Глава 44

Joseph's trick to test his brothers' affection for Benjamin Gen.44:1–2. And [Joseph] commanded the captain of his house, saying, Fill the sacks of these men with food as much as they can carry, and put each man’s money in the mouth of his sack. And put my cup, the silver cup, into the hole of the younger man’s bag, along with the silver for the bread he bought. And he did according to the word of Joseph which he had spoken. After a friendly conversation and a solemn common meal with the brothers, Joseph prepares a difficult test for the brothers: for reasons that at first glance seem incomprehensible, Joseph orders the steward to put his silver cup in the sack of his younger brother - in order to have a reason to demand from the brothers the leaving of Benjamin as a slave (v. 10) and then to test the degree of affection of the brothers for Joseph's half-brother. At the same time, Joseph orders each of the brothers (and Benjamin) to continue to return the payment for the bread. The latter, as noted by Jewish commentators, was to reject the suspicion among the brothers that Benjamin was really guilty of stealing the cup: now the appearance of the latter in Benjamin’s bag bore a complete resemblance to the mysterious (secondary) return of payment for bread to each of Joseph’s brothers. Gen.44:4–5. They had not yet gone far from the city when Joseph said to the ruler of his house: go, catch up with these people, and when you catch up, tell them: why did you pay evil for good? [why did they steal my silver cup?] Isn’t this the one from which my master drinks and he tells fortunes with it? It's a bad thing you did. Joseph urges his steward to go in pursuit of his brothers; otherwise, they themselves could have noticed someone else’s item from Benjamin and returned it, then Joseph’s plan would not have been fulfilled. Joseph's brothers had to be confronted with the particular ugliness of their action: • they allowed the property of the person who benefited them to be taken; • take a thing necessary in Joseph’s daily routine; besides • they could already know from experience (Gen. 43:33) that Joseph has the gift of foresight, in particular - he “tells fortunes” using the cup they took (“nachesch jenachesch” - “usually guesses”): of course, fortune telling by cup, very common among the ancients, is kilikomancy (κυλικομαντεία, κυαὕομαντεία), which consisted of observing the play of rays of light on the surface of water poured into a bowl, or: hydromancy, when precious things were thrown into the water and the future was guessed by their shine. It is possible that Joseph’s fortune-telling is spoken about by him and the housekeeper in a frivolous tone. The reference to fortune telling was needed only to give the accusation a certainty. Gen.44:6–9. He caught up with them and told them these words. They said to him: Why does our lord say such words? No, your servants will not do such a thing. Behold, the silver that we found in the hole of our sacks, we brought back to you from the land of Canaan: how can we steal silver or gold from your master’s house? Whoever of your servants finds [the cup], death will come to him, and we will be our master's servants. Joseph's brothers quite thoroughly refute the accusation brought against them by citing the fact that they returned Joseph's payment for the bread, from which fact their honesty and inability to carry out the abduction attributed to them was obvious. In the consciousness of their innocence, they themselves assign an excessively large punishment: the death of the culprit and the slavery of all other brothers (Gen. 31:32), - neither one nor the other was required by the criminal law of the Hebrew and other ancient peoples; the participation of the whole society in the responsibility of the culprit was required by Mosaic criminal law more than once (Deut. 21:1–9). Gen.44:10. He said: good; as you said, so be it: whoever has [the cup] will be my slave, and you will not be guilty. The steward accepts the brothers’ offer only in that part in which they proposed to search their place (cf. Art. 12): he mitigates the punishment they impose. Gen.44:12. He searched, started with the eldest and ended with the youngest; and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. The search, obviously to give it the character of correctness and unintentionality, begins with the elder brother and, naturally, the cup is found only from the latter. 10 times a sigh of relief flew from the chests of those being searched, but the stronger the impression of the result of the search on the 11th brother. Gen.44:13. And they tore their clothes, and each one laid his load on his donkey and returned to the city. Regarding the tearing of clothes by the sons of Jacob, the Midrash notes that this was retribution for them because they once forced their father to tear his clothes (Gen. 37:34). In any case, the fact that Joseph’s brothers repented of their long-standing crime is beyond doubt. Gen.44:14. And Judah and his brothers came to the house of Joseph, who was still at home, and fell to the ground before him. Judah deliberately stands out from among the brothers, as having to act as an intercessor for Benjamin and speak instead of all the brothers, who, obviously, all take part in the fate of Benjamin. Gen.44:15. Joseph said to them: What have you done? didn't you know that a person like me would certainly guess right? Joseph, who wanted precisely such an attitude towards Benjamin from his brothers, begins to accuse them not so much of baseness as of recklessness: the brothers, already familiar with Joseph’s insight, could not, he says, think of hiding the kidnapping from him. As for his sorcery (cf. v. 5), then, according to Blessed Theodoret (question 107), he “said this, not actually using fortune telling and sorcery, but applying words to the present circumstance. The accuracy in his words is worthy of surprise. Even feigningly before his brothers he did not agree to attribute magic to himself, but attributes it to someone else, invested with the same power, for he did not say: I do magic, but: a person like me does magic.” Gen.44:16–17. Judas said: What shall we say to our lord? what to say? what is the excuse? God has found out the iniquity of your servants; Behold, we are servants to our master, both we and he in whose hands the cup was found. But [Joseph] said: No, I will not do it; the one in whose hands the cup was found will be my slave, and you go in peace to your father. Conscious of himself and his brothers being innocent, Judas, however, pretends that they have found material evidence of the abduction (“corpus delicti”), therefore only the direct action of God’s judgment can explain the presence of their guilt: thus Judas no longer appeals to justice, but to the mercy of God and the mercy of the ruler of Egypt. But Joseph, repeating what was said by his steward (v. 10), insists on leaving only Benjamin in slavery, and allows the other brothers to go free and unharmed to their father: here is the most decisive point of their temptation - a plausible reason seemed to be to get rid of their favorite. But at this tense moment, Judas comes to the defense of Benjamin with new energy. Judah intercedes for him and selflessly offers himself to Joseph as a slave in his place. Gen.44:18. And Judah came to him and said: My lord, let your servant speak a word in the ears of my master, and do not be angry with your servant, for you are the same as Pharaoh. The speech of Judas is one of the most sublime and beautiful speeches contained in the Old Testament, and at the same time one of the selfless acts of love of persons in the Old Testament biblical history. With extreme sincerity and depth of feeling, Judas’s speech is distinguished by its special psychological subtlety and art, as well as by the remarkable completeness of its coverage of the main subject - the incident with Benjamin. Art. 18 forms an introduction and, in addition to a request for attention (cf. Gen. 50:4), also contains a skillful captatio benevolentiae. Gen.44:19–21. My master asked his servants, saying: Do you have a father or a brother? We told our lord that we have an elderly father, and [he] has a younger son, a son of old age, whose brother died, and he was left alone by his mother, and his father loves him. We said to our lord: the boy cannot leave his father, and if he leaves his father, he will die. Having in mind at the end of his speech (vv. 30-31) to depict the deep sadness of his father if he was left in Egypt, Judah even earlier (vv. 25-29) speaks of the mental suffering that Jacob experienced already during their second departure to Egypt, and this departure itself makes it dependent on Joseph’s order to bring Benjamin, and deliberately exposes that it was not they, Benjamin’s brothers, who were the first to talk about him, and Joseph himself asked them about him and in general about their family situation and he himself made it clear to them that he would receive Benjamin with love (“look”, v. 21, cf. Gen. 42:20) - with which, it is assumed, Benjamin’s present situation is completely at odds - and strong pressure on them (by imprisoning them for 3 days, Gen. 42:17) forced them to force their father to let Benjamin go. Gen.44:27–29. And your servant our father said to us: You know that my wife bore me two sons; one left me, and I said: surely he is torn to pieces; and I have not seen him until now; If you take this one out of my sight, and misfortune happens to him, then you will bring my gray hair with sorrow to the grave. With particular touchingness, Jude depicts Jacob's predominant affection for Benjamin in view, especially, of the loss of Joseph (the last mention should have touched Joseph's heart especially vividly). Gen.44:30–31. Now if I come to your servant our father, and the boy with whose soul his soul is bound is not with us, then, seeing that the boy is not there, he will die; and your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave. In figurative Hebrew language, Jacob’s love for Benjamin is presented as follows: Jacob’s soul is connected by inextricable ties with the soul of Benjamin (cf. 1 Samuel 18:1), so fused with it that with the disappearance of Benjamin, Jacob’s life will also perish. The pagan world did not know such tenderness of parental love for children. Saying that the return of the brothers to Jacob without Benjamin will entail the death of their father, Judah uses the same expression: “they will bring... the gray hair... of the father... into the grave,” which Jacob himself used in response to his sons (Gen. 42:38). With this expression, Judas, unknown to himself, also includes Joseph among the culprits of Jacob’s future death. This last one could most of all strengthen the impression of Judah’s speech on Joseph. Gen.44:32–34. Moreover, I, your servant, undertook to answer for the boy to my father, saying: if I do not bring him to you [and put him before you], then I will remain guilty before my father all the days of my life. So let me, your servant, instead of the lad, remain a slave to my master, and let the lad go with his brothers: for how can I go to my father when the boy is not with me? I would have seen the disaster that would have befallen my father. At this moment of supreme tension, Judah offers himself as a slave instead of Benjamin for two reasons: • he took Jacob's favorite as bail (v. 32) and will forever remain guilty before his father (v. 33); • he cannot be a spectator of the tragic death of his father, of which he cannot help but consider himself one of the culprits. With these two main ideas of his - the depiction of Jacob's grief and suffering and the expression of noble courage and determination for self-sacrifice - Judas finally wins the heart and mind of Joseph, on whose compassion everything now depended: he receives complete moral satisfaction seeing that the brothers have repented, and deep emotional shock. All this prompts him to open up to his brothers, which he then does. You might be interested in: