Глава 37

Gen.37:1. Jacob lived in the land of his father [Isaac's] pilgrimage, in the land of Canaan. Returning, after a break (list of genealogies of the tribe of Esau, chapter 36) to the story of Jacob and his immediate descendants (cf. Gen. 35:27–29), the sacred writer recalls that after the separation and removal of Esau (Gen. 36:6–7) from Jacob, the latter was still “in the land of his father’s wanderings” - in Canaan, which, although in the future, according to the promises of God, was to be the property of the descendants of Abraham - Jacob, for now it was only a land of wandering (Hebrew megurim - Midrash brings it closer to the word ger, stranger, proselyte, and says that Isaac, like Abraham and Jacob, acquired proselytes of the true faith in Canaan - Beresch. r. Par. 84, s. 409). In particular, Jacob was currently living in Hebron (Gen. 35:27, 37:14). Gen.37:2. This is the life of Jacob. Joseph, seventeen years old, tended [his father's] cattle with his brothers when he was a boy, with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought evil rumors about them to [Israel] their father. Although what follows is primarily the story of Joseph, since the story of the brothers and Jacob himself is closely connected with it, the title of the story of Joseph contains the remark: “here is the life (subsequent story) of Jacob.” How, after the death of Abraham (Gen. 25:8), the genealogy (toldoth) of Ishmael is given (Gen. 25:12–18), and then the history (toldoth) of Isaac continues (Gen. 25:19); so after the death of Isaac, the genealogy (toldoth) of Esau is given (Gen. 36), then the story of Jacob continues (from chapter 37 to the end of the book of Genesis). The preference that the sacred writer gives to Joseph over Jacob is explained by the Midrash by the fact that the fate of Joseph had the greatest similarity with the fate of Jacob, for example, both were subjected to brotherly hatred and danger of life, etc. (Beresch. r. Par. 84, s. 409–410). In the one about Joseph, after the indication of 17-l. his age, it is said that he was young (naar, youth), Jewish interpreters saw an indication of Joseph’s childishly naive (partly in a disapproving sense) behavior, thanks to which he unwittingly incurred the hatred of his brothers. Joseph tended his father's flock as an assistant to Jacob's sons close to him in age from Bilhah - Dan and Naphtali (Gen. 30:6-8) and from Zilpah - Gad and Asher (Gen. 30:11-13); Joseph stood especially close to the first two brothers, as to the children of his mother’s slave Rachel, who after the death of the latter replaced Joseph and Benjamin’s mother. Joseph's attitude towards his older brothers, according to Gen. 37:13–14, resembles the attitude of the young man David towards his older brothers who went to war (1 Sam. 17:17–18). Immediately after the mention of the activities of Joseph and his brothers, the circumstance that served as the first reason for the brothers’ hatred against Joseph is reported: he brought unkind rumors about them to the attention of his father (Vulg.; “crimine pessimo”). LXX interpreters and the Slavic text give the opposite idea, i.e. that the brothers slandered Joseph (so did Saint John Chrysostom). But the Targum of Onkelos, Achilah, Symmachus, the Samaritan translation, the Arabic, the Vulgate express the thought of the Jewish Masoretic text (as well as the Russian Synodal). The biblical text does not say what the accusation was; The Midrash and the rabbis made different assumptions about this (Beresch. r., s. 410). Gen.37:3. Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age, and they made him a coat of many colors. Jacob's special love for Joseph is motivated by the fact that the latter was the son of his old age. But Issachar and Zebulun, the sons of Leah, were born to Jacob almost simultaneously with Joseph (Gen. 30:18–23), and Benjamin was even 15 years younger than Joseph. Therefore, the testimony of the Bible can be supplemented by the testimony of Josephus that Jacob loved Joseph as born of Rachel (after long expectations) and distinguished by beauty (εὐγένεια ) body and virtue of the soul (Ant. 2:2, 1). Jacob expressed his primary love for Joseph by sewing him, as it were, his firstborn (cf. Gen. 27:15 - about Esau’s rich clothing) special clothes, ketoneth passim. According to the literal meaning of the Hebrew word pas, it is “clothing of the extremities”, i.e. long tunic with sleeves (tunica manicata et talaris - Gezen., according to Aquila and Symmachus); in this form one must imagine ketoneth passim and the daughter of David, Tamar (2 Sam. 13:18). But LXX interpreters (also Slavic-Russian) convey: χιτῶν ποικίλον, a multi-colored tunic, and the customs of the East, ancient and new, - the use of predominantly colored materials for costumes (2 Kings 1:24; Proverbs 31:22) give credibility to this translation (Vulg: “tunicam polymitam”). On one of Beni-Ghassan's pages the Semites are depicted wearing brightly colored clothes. Gen.37:4. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and they hated him and could not speak friendly to him. This preferential love served as a new reason for Joseph’s brothers to hate, the most unbearable and unconcealed, towards their favorite, especially since they could fear (as Abarbanel noted) that their father would deprive them of all inheritance because of Joseph. Gen. 37:5–11. And Joseph saw a dream, and told [it] to his brothers: and they hated him even more. He said to them: listen to the dream that I saw: behold, we bind sheaves in the middle of the field; and behold, my sheaf rose up and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves stood round and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brothers said to him, “Will you really reign over us?” will you really rule over us? And they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. And he saw another dream and told it to [his father and] his brothers, saying: behold, I saw another dream: behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars worship me. And he told his father and his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have seen?” shall I and your mother and your brothers come to bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were annoyed with him, and his father noticed this word. But the brothers’ hatred of Joseph reached its highest degree when he naively and innocently told them his two prophetic dreams, which equally foreshadowed the future submission of his brothers and even his father to him. The first dream in its content reflects agriculture, which, as is known (Gen. 26:12), the patriarchs were already engaged in together with cattle breeding. Its meaning was very clear, which is why the brothers, having understood the meaning of the first dream, became even more embittered. Belief in the reality and significance of some dreams is found here, as well as in the Bible in general (Job 33:14–18; Judges 7:9–15; 1 Kings 3:5–15, etc.), but only in the story of Joseph is the phenomenon of double dreams observed (Joseph himself - in this place, the cupbearer and baker, Pharaoh), that Joseph himself in Gen. 41:32 explains that the repetition of the same object in two different forms means the providential necessity of the fulfillment of the foreshadowed fact and, moreover, in the near future (arbitrarily, the Midrash sees the dream of sheaves as realized in the cult of the golden calves, introduced (1 Kings 12:28, 32) by Joseph’s descendant Jeroboam). Joseph’s second dream already attracts the attention of his father, who, attaching a mysterious meaning to this dream (v. 11), however, reprimanded Joseph for his story: the admiration of the father, mother and older brothers for the younger brother and son, according to the concepts of the East, was unthinkable (in view of the deepest reverence of elders by the younger ones, usual in the East). “Your mother” (v. 10) is not Rachel, who has already died, but either Bilhah, who replaced her for Joseph (according to the Jewish interpretation), or Leah, who now used the name of her mother on the part of Rachel’s sons. Interpreters who see Rachel in the name “mother”, or admit that part of what is described in ch. 37, including dreams, occurred during Rachel’s lifetime, or (assuming that Rachel had already died) they see in the words of Jacob “shall I and your mother... come”, so to speak, a reductio ad absurdum: “after all, your mother is dead, how and when will we worship her now? The dream is clearly deceptive.” In the depths of his soul, Jacob had the opposite conviction. What has been said about the reasons for the brothers’ hatred of Joseph is united by Blessed Theodoret in the following words: “Joseph was loved by his father both as one born late, and as the son of Rachel, and as distinguished by virtue. Therefore, the brothers, seeing him as preferred, were stung by envy and at first tried to put their father in a bad position towards him, many times resorting to slander; Having not achieved their intention, they decided to destroy it, and then, after consulting, they sold it. The dream of sheaves foreshadows worship for wheat” (answer to question 96). Gen.37:14. [Israel] said to him: Go, see if your brothers are healthy and if your cattle are safe, and bring me an answer. And he sent him out of the valley of Hebron; and he came to Shechem. Despite the ominous mood of the brothers regarding Joseph, “neither the father nor the young man suspected anything or imagined that they could reach such a fury” (John Chrysostom, Bes. 61, p. 655). Therefore, when the brothers went to the flocks in the vicinity of Shechem, Jacob, out of concern for the well-being of the children, sent Joseph to inquire about their health, and Joseph immediately carried out his father’s order, which turned out to be fatal. Shechem, after the well-known bloodshed (Gen. 34:25), could already be populated again and the consequences of its defeat could be eliminated. But Jacob, apparently, fears for the fate of his sons, who could still incur vengeance from the surrounding residents. The sons of Jacob with their flocks apparently moved from place to place - from Hebron, where Jacob lived, to the north and east. Gen.37:15. And someone found him wandering in the field, and the man asked him, saying, “What are you looking for?” That Joseph went astray near Shechem is understandable, since he lived there as a boy. Jewish tradition saw the Archangel Gabriel in the man who met Joseph here, who allegedly demanded that he not return back and exactly fulfill his father’s orders. Gen.37:17. And the man said, They left hence, for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. Dothan, or, according to the LXX reading, Dophaim (mentioned later in the history of the prophet Elisha, 2 Kings 6:13, and still later in the history of Judith, Judith. 4:6, 7:3, 8:3), according to the testimony of Josephus and Blessed Jerome, lay north of Samaria and Shechem, at the entrance to the valley of Jezreel; the caravan road from the northeast to Egypt ran through this valley and through the city of Dothan. The place has retained its ancient name to this day. Gen. 37:18–20. And they saw him from afar, and before he approached them, they began to plot against him to kill him. And they said to each other: Behold, there comes a dreamer; Let's go now and kill him, and throw him into some ditch, and say that a predatory beast ate him; and we will see what will happen from his dreams. Having seen Joseph from afar (maybe by his characteristic clothes), the brothers - except Reuben and Judah (as can be seen from the subsequent, vv. 21-30), and also, of course, the young Benjamin - are plotting to kill, both from the name “possessor” (Heb. baal) of dreams, and from the fact that through the murder of the dreamer brother they hope to prevent the fulfillment of his dreams, it is clear that they firmly believed in the possibility of their fulfillment and were greatly alarmed by this. But it was precisely this intention that God turned them into one of the links on the path that led Joseph to his exaltation (cf. Gen. 50:20). According to legend, the proposal to kill Joseph came from Simeon and Levi (cf. the Shechem bloodshed) or from Simeon alone: ​​in the latter case, it would explain why Joseph subsequently leaves Simeon as a hostage in Egypt (Gen. 42:24). The brothers propose to throw the murdered Joseph into one of the dry tanks (bor) of the desert, of which there are many in Palestine even now, especially in the summer (cf. Jer. 41:9). Gen.37:22. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood; throw him into the pit that is in the wilderness, and do not lay hands on him. He said this [with the intention] to deliver him from their hands and return him to his father. The brutally cruel intention of the brothers meets with a generous rebuff from the more human nature of Reuben, who, although he was capable of criminal hobbies (Gen. 35:22), but, as the eldest, considered himself especially responsible to his father for his younger brothers, especially for his father’s favorite, Joseph (vv. 29–30). Trying to dissuade his brothers from shedding his blood, he repeats their idea - to throw Joseph (only alive into one of the tanks in the “desert” - the deserted part of the Jezreel Valley), of course, not with the goal of destroying Joseph without shedding blood (Knobel’s opinion), but with the intention of saving him and returning him to his father. Gen.37:23–24. When Joseph came to his brothers, they took off Joseph's robe, the coat of many colors that he was wearing, and they took him and threw him into the ditch; that ditch was empty; there was no water in it. As soon as Joseph approached, the brothers (according to tradition, first of all Simeon) took off his beautiful tunic - the object of their envy and indignation - and threw him, of course, with his desperate cry for compassion (cf. Gen. 42:21), into an empty ditch, without water, but hardly without liquid mud at the bottom of this ditch - a tank full, perhaps, of various reptiles: scorpions, snakes (Beresch. r. 84, s. 404). Gen.37:25. And they sat down to eat bread, and, looking, they saw, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from Gilead, and their camels were carrying styrax, balm and incense: they were going to take it to Egypt. Having committed this violence against their brother, the sons of Jacob, with the exception, perhaps, of Reuben, who had gone away, apparently in order to think over a plan for the salvation of Joseph (cf. Gen. 37:29–30), sit down to dinner: their hard-heartedness and callousness are amazing (cf. Proverbs 30:20)! At this time they saw a caravan (orechah; vulg.: viatores; slav.: travelers) heading with goods along the road from Gilead through Jezreel and Dothan. Caravans (cf. συνοδία, glorified “squad”, Luke 2:44) are a common way of traveling in the ancient and new East, in order to avoid attacks. The merchants or members of the caravan referred to here are called either Ishmaelites (vv. 25, 27, 28) or Midianites (vv. 28, 36). The Targum of Onkelos conveys the first name with the word "Arabs", and Josephus calls the Midianites Αραβας τοῦ Ισμαελιτῶν γένος: this name and representation ("Arabs") in the mouth of Joseph's brothers is more understandable than the special names (Ischmeelim, Midjanim and also Medanim, Art. 36), - since, if by the time of Moses the inhabitants of northern Arabia were generally known under the name of the Ishmaelites, then in the time of Jacob, when only the second generation of Ishmael lived, his descendants could not yet tell the country their name. The duality of the name is explained either by the fact that the leaders of the caravan were people of one tribe (Ishmael), and the merchants of another (Midian or Medan, cf. Gen. 25:2), or all three (see Hebrew text, v. 36, where medanim, and not midjanim, as in v. 28) names mean people of the same nation, sometimes general, sometimes special. The products that the merchants carried, according to a more likely explanation, were the following: nechoth - the so-called. gummi tragacanti, white, odorous, hard resin of the styrax tree (LXX and Vulg. common: θυμιάματα, aromata); zeri (LXX: ῥητίνη, Vulg:. "resina") - balm, resin of the tree balsamodendron gileadense - the balm of Gilead, to which the Jews attributed healing power against wounds, in all ancient writers concerning Palestine, it seems to be the main product of this country; loth (LXX: στάκτη, and Vulg.) - incense, myrrh or resin found on the leaves of the plant cistus creticus, growing in Syria, Arabia and Cyprus. All these products were transported in their raw form to Egypt, where spices were prepared from them; Jacob later (Gen. 43:11) sent these foodstuffs as a gift to Joseph. The Midrash notes that these fragrant substances were brought by merchants, according to God’s dispensation, for the sake of the righteous (Joseph). Gen.37:26–28. And Judas said to his brothers: What good will it do if we kill our brother and hide his blood? Let's go, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let our hands not be on him, for he is our brother, our flesh. His brothers listened to him and as the merchants of Midian passed by, they pulled Joseph out of the den and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they took Joseph to Egypt. Judah (in the absence of Reuben), for his part, proposes a measure that, according to his intention, would serve to save Joseph from hungry, painful death in the well: selling him to merchants - a proposal to some extent characteristic of the future Jewish tribe, an intermediary of world trade - a proposal that is less humane in comparison with the admonition of Reuben (v. 22), but which turned out to be more intelligible to the heartless brothers. And they sold him to merchants (apparently, with the condition that they take him to Egypt, as can be concluded from the words of Joseph in Gen. 45:4–5) for 20 shekels of silver, i.e. for the price that Moses subsequently set for ransoming boys from 5 to 20 years old from the sanctuary (Lev. 27:5), while the average price of a slave (Joseph was sold as a slave, Ps. 105:17) was considered (Ex. 21:32) 30 shekels of silver. LXX, apparently counting 20 cycles. silver (approx. 17 rubles in our money) at a too low price, they say: “zlatnitsy” (εἴκοσι χρυσῶν). Having sold Joseph, his brothers committed the crime of predation on mankind, for which the law of Moses subsequently prescribed the death penalty (Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7). Gen.37:29–30. Reuben came again to the den; and behold, Joseph was not in the den. And he tore his clothes, and he returned to his brothers and said: The boy is gone, but I, where can I go? Reuben, who was absent during the sale of Joseph, returning and not finding Joseph in the well, falls into despair and tears his clothes as a sign of unbearable sadness (as after Jacob, v. 34, cf. Gen. 44:13). His cry to his brothers - enennu vaani ani anah ba - contains an untranslatable assonance characteristic of the Hebrew language, expressing the immediate and deep sorrow of the good soul of Reuben, who, however, did not have enough firmness to reveal to his father the real state of affairs. Gen.37:31–32. And they took Joseph's clothes, and killed the goat, and stained the clothes with blood; and they sent the coat of many colors, and brought it to their father, and said: We have found it; see if these clothes are your son's or not. One crime of Joseph's brothers entails another - a gross deception of their father, and for this purpose they use the same ill-fated tunic of Joseph: in this monument of paternal preference for Joseph, their troubled conscience wanted to find justification for itself. R. Maimonides says that in the law of Moses a goat is often required for the sins of the community of Israel, to remind of this deception of Jacob by his sons and to arouse in the sinner the consciousness of the need for cleansing of sins (Philippson, s. 201–202). Gen.37:34. And Jacob tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days. Having put on the usual Jewish mourning - sackcloth (2 Kings 3:31; 1 Kings 21:27), Jacob mourned Joseph (as if dead) “for many days,” i.e. all 22–23 years that elapsed from the sale of Joseph to Egypt until Jacob and his family moved there (Beresch. r., Par. 84, s. 416). Gen.37:35. And all his sons and all his daughters gathered together to comfort him; but he did not want to be consoled and said: I will go down to my son in the underworld with sorrow. Thus his father mourned him. Of the daughters of Jacob so far (chapter 34), only Dinah has been mentioned; others may not have been mentioned in the genealogical table, or (according to the explanation of Midrash, Rosenmüller, etc.) here Jacob's daughters-in-law are called daughters. "Hell", Heb. scheol (from the chapter schaal, to demand, - a place that inexorably calls all people to itself (Is. 5:14; Proverbs 30:16) - not a grave, which, according to Jacob, Joseph did not have (for he considered him torn to pieces by wild beasts), but a mysterious dwelling of the dead. Like the expression of the sacred writer (about Abraham, Isaac) “he venerated himself to the people to his own” (Gen. 25:8, 35:29), the idea of the patriarchal period about number is evidence of the patriarchs’ belief in immortality. Gen.37:36. The Midianites sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, Pharaoh's courtier, commander of the bodyguard. “Potiphar”, through the Coptic “piot-furo”, is usually understood to mean: “devoted to the king,” considering this name rather a title than a proper name (similar “Potipher”, Gen. 41:45, has a different meaning: “dedicated to the sun”). The name “eunuch” (Heb. saris) is probably adopted by Potiphar not in the literal sense (he had a wife, Gen. 39:7), but in general: a courtier. sar hattabachim – “chief of executioners”, i.e. maybe the king's bodyguards. LXX: chief of cooks, ἀρχιμάγειρος; Vulg:. "magister militum". You might be interested in: