פירוש על בראשית 43:33

הבכור כבכרתו THE FIRST-BORN ACCORDING TO HIS BIRTHRIGHT — He struck the goblet and called aloud: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulon, sons of one mother, take your seats at the table in this order which is the order in which you were born — and similarly in the case of them all. When he reached Benjamin’s name he said, “This one has no mother and I have no mother — let him sit beside me” (Genesis Rabbah 92:5).

וישבו לפניו, Joseph had given instructions to arrange the seating order in order of their birth.

וישבו לפניו, in the order in which Joseph had given instructions to seat them.

הבכור כבכורתו, “the firstborn in accordance with his birthright.” Joseph would strike his goblet and pronounce: ”Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehudah, Issachar and Zevulun are all sons of one mother.” He proceeded to seat them in the order of their birth. He repeated the same procedure with the other sons also. When he came to Binyamin, he said: “this one does not have a mother; I do not have a mother either.” He therefore placed Binyamin next to himself. This caused ויתמהו האנשים איש אל רעהו, “the men were looking at each other in astonishment.”

נתמה .ויתמהו: Gefühl einer Vorstellung, über die wir uns nicht klar werden, also eine unklare Vorstellung: Staunen. Verwandt mit דמה, etwas vorstellen, und zwar liegt auch in דמה die doppelte Richtung: a. דמה אל, die Vorstellung von etwas anderem in uns anregen, einem andern ähnlich sein, also immerhin eine nicht so klare Vorstellung wie die Vorstellung des Gegenstandes selbst. Dann b. דמה absolut, eine unklare Vorstellung haben: meinen, sich einbilden. Hiervon das rabbinische דמאי: das, worüber man keine klare Vorstellung hat, דמי מתוקן דמי אינו מתוקן (Jeruschalmi); ferner דמוע, das Gemischte; ebenso טמע von einer Menschen-Familien-Rassenmischung. Daher denn auch טמא, das Unklare, Getrübte, im Gegensatz zu טהור, das Reine, Klare.

ויתמהו האנשים, “the men (Joseph’s brothers) were astounded;” their amazement did not concern the order in which they had been seated- as might be understood- but it concerned the separation of Egyptians, themselves and Joseph, the Torah indicating this to us when stating that the separation had to do with the different eating habits of the Egyptians on the one hand and the Hebrews on the other. They wondered which race Joseph belonged to, seeing that he appeared to be neither Hebrew nor Egyptian.

הבכור כבכורתו, “the firstborn according to the mother he was the firstborn of.” Rashi explains: when it came to seating Binyamin, seeing that he did no longer have a mother, he seated him according to his being the youngest as the brothers had told him on their first visit. Joseph thought that the mothers of the others were still alive, [although we know from Yaakov’s remarks on his deathbed that Leah had already been buried by him in the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 49,31). The brothers who were not firstborns seated themselves in the order of their seniority, seeing that it does not say concerning them that ויושיב אותם, “he seated them.”. Ed.]

ויתמהו, they were utterly amazed, seeing that they had all been born within a space of seven years and they could not understand how their ages had become known to Joseph.

הבכור כבכורתו ויתמהו, the oldest in accordance with his seniority etc. They were amazed. They could not explain to themselves how Joseph had known their respective ages seeing that only seven years separated all of them from the oldest except for Binyamin, whom they had described as the youngest so that Joseph knew about him. According to Bereshit Rabbah 92,5 Joseph had made a great pretense of consulting the goblet he used to drink from to determine the seating arrangement to correspond with their importance. He would claim that seeing that Yehudah was destined to become a king, he should sit at the head of the brothers. Reuven who was the biological senior of the brothers should sit next to Yehudah. He would continue in this fashion, explaining the reason why he had chosen to seat the brothers in the sequence he assigned to them. When he came to Binyamin, he said: “seeing that I have no mother and he has no mother let him sit closest to me.” No wonder that the brothers were utterly confused by this.

The previous passage was taken from Bereshit Rabbah 92,5. At this point, the brothers began to wonder about the hidden properties of Joseph’s goblet. The problem with this interpretation of the words: “they were astonished,” is that if indeed the goblet possessed magic properties, Egypt was the country in which the magic arts had been perfected and the brothers should not have had any special reason to wonder about this. It appears that there was an element of vocal communication involved here, something other than the known varieties of Egyptian magic. Whereas normally, the people practicing the art of sorcery, magic, could hear only by means of living creatures which themselves possess a mouth, i.e. an organ by means of which they emit sounds which may be interpreted as words, in this instance an inert object such as Joseph’s goblet appeared to communicate such words to its owner. Our sages who are on record as saying that even the ears of corn proclaim their song of praise to G’d, have described the times the ears of corn as doing this as being when the wind blows, i.e. when there are sound vibrations, some of which the ears of corn exploit in order to communicate their feeling to G’d. (compare Rashi on Rosh Hashanah 8 where these ears of corn are described as singing their song during the month of Nissan). At any rate, experts are able to discern more than just sounds when the wind blows through the corn fields. Joseph’s brothers (mistakenly) believed that the sound of Joseph striking the goblet translated to him into words, into an intelligent message. It was something they had never heard of.

ויתמהו האנשים, “the men were amazed;” clearly this does not refer to the line: וישבו לפניו, “they sat before him;” their amazement was at the separation between the separate seating arrangement between 1) himself, 2) the Egyptians, and 3) themselves, the Hebrews. What they could not understand was why Joseph was seated by himself seeing that in their opinion he was also an Egyptian. They concluded that he must be of a different people or religion altogether.