The Wagons Tell the Tale

 

When Jacob’s sons returned to Canaan to tell their father the good news—that his long-lost son Joseph was still alive—at first he didn’t believe them. Why should he? If what they were saying now was true, then what was the meaning of that blood-soaked tunic that they had shown him some thirteen years earlier? If that was all a trick, why should he believe that his sons were telling him the truth now? And what a story! Joseph wasn’t just alive; he was a high Egyptian official, second only to Pharaoh. If that were true, then why didn’t Joseph himself come to Canaan to be reunited with his father—was he too busy?

 

Particularly troubling was the Torah’s own explanation of Jacob’s change of mind. While conceding that at first he did not believe his sons, it goes on to say: “But when they told him all the words that Joseph had told them [to say], and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to transport him, the spirit of their father Jacob returned to him… ‘My son Joseph is still alive. Let me go and see him before I die!’” (Gen 45:27-28).

 

Apparently, it was the sight of those wagons that somehow changed Jacob’s mind. But why were they such a convincing proof? If Jacob were already suspicious of his sons’ motives, then seeing the wagons would have hardly been enough to change his mind.  After all, what was to prevent his sons from renting a few wagons and stenciling “Property of the Kingdom of Egypt” in hieroglyphs on their side? What kind of verification was that?

 

The Rabbis of the Talmud and midrash wrestled with these questions and found an explanation. They began by recalling the very last time that Jacob had seen Joseph. It was when Jacob had dispatched Joseph to check up on his brothers’ shepherding; he is said to have sent Joseph off “from the valley of Hebron” (Gen 37:14). This was a somewhat odd specification; as everyone knew, Hebron is in the hill country and not in a valley. The Torah must have meant that Jacob had accompanied his son all the way from Hebron down to the valley below and sent him off from there to find his brothers. In so doing, the father must have explained to his son the meaning of his doing so.

 

“When the Torah is given to Israel,” he probably said, “there will be a special law in it called the law of the ‘eglah ‘arufah, the ‘broken-necked heifer.’” He then must have told his son the details of this law (since many of the future Torah’s laws were already known to Israel’s ancestors). The law, now found in Deut 21:1-9, states that if someone is found murdered in the open land and his killer is unknown, the inhabitants of the nearest town are to take collective responsibility for the corpse and perform a special procedure. In this procedure, the elders of the town are required to break the neck of a heifer (in Hebrew, an ‘eglah), wash their hands in its blood, and then proclaim: “Our hands did not shed the blood of this man; our eyes did not even witness it!”

 

This proclamation is somewhat puzzling. After all, the town elders are generally its most honored citizens, its magistrates and other officials. Would anyone suspect them of being the murderers, or even of being complicit bystanders? “No,” Jacob must have told his son. “What the law means is that it is the town’s responsibility—and that of the elders in particular—to see to it that any wayfarer is properly taken care of. Among other things, he should not simply be dispatched from the town’s gates; it is the townsmen’s duty to accompany him part of the way, just as I am accompanying you now, Joseph.”

 

This was Jacob’s last conversation with Joseph, and the two of them remembered it well. Now, twenty-two years later, Joseph was in charge of all of Egypt, and thus indeed could not leave his post to fetch his father; he sent his brothers instead. But knowing that Jacob might well be skeptical of their words, Joseph told them to say—after having explained that Joseph was now Pharaoh’s right-hand man—that he had added a coded message that only he and Jacob could understand. The message was: “Those wagons were an allusion to the very last conversation that we had together.”

 

Now, the Hebrew word for wagon, ‘agalah, sounds very similar to the word for heifer, ‘eglah. When Jacob saw the wagons, he thus immediately understood Joseph’s message: the wagons (‘agalot) were meant to recall the law of the ‘egla ‘arufah, the “broken-necked heifer” that they had been discussing that day. That is why the Torah says that Jacob’s sons “told him all the words that Joseph had told them”—not just the obvious words, to the effect that Joseph was now in charge of the whole land of Egypt, but the hidden message about their last conversation. Then, “when he saw the wagons,” Jacob knew for sure that what his sons were telling him was true. Now Jacob could exclaim in all confidence, “My son Joseph [really] is still alive. Let me go and see him before I die!’” (Gen 45:27-28).

 

Shabbat shalom!