Isra'el.
Some teach that when he is acting righteously he is Isra'el and when
he is acting unrightouesly he is Ya'akov. I'm not sure I go along with
that idea.
[BACK]
3b. Displays of favoritism in a
family never bode well.
[BACK]
3c. Although most translations say
“coat of many colors,” the Hebrew text says פַּסִּֽים כְּתֹ֥נֶת: kəṯōneṯ,
a tunic or under-garment, a long shirt-like garment usually of linen,
passîm flat (of the hand or foot), palm, sole; a tunic
reaching to palms and soles.
This was a symbol that Yosef had been selected as his father’s heir
(first-born)
in preference to the biological first-born. It was a high privilege and gave
him authority over all his siblings. The long sleeves were
practical, and indicated that he wouldn’t have to get his hands
dirty working.
[BACK]
4. Peaceably: Hebrew לְשָׁלֹֽם
(lə·šā·lōm), with shalom. Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) translates as “peace”
but is so much more; it indicates completeness, soundness, welfare,
everything that one could possibly want or need to be totally
satisfied.
[BACK]
7. His use of the word
hinneh three times sounds to me like a spoiled little boy
rubbing his brothers’ noses in the fact that he had authority over
them. His brothers’s reaction seems to agree.
[BACK]
13. Hebrew הִנֵּֽנִי (hin·nê·nî),
see me, usually translated “here I am”; see
hinneh.
[BACK]
17. Look at the
map and notice how far Yosef went
lookinig for his brothers. Hebron is about 20 miles south of
Jerusalem and about 20 miles north of Beersheba. Shechem is
about 34 miles north of Jerusalem and 7 miles southeast of
Samaria. Dothanis about 12 miles north of Samaria.
[BACK]
28a. The term is descriptive, and not genealogical. Midian, like Ishmael, was a son of Abraham (Genesis 25:2).
Thus, these Ishmaelites were from the territory of Midian.
[MAP][BACK]
28b. Twenty shekels of silver
were computed (Leviticus 27:5) as the average worth of a male
slave under twenty.
[BACK]
29, 34. A token of his mingled
grief and horror at the discovery (cf. Gen 44:13; 2Sam
13:31; 2Kings 18:37; Job 1:20).
[BACK]
34. For “sackcloth” in mourning,
see 1 Kings 21:27; 2 Kings 6:30.
For further discussion see
HERE.
[BACK]
35. A similar modern expression might be “I’ll go
to my grave,” or “I’ll take this to my grave.”
[BACK]
Page originally posted on Friday, 17
September 2021
Page last updated on
Monday, 02 October 2023 12:52 PM
(Updates are generally minor formatting or editorial changes.
Major content changes are identified as "Revisions”) ANXIOUSLY WATCHING FOR MASHIACH’S RETURN,
SPEEDILY AND IN OUR DAY. MARANA, TA!