Commentary for Genesis 37:23

את כתנתו HIS GARMENT — this means his shirt.

את כתונת הפסים, the only reason why these words have been inserted here is to remind the reader of what had been the cause of the entire tragic episode of fraternal hatred. However, if the Torah had not added these words, we would have been misled. The fact that the Torah describes the brothers sending the blood-spattered tattered remains of this tunic to their father (verse 33) was designed to deceive their father into believing that what happened to Joseph had nothing to do with his father having had this garment made for him and the brothers having resented this. The Torah does not want us, the readers, to be misled as the brothers had succeeded in misleading their father into thinking that he had become the victim of a wild animal.

ויפשיטו את יוסף את כתנתו, They stripped Joseph of his tunic, etc. According to the plain meaning of the verse the word כתנתו refers to his shirt, whereas the additional words את כתנת הפסים refer to his outer garment, the one his father had made for him. In order to understand the verse thoroughly we have to know why the Torah did not write ואת כתנת הפסים, "and the striped coat."

ויהי..את כתנת הפסים, the letter ה at the beginning of the word הפסים, referring to a specific garment, is justified seeing that we had previously been told את כתנתו, “his tunic,” i.e. the same tunic.

ויפשיטו את יוסף את כותנתו, “They stripped Joseph of his tunic.” Rashi explains the word כתונת as “shirt,” an undergarment. This is a difficult explanation, as the question is how they could remove an undergarment before removing his outer garment first, the famous striped coat. The answer usually given to this question is that it is normal for someone robbing someone else of his clothing to pull all his garments off him in one motion, and to then turn these garments inside out, beginning to separate them, so that the undergarment is separated first. Alternately, travelers have a habit of covering their outer garments with their undergarments as a form of protection for them while they are on the journey encountering obstacles that might damage the costly outer garments. Personally, I believe that the Torah speaks of only one garment, describing his fancy outer garment as also his undergarment, and the fact that he wore it visibly when planning to visit his brothers inflamed their hatred even more.

This is an additional one that his father gave him in excess of what was given to the brothers. Re’m explains that it is all one garment. He was wearing only one כתונת, which was of פסים, and the verse reads as follows: “They stripped him of his כתונת.” Which כתונת? “The פסים כתונת that he had on.” It cannot mean that he wore two כתונות, one top of the other, because only the garment touching the skin is called כתונת. But Maharshal writes: It seems to me not so. Rather, he had on two כתונות, one on top of the other. The first was on his skin, so that sweat should not ruin the כתונת of פסים. They stripped off both garments at once by grasping the bottom one and removing both. That is why it says אשר עליו (“that was on it”), referring to the other garment on which the פסים כתונת was on top of. The reason they grasped the bottom one was to show him that they were not doing this because his father gave him an additional כתונת of פסים. Rather, it was because of his bad reports and his dreams [that he told his father].

Das ויקחהו steht erst nach dem Ausziehen des Rockes. Er hat überhaupt keinen Widerstand geleistet. Nur durch Bitten suchte er sie zu erweichen, wie wir aus Kap.42, 21 wissen.

את כתונת הפסים, “the striped coat;” because it had been the garment which had caused all the hatred and jealousy.

את כתנת הפסים THE LONG SLEEVED GARMENT — this was the garment that his father had given him additional to those of his brothers (Genesis Rabbah 84:16).

The Torah wanted us to understand that the brothers did not want to strip Joseph naked. Their main concern was to remove the striped coat which had aroused their jealousy. The Torah tells us that when they began to strip the striped coat off him they were so angry at him that they inadvertently also removed his shirt at the same time. The Torah describes that Joseph was left naked by writing ויפשיטו את יוסף את כתנתו, "they stripped him naked by unintentionally removing his shirt with his striped coat."

The Torah adds אשר עליו, "which he wore on top," to further underline that the striped coat was an outer garment. In spite of this, in their frenzy they removed all his garments.