Weekly Torah Reading, Vayyeshev, December 21, 2024
His Father’s Face
Joseph, whose early life is the focus of this week’s reading, got off to a rocky start. The favorite son of his father Jacob, he seems to have been quite an obnoxious young man. As a shepherd along with his older brothers, he actually used to tattle on them, bringing back “bad reports” of their conduct to his father (Genesis 37:2).
At one point, Joseph told the whole family about two dreams he had had, each suggesting that he would someday rule over them all. This only stoked his brothers’ resentment, to the point that they ended up seizing Joseph and selling him as a slave to a passing caravan headed down to Egypt. There he was purchased by Potiphar, a high Egyptian official, to serve in his household. But then came the event that would change his life forever.
Potiphar’s wife (name otherwise withheld) was attracted to the handsome young slave, and she began propositioning him in the crudest way: “Lie with me,” she said. Joseph refused her advances time and time again. But one day, she saw her chance. According to an old tradition, that particular day was the Festival of the Nile, and all the inhabitants of Potiphar’s house had gone down to the Nile to celebrate. All, that is, except for Potiphar’s wife. She pretended to be ill, knowing that Joseph, as a faithful Hebrew, would not be indulging in the pagan worship at the Nile. He would enter the house to do his work as usual. This was her chance to force herself on Joseph unimpeded.
It is noteworthy that the biblical text is quite emphatic in saying that at no point did Joseph ever consider giving in to her demands. The Talmud, however, suggested otherwise. If Joseph went to Potiphar’s house knowing that everyone would be down at the Nile, perhaps it was because he and Potiphar’s wife had agreed to meet in secret that day: “The two of them planned to sin together,” the Talmud says (Sotah 36b). It was only at the last moment that Joseph had a change of heart: suddenly, he had a fleeting vision of his father’s face and fled outside.
The trouble is, this vision is nowhere mentioned in the biblical account; it only appears later on, in the Talmud and midrash. Was it just a rabbinic invention? Yes and no.
When rabbinic sources mention this vision, they cite a biblical verse that appears much later in Joseph’s life. It comes in Genesis 49:24, when Jacob, now old and on his deathbed, seeks to give Joseph his final blessing. Referring to the incident with Potiphar’s wife, Jacob says that Joseph had escaped her clutches “at the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, from there the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel.”
Even today, scholars have difficulty making sense of these words. The phrase “the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel” at first looks like a poetic reference to God. To ancient interpreters, however, it seemed possible to read this phrase a little differently. The word for Shepherd, ro‘eh (spelled with the letter ayin), could easily be confused with ro’eh with an aleph, meaning “he sees” or even ra’ah “he saw.” If so, then instead of “from there the Shepherd,” this verse could be saying “from there he saw,” that is, Joseph saw something, perhaps indeed in a vision. But what did he see?
The rest of this verse (Gen 49:24) says that Joseph saw “the Rock of Israel,” and it is true that God is often referred to as Israel’s “Rock.” But in this case, the Talmud and other ancient sources proposed a different reading. The “Rock of Israel” could refer to a stone bust or statue, or what is called in rabbinic Hebrew an ikonin. (This is actually a Greek loan-word into Hebrew. It comes from the same Greek term as our word “icon” in English, and both words originally designated a stone bust or statue.) If so, interpreters argued that Joseph escaped from Potiphar’s wife when he went from there, that is, he fled from Potiphar’s house, after having seen (ra’ah) in a vision the face (ikonin) of Israel (Jacob’s other name)” and ran outside.
Shabbat shalom!