Genesis 41:1-44:17
The Fear of God
Joseph’s abilities as a dream interpreter eventually landed him a job as a high Egyptian official in charge of grain supplies. Meanwhile his family in Canaan had begun to feel the effects of the predicted famine, so Jacob sent a delegation of his sons to buy grain in Egypt. Joseph recognized his brothers at once, but they did not recognize him: he was dressed as an Egyptian and spoke to them through an interpreter.
Taking advantage of this circumstance, Joseph accused his brothers of espionage and had them all thrown into jail. After three days, however, he relented and freed all but one of them, explaining, “I fear God.” What exactly did he mean by that—and why did he say it?
‘Fear of God” is a moving target: it underwent its own evolution from biblical times to later usage. But one point is most important: although it might not seem so, the “fear of God” (yir’at Elohim) in the Bible is generally quite distinct from the “fear of the Lord” (yir’at H’).
What’s the difference between these two? The “fear of the Lord” generally means “the worship of [Israel’s] God.” As such, it is something that had to be learned: “Come my sons, listen to me and I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Psalm 34:12). The king is required to keep a copy of the Torah with him, “Let it remain with him and let him read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Torah” (Deut 17:19). Similarly, “and let their children, who do not yet know, listen and learn to fear the Lord your God” (Deut 31:13). When the Assyrians deported the northern Israelite tribes and replaced them with foreigners, at first the foreigners “did not fear the Lord, so the Lord loosed lions against them, who killed some of them… Then the Assyrian king gave an order: ‘Send back one of the priests (kohanim) whom you have deported. . . and let him teach them the practices of the God of Israel. So one of the priests whom they had exiled from Samaria came and settled in Bethel; he taught them how to fear the Lord.’ ” (2 Kings 17:26-28).
The “fear of God” has an entirely different meaning; in fact, yir’at elohim might best be translated in some instances as “fear of the gods,” because it is in no way restricted to the people of Israel and does not necessarily refer to Israel’s God. The usual meaning of the expression yir’at elohim is “common decency” or “basic morality,” that is, the minimal set of moral values that any ordinary person could be counted on to possess.
This is the point of Abraham’s remark to Abimelech in Gen 20:11: Abraham didn’t reveal that Sarah was his wife because “I thought to myself: there is no fear of the gods in this place, so they may kill me for my wife.” In other words, I wasn’t sure that out here even the minimum standards of human decency were respected. Similarly, when the Egyptian king ordered the Hebrew midwives to slaughter every newborn Hebrew boy, “they feared God and did not do as the Egyptian king had ordered; instead, they spared the boys” (Exod 1:17).
Even in an entirely monotheistic context, “fear of God”—in this case, our God—retains this basic sense of common decency. “You shall not curse the deaf, and you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind, and you shall fear your God; I am the Lord” (Lev 19:14). “You shall stand up before the elderly and show respect to the aged, and you shall fear your God; I am the Lord.” Anyone with common decency wouldn’t put a stumbling block in front of a blind person, nor would such a person fail to get up and give his seat to an old man on the bus—this is just the minimum of human morality.
So Joseph wasn’t (as some ancient interpreters supposed) giving his brothers a subtle hint that he was actually their coreligionist. All he meant was that he too observed the usual standards of common decency; he wasn’t going to hold all of them hostage when he could accomplish what he wanted by holding only one of them.
In this connection, it might be appropriate to mention a well-known rabbinic maxim, “Everything is in God’s hands, except for the fear of God.” This saying, attributed to the third-century sage Rabbi Hanina b. Hama, is normally interpreted to mean: God will take care of everything else, but you have to supply the first step, the fear of God. But actually (and in light of the foregoing), the meaning seems somewhat different. What Rabbi Hanina really seems to mean is that what God grants each person in this world is determined solely by God—except for the fear of God, since God gives that to everyone. Like those cold gusts in Sepphoris that Rabbi Hanina knew so well (on which see Leviticus Rabba 16:8 and parallels), the fear of God strikes the heart of every person, even the crudest savage. The saying is thus what used to be called a “pretty paradox.” What happens to a person is in God’s hands, and it can go this way or it can go that way—but there is one thing that can go only one way and that is the most important thing, the fear of God, since He gives that to everyone.
Shabbat shalom!
