YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

PARASHAT VAYECHI

Ya'acov's Reassurance
By Rav Michael Hattin

INTRODUCTION

Ya'acov dwelt in Egypt for seventeen years, and the days of Ya'acov's lifetime, the years of his life, were one hundred and forty-seven.  Ya'acov's death drew near…

With the death of Ya'acov and his burial at Machpela, the Book of Bereishit is effectively completed.  The lengthy saga of Yosef and his brothers that had animated the final third of the book is thus neatly concluded, with the satisfying story of the family's reunion and rapprochement.  Before his death, Ya'acov summons his beloved Yosef, later still Yosef with his children, and finally his other sons in turn.  In the first encounter with Yosef, Ya'acov exacts a pledge from his politically powerful son to bear his remains back to Canaan and to inter them in the family sepulcher at the Cave of Machpela.  At all costs, Ya'acov does not want his bones to be interred in foreign soil.  Not only is this an expression of Ya'acov's personal preference to be laid to rest with his ancestors, namely his parents and grandparents, but also a deliberate declaration to his children – some of whom no doubt dream of building successful and stable lives for themselves in fertile Goshen, shielded from harm under Yosef's protective wings.  The sojourn in Egypt is but a phase, Ya'acov seems to say, its glittering blandishments illusory, but our permanent home and, with it, our ultimate mission as a people, await us back among the rocky hills of Canaan.

THE SECOND SUMMONS

Ya'acov then summons Yosef a second time, as sickness saps his strength and mortality stares him in the face.  Recounting to his son God's promise that He would fashion a nation from his descendents, Ya'acov extends his blessing to Yosef and then proclaims the latter's two sons, Menashe the older and Efraim the younger, as tribes.  Henceforth, the tribes of Israel will number thirteen, for Yosef's two sons will be counted among them and will eventually secure a dual inheritance of land in consequence.  Placing his hands upon Menashe and Efraim, Ya'acov then blesses the lads with Divine protection and success.  But prophetically sensing that the younger will outshine the older, Ya'acov crowns the head of Efraim with his right hand, while placing his left upon Menashe.  He concludes with an invocation of words of grace that to this day are recited in the Jewish home on the Sabbath eve: "May God make you as Efraim and Menashe" (48:20).  Turning to Yosef, he reminds him that God's promise will be fulfilled: He will restore them to their ancestral home in Canaan, and there Yosef's special tribal status will be confirmed: "Yisrael said to Yosef: behold, I now die, but the Lord will be with you and will return you to the land of your forefathers.  As for me, I gave you a measure ("shechem" in the original Hebrew) more than your brothers, that which I seized from the Amorites with my sword and with my bow!" (48:21-22).

While the primary thrust of Ya'acov's words is straightforward enough, this final phrase is unusually cryptic.  Clearly, the context speaks of Efraim the younger surpassing Menashe the older, of restoration to Canaan, and then of Yosef's unique status among his brothers.  The basic linkage is obvious: just as Efraim will achieve greater prominence than Menashe, just as the younger son will achieve through his merit the honor that his older sibling had initially been granted as an entitlement from birth, so too Yosef had earned Ya'acov's special attention by surpassing his brothers through effort.  Though by birth, Yosef was surely not Ya'acov's firstborn, he had nevertheless secured that singular honor by demonstrating characteristic responsibility through the physical deliverance of the family from famine as well as its spiritual rescue from ruin.  It was Yosef who had never forgotten them, it was Yosef who had reunited them, it was Yosef who had overcome his brothers' devastating estrangement to forgive, and to thus mend the tattered family to become whole again.  But what was the meaning of Ya'acov's concluding words, the reference to the Amorite and weapons of war?

RASHI'S READING

Rashi (11th century, France) provides us with two possible readings of the verse, but on the surface, both seem somewhat forced.  We will consider his first explanation:

Because you exert yourself to attend to my imminent burial, I grant you also an inheritance for your interment.  What would this be?  This would be the town of Shechem, as the verse states: "in Shechem they buried the bones of Yosef that they had brought out of Egypt…" (Yehoshua 24:32).  In other words, Shechem itself will constitute the extra measure that I extend to you more than to your brothers.  

Concerning the reference to the sword and the bow, Rashi remarks (now quoting an earlier Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 80:10):

When Shim'on and Levi decimated the people of Shechem, all of the surrounding peoples gathered to fight them, and Ya'acov himself donned weapons and defeated them!

For Rashi then, the theme of death and interment that so preoccupies Ya'acov's thoughts now, is also the thrust of his remarks to Yosef.  Linking these final two verses, Rashi understands that Ya'acov here reassures his son Yosef that he too will merit burial in Canaan's coveted earth, namely in the shadow of the town of Shechem, the natural analog in the northern hill country to the cave of Machpela nestled among the southern hills of Chevron.  The "Shechem" of the verse is therefore the town of that name, rather than an expression of "measure," and Ya'acov himself, claims Rashi, had secured the location as his own by battling the Amorites in the aftermath of Shim'on and Levi's indiscretion (see Bereishit 34:25-31; 35:5).  

According to Rashi, we are to read the verses as containing a single idea, a guarantee to Yosef that his own earthly remains will not be abandoned in Egypt but will be borne back home: "Yisrael said to Yosef: behold, I now die, but the Lord will be with you and will return you to the land of your forefathers.  As for me, I gave you a measure ("shechem" in the original Hebrew) more than your brothers, that which I seized from the Amorites with my sword and with my bow!" (48:21-22).  Though Rashi's explanation would have benefited from verse 21 being phrased in the singular, for it then would have constituted a direct reference to Yosef's "return to the land of HIS forefathers," we note that the verse is in fact couched in the plural: "Yisrael said to Yosef: behold, I now die, but the Lord will be with you ("eemachem," rather than "eemcha") and will return you ("etchem," rather than "otcha") to the land of your forefathers ("avoteichem," rather than "avotecha").  Presumably, Rashi understands verse 21 as a reference to the people of Israel who will one day be restored to Canaan (long after Yosef's death).  At that time, they will take Yosef's remains with them and bury his bones at Shechem, the town that Ya'acov now assigns to him as his personal parting gift.

RASHI'S INTENT

Though Ya'acov's reported skirmish with the Amorites is not substantiated by the Biblical text, for it actually reports that the surrounding peoples were seized with a Divinely-inspired dread and did not attempt to pursue Ya'acov's family (see Bereishit 35:5), perhaps Rashi's exegetical intent is in fact somewhat different.  Recall that Ya'acov had been intensely displeased with the conduct of Shim'on and Levi at Shechem, though their intentions to save their sister Dinah and redeem her disgraced honor may have been above reproach.  By massacring the people of Shechem who had naively circumcised themselves at the deceitful behest of the brothers, Shim'on and Levi had not only brought disrepute to God's name but had also endangered the entire family who, vastly outnumbered by the surrounding Canaanites, could not have survived a reprisal attack.  Ya'acov's displeasure with their act can actually be gauged by his words to them in our own Parasha, for his so-called "blessing" to them is in fact anything but:

Shim'on and Levi are brothers, weapons of violence are their portion.  In their counsel let my soul not be counted, in their congregation let my glory not be united, for in their anger they killed men and with desire they crippled oxen.  May their anger be cursed for it was extreme, and their rage for it was harsh, I will divide them among Ya'acov and scatter them among Israel!" (49:5-7).

But, Rashi relates, Ya'acov himself had countered their rashness by opposing the Amorites in battle and then defeating them.  Thus, the disastrous consequences that could have easily materialized in the aftermath of Shim'on and Levi's debacle were forestalled by Ya'acov's direct intervention.  In a similar vein, Rashi may be intimating in his explanation to our verses, the brothers had attempted to destroy Yosef by selling him down to Egypt.  It is indeed significant that in that context, Rashi adopted the view that it was Shim'on and Levi who had been particularly active in the distressing cabal!  Commenting on Bereishit 42:24, Rashi remarks: "it was Shim'on who had cast Yosef into the pit.  He had said to Levi: 'behold, this master of dreams now approaches!  Come now, let us kill him…'"  But the plan of Shim'on and Levi had again been thwarted, this time not by Ya'acov's intervention but rather by God's guidance.  Yosef had been preserved in Egypt, had risen to prominence, had served as the instrument for his family's deliverance, and now attended his aged father on the eve of the latter's demise.  In effect, Shim'on and Levi did not succeed at all in breaking the bond between father and son!

But perhaps, nevertheless, their deed had unwittingly borne noxious fruits, for they had initiated the chain of events that had driven Yosef far away from Canaan never to return, for in Egypt he would in the end perish and there he would remain!  "Therefore," says Ya'acov according to Rashi's reassuring reading, "know Yosef that you WILL return to Canaan.  Just as you take pains to restore my remains to Machpela, so too your descendents will not leave you to be covered by Egypt's arid sand but will instead bring you back to Shechem, to the very place that I had sent you so many years earlier to seek your vengeful brother's welfare!" (see Bereishit 37:15).  

DECIDING THE OUTCOME

In effect, Rashi's remarks may therefore constitute a profound meditation on the works of men.  How they plot and plan, often driven by their frustrations to excess, convinced that they will surely succeed in the execution of their deed.  But how many great and small steps separate the scheme from its successful realization, how many unforeseen variables may yet effect the outcome!  Shim'on and Levi had attempted to separate Yosef from Ya'acov forever, to dispense with the hated dreamer and his enthusiastic pronouncements of power, to send him far away never to return.  In the end, all of their plans were overturned, for Yosef had been reunited with Ya'acov, had in the interim realized only too well his hated dreams of prominence, and was now assured, according to Rashi's reading, that even the final piece of the puzzle would be restored by Ya'acov to its rightful place.  To Shechem, Yosef would one day return, in the concluding upset of the brother's plan, while they would remain behind in Egypt to languish among its storied ruins forever.

With the conclusion of Sefer Bereishit, the tale of Yosef and his brothers ends, leaving us with some of the most inspiring ideas that the world has ever known.  But one notion in particular stands out among them.  While God calls upon us to choose, freely exercising our will in the seeking of the good and the right, He also guides our steps and decides the eventual outcome.  We follow His call or we ignore it, we embrace our destiny or we discard it, we realize our objective or we miss the mark, but every step of the colossal struggle that is human existence and human choice is informed by God's involvement and guided by His will.  For those that seek His presence, He is there, and though we may often labor to understand His ways we also submit that they are not random or capricious.  Yosef and his brothers embark on an odyssey that in the end transforms them all, mostly due to turns of events that are "unexpected" and "unforeseen," but not at all arbitrary.  With the greater spiritual sensitivity that eventually informs them all, Yosef in the closing verses is able to articulate the enduring truth: "though you thought to do me evil, God designed the good, for it was in order to preserve a great nation this very day!"

Shabbat Shalom