Commento su Genesi 38:1

ויהי בעת ההוא AND IT CAME TO PASS AT THAT TIME — Why is this section placed here thus interrupting the section dealing with the history of Joseph? To teach that his brothers degraded him from his high position. When they saw their father’s grief they said, “You told us to sell him: if you had told us to send him back to his father we would also have obeyed you” (Genesis Rabbah 85:2).

ויהי בעת ההיא, והמדנים מכרו אותו, [the Torah contrasts the facts with the perception of the facts, i.e. Joseph was alive but the Midianites had sold him. I believe that this is why the author quotes the beginning of this verse without elaborating on it at all. He leaves it to our imagination to fill in this next item in the tragic chain of errors beginning with the fact that Yitzchok had shown more love for Esau. Ed.] at about the same time when Joseph was sold to Egypt at the suggestion of Yehudah who had proposed this instead of bringing him back to his father and had thereby bereaved his father, Yehudah reaped some of the fruit of his ill advised plans, in that the way was paved for him to be bereaved of two of his own sons in due course.

38.1. וירד יהודה מאת אחיו, Yehudah descended and turned from his brothers, etc. Our sages in Sotah 13 say that the brothers demoted him. Ibn Ezra says that anyone who comes from the northern part of the world to the South is considered as "descending." What he said is correct; it does not apply here, however, because then the Torah need not have added: "from his brothers." This clearly indicates that Yehudah's descent, i.e. demotion, was caused by his brothers. It also says: ויט עד איש, "he turned to a certain person, etc." Our sages are quite correct when they interpret the word וירד as a moral descent and the words ויט, etc., are integral to the verse.