Comentario sobre Génesis 43:9

והצגתיו לפניך AND SET HIM BEFORE THEE — for I will not bring him back to you dead but alive.

אנכי אערבנו…וחטאתי לך כל הימים "I will remain liable to you forever." The reason Yehudah said "forever" is explained by our sages in Bereshit Rabbah 91,10. The Hereafter is called "כל הימים," as it lasts forever.

וחטאתי לך, Yehudah did not really man that if he did not bring Binyamin back this would automatically be a sin in the objective meaning of the word. He meant that he would consider himself as a sinner against his father forever in the unlikely event that this would happen. He would guarantee his brother’s return under such conditions. These considerations prompted our sages in Makkot 11 to characterise Yehudah as placing himself in the position of a conditional outcast, מנודה, they derive the halachah that someone who places himself in such a state requires the court to annul his conditional vow, status. Needless to say that ostracising oneself from the Jewish community even conditionally is forbidden, and we have a tradition that the bones inside Yehudah’s coffin were rattling for the entire 40 years the Jewish people carried the coffins of the 12 founding leaders of the tribes with them through the desert. This stopped only at the request of Moses who asked mercy for Yehudah in his final blessing in Deuteronomy 33,7, וזאת 'ליהודה וגו

אנכי אערבנו מידי תבקשנו...וחטאתי לך כל הימים, “I will guarantee him, from me you can demand him;....or I will have sinned against you for all the days.” He meant that as long as he would live on earth he would consider himself as having sinned against his father. Solomon describes someone who steals from his parents as being a thief (although he stands to inherit his parents’ property) — compare Proverbs 25,24. Such a person is described there as a sinner against his parents.

Es soll dann der schwankende Verdacht, der jetzt auf uns allen lastet, in betreff Benjamins in konzentrierter Gestalt auf mir ruhen.

וחטאתי לך כל הימים THEN SHALL I HAVE SINNED AGAINST THEE ALL THE DAYS — also in the world to come (Genesis Rabbah 91:10).

Rav Yehudah in Makkot 11 teaches the rule that if someone is excommunicated, even conditionally, [i.e. he has been warned he would be put in ban if he did not conform to certain rules of conduct, Ed.] the conditional ban is not considered as having been lifted unless a collegium of laymen or judges has released such a person from such a conditional excommunication. The Talmud cites Yehudah's statement "if I do not bring him back to you" as proof. We have a tradition quoted by Rabbi Shemuel bar Nachmeni in the name of Rabbi Yochanan that the reason Yehudah and Reuben are linked in Moses' blessing in Deuteronomy 33,6 "may Reuben live and not die" followed by the statement "וזאת ליהודה," is that during all the forty years the Jewish people travelled through the desert with the coffin of Yehudah, the bones in his coffin still kept turning over. If you were to say that perhaps Yehudah's fault had been that he had not spelled out what would happen if he fulfilled his guarantee as did the tribe of Gad and Reuben in Numbers 32,29-30 [something known as תנאי כפול in halachah, Ed.], the fact remains that he did deliver on his promise, so why should he be guilty of anything?

According to Tossaphot the whole rule that one needs a release from a conditional excommunication applies only when the person who makes the undertaking is able to carry it out, and no part of the execution depends on someone else's goodwill. In the case of Yehudah, he had no control over what Joseph would or would not do. As a result the conditional excommunication that Yehudah was prepared to endure never became effective legally.

It is no more than reasonable that when someone makes an undertaking to endure excommunication in the event that he will not fulfil his undertaking (such as that of Yehudah, who was unable to know if he would be able to make good on it), he would require that such an undertaking be cancelled by the appropriate religious authority. It does not matter whether one phrased such an undertaking as a תנאי כפול, spelling out the alternative, or not. The very fact that one ties one's fate to something over which one has no control is frivolous. Yehudah's bones rattling in his coffin is quite plausible then, seeing he did not have his undertaking voided by his father or some other religious authority.

[I have condensed the author's treatment of this problem considerably. A reader who will peruse it in the original will see why. Ed.]