Комментарий о цитате к Берешит 18:28

According to Bereshit Rabbah (84,10) Yaakov had a flash of insight seeing in his mind’s eye that Joseph would become provoked by the wife of Potiphar. We may be permitted the question that if G’d granted him such a flash of insight, why did He not reveal to him that Joseph was alive? Our sages answered this by saying that the brothers had all made a solemn agreement that whosoever would reveal what happened to Yaakov would be ostracised. They had included G’d in that agreement, i.e. they did specifically impose silence even on G’d (compare Pirke d'Rabbi Eliezer 38). In order to make such a weird sounding statement more plausible, let us consider the following. There were nine brothers present at the time the sale took place (Binyamin and Reuven were absent. Joseph, as the victim was not part of this agreement). In order to make such a solemn oath or agreement legally valid a quorum of ten adult males was required. They had decided to make G’d the tenth member of that quorum (not that they “forbade” G’d to reveal to Yaakov what He saw fit to reveal). If you find this concept difficult to accept, consider, if you will that when Avraham prayed for the cities of Sodom, etc. to be saved if they contained a certain number of righteous individuals, he asked if G’d would spare them if He could find there forty-five such people. Why did he mention the number 45, and not 35, 25, or 15? He began with he number 50 to say that if there could be found a quorum of ten good people in each of the five towns under threat of extinction G’d should spare the town on account of them. In mentioning the number 45, he assumed that if each of these towns would have only nine righteous men G’d would be willing to make up the missing tenth and thus He would complement the required number (Genesis 18,28 according to Rashi). If you were to reject this comparison saying that whereas Avraham wanted to make G’d a partner in order to save a town, in this instance the brothers made G’d their partner in a destructive scheme, remember that their objective was not a nefarious one. Their objective all along had been to preserve the people of Israel and the honour of G’d as they considered how Yaakov would curse all of them if he became aware of what they had done to his favourite son. If the sons and family of Yaakov would perish, who would proclaim the name and glory of G’d in the world? The situation which would then come about is similar to the one mentioned in Joshua 7,9 when Joshua felt that the Israelites were threatened by the defeat they had suffered at the hands of the little town of Ai, and he implored G’d to reverse this defeat. He said: והכיתו את שמנו מן הארץ ומה תעשה לשמך הגדול, “and they will wipe out our name from the land and then what will You do to promote Your great name?” On account of these considerations the brothers had felt justified in including G’d Himself in their scheme. Incidentally, we find that Moses also included G’d and his heavenly tribunal at the time he received the Torah.
You might ask that seeing the sages (Bereshit Rabbah 84,21) have told us that Yitzchak knew that Joseph was alive but decided not to reveal this to his son Yaakov as he felt that G’d must have had a good reason if He Himself had not revealed it to him, whence did Yitzchak have his information? We must obviously conclude that G’d had told Yitzchak. He also told Binyamin that Joseph was alive. We know this (compare Bereshit Rabbah 71,8) because the gem on Aaron’s breastplate which represented the tribe of Binyamin was the ישפה, which may be read as יש פה, “there is a mouth”. The Midrash implies that though Binyamin was not included in that solemn undertaking of the nine brothers and he could have told his father that Joseph was alive without violating that pact, he decided to keep his mouth shut as he appreciated the motivations which had guided his brothers when making such a pact, and he too did not want to take the chance that his father would curse the brothers.