Finding God in the Details

Vayeshev

Genesis 37:1 - 40:23

Précis: The story of Joseph begins with the words, “And Jacob dwelt (vayeshev) in the land of his father’s travels.” We learn that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son who receives the coat of many colors, and dreams strange dreams and relates them to his brothers and father, creating additional concern (jealousy) on their part. The sons conspire to do away with Joseph, but before he dies, they sell him into slavery. Jacob is devastated when the sons present evidence of Joseph’s “death.”
     We then have an intervening story about Judah. He marries off his first son to Tamar. The son soon dies, and, the next son is married to the widow (“levirate marriage.”) The second son (Onan) dies, and Judah is loath to offer the third son. The widow dresses as a harlot, seduces Judah, becomes pregnant, and reveals herself to Judah as a woman wronged. He acknowledges her as a rightful daughter.
     The scene shifts back to Joseph, who is now a servant in the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian official. Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph but he refuses her advances. She accuses him nonetheless of rape, and Joseph is tossed into prison. There, he meets jailed servants of Pharaoh, for whom he interprets dreams successfully. When the chief butler is restored to his post, he promises to “remember” Joseph, but the parasha ends with the words, “but he forgot him.”

Genesis 37:14-17 “And he (Jacob) said to him (Joseph), ‘Go and see how your brothers are and how the flocks are faring, and bring me back word.’ So he sent him from the valley of Hebron. When he reached Shechem, a man came upon him wandering in the fields, the man asked him, ‘What are you looking for?’ He answered, ‘I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?’ The man said, ‘They have gone from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dothan.’ So Joseph followed his brothers and found them in Dothan.”

The difficulty of reconciling the concepts of free will and God’s omniscience is on display in this week’s reading. In the cited verses, Jacob sends out Joseph to check up on his brothers. On his way he meets “a man” who is able to direct him to the correct destination. The sages tell us that this unidentified "man" was God’s messenger. At the very end of the Joseph saga, Joseph tells his brothers that “it was not you who sent me here, but God" (Genesis 45:8). These two statements seem to bracket God’s presence in the story of Joseph, and in between them we find examples of God being “with” Joseph at various stages of his journey.

Just as Jacob voluntarily decided to wrestle with “a man” on the fateful night his name was changed to Yisrael, Joseph’s story seems to be the unfolding of God’s plan, step by step, through what on the surface appear to be voluntary steps by human beings (Jacob, Joseph, the brothers, the actions of the fellow prisoners in the jail cell, Pharaohs’ elevation of Joseph, etc.). This plan will lead to the slavery of Egypt, the Exodus, and Revelation at Sinai.

In this light, we can even see that the story of Judah and Tamar, often viewed as an incidental insertion into the story of Joseph, reinforces the theme of God acting through humans; the offspring of Tamar by Judah are the ancestors of King David, and by tradition, the Mashiach as well.

So how do we reconcile free will with God’s plan? Perhaps we can view ourselves as partners in the developing story. God may “know” how “things will turn out” but each individual must make his own decision about how he or she will react to circumstances, whether it is wrestling with someone, accepting or rejecting directions, or being caring or compassionate to others.