Komentaryo sa Genesis 45:27: Rashi, Chizkuni, Da'at Zekenim & Ramban

.(פג ALL THE WORDS OF JOSEPH — As evidence that it was Joseph who was sending this message he had informed them of the religious subject he had been studying with his father at the time when he left him, viz., the section of the Heifer (עגלה) that had its neck broken (Deuteronomy 21:6). It is to this that Scripture refers in the words “And he saw (i.e comprehended the meaning of) the עגלות (here to be taken in sense of Heifer) which Joseph had sent — and it does not state “which Pharaoh had sent” (as one would expect if עגלות meant wagons) (Genesis Rabbah 94:3).

את כל דברי יוסף, “all that Joseph had said.” According to Rash,i the reference is to Joseph having sent the carriages, not to Pharaoh having sent them. Only before the arrival of the family in Egypt, were these carriages attributed to the generosity of Pharaoh. (46,5.)

וידברו אליו את כל דברי יוסף, “they said to him all the words Joseph had spoken. According to Rashi, Joseph conveyed to his father a code word that would convince him that only he could have known this. It concerned the subject matter that his father and he had been discussing when he accompanied him part of the way on his fateful journey. It dealt with someone being found dead on the road, someone whom no one knew and who had nothing on him that could identify him. This subject is discussed in chapter 21.of the Book of Deuteronomy. The hint was contained in the translation of the word וישלחהו, “he sent him off,” which the Targum renders in Genesis 12,20 when Pharaoh sent Avraham home as ואלויאו, “he gave him safe conduct.” Joseph had at the time told his father to go home, to which Yaakov had replied that it was a virtuous act to accompany someone departing some distance. He acquainted him at the time with the paragraph quoted from Deuteronomy chapter 21. He even pointed out the fact that failing to accompany a departing guest some distance, could make such a person liable to have to swear a sacred oath that he had not been negligent in this respect. The subject is discussed in the Talmud tractate Sotah chapter nine at length, where it is presumed that the word עגלות was supposed to refer to the heifer that would be the animal offered as atonement for this sin of negligence by the townspeople closest to the murdered person. Other commentators believe that what Yaakov and Joseph had been discussing was the subject of a carriage being pulled by a heifer (compare Sotah, folio 46.) In either event, it seems very forced to see in the carriages Joseph had sent to carry Yaakov’s family a reference to the word עגלה, heifer. It is more plausible that the hint had to do with the carriages used by the Jewish people to transport the parts of the Tabernacle that could not be carried on the shoulders of the Levites. (Compare Numbers 7,3)