Komentarz do Rodzaju 45:8

לאב A FATHER — he made me his colleague and he bestowed on me the dignity of “Father of the king.”

כי האלוקים, “only G’d.”

ועתה לא אתם שלחתם, now that you have seen G’d’s purpose a purpose that could not have been achieved without all the various stages preceding it, it is no more than reasonable to suppose that also the further distant causes which led up to all this were part of G’d’s plan.

ועתה, לא אתם שלחתם אותי הנה, "Now, you did not send me here, etc." Joseph explained why he told the brothers not to worry that he still hated them for what they had done to him and how cruelly they had treated him. He implied that it was true that at the time he certainly had not understood why they could have harboured so much resentment against him; he had had reason to hate them for that; ועתה, now, things had become clear.

לאב, die Grundbedeutung von אב rad. אבה, einwilligen, ist ja: derjenige, dem das Veto zusteht, ohne dessen Einwilligung ein anderer nichts tun darf; somit hier: Ratgeber.

לאב לפרעה, as an adviser to the king.

Having reflected on all that had transpired since the brothers had sold him, Joseph had realised that it had been part of an overall design orchestrated by G'd. The brothers had merely been G'd's agents, though they did not realise it at the time. It would not be appropriate for him to continue to feel hatred towards them.

ולאדון לכל ביתו, in charge of the entire palace.

Perhaps this consideration enabled the brothers to face their father who would now have to become aware that it was the brothers who had caused him to mourn the loss of Joseph all these years. In view of the outcome, the brothers did not even need to feel shame when they faced their father. It is quite unlikely that once Jacob had become aware that Joseph was the ruler in Egypt that he should not have made every effort to find out how Joseph came to be in Egypt and what happened to cause his striped coat to become blood-drenched at the time. The only argument that would reconcile Jacob and his sons with what had happened was that it had become evident that G'd's plan had been executed step by step. There was no point in second-guessing why and how G'd had brought all this about. Our sages in Bereshit Rabbah 86,1 have already said that Jacob had originally been meant to descend to Egypt in chains, but that the sale of Joseph enabled him to arrive in Egypt in style, i.e. riding in Pharaoh's chariot.

ומושל בכל ארץ מצרים, and absolute ruler in the whole land of Egypt concerning national and international affairs.