Vayeshev – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam and together with Brad TV, we’re continuing the reading of the Shabbat portions from the five books of Moses. And this week, we have arrived to a brand new saga, story, that is one of the most important and influential stories in the whole five books of Moses.

It begins the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel. And we start reading from Genesis 37 verse one, to Genesis 40, verse 23, from the Law of Moses. The accompanying passage in the prophecy is from the prophet Amos, chapter two, verse eight. To three, verse eight. Chapter three, verse eight. And from the Book of Acts, it’s chapter seven, verse nine to verse 16.

At the beginning of a new story, Jacob returned from the land of his mother’s family, of Assyria. And from the city of Haran, which was one of the great cities of the ancient, Fertile Crescent. He arrived, be made reconciliation with his brother Esau. who actually wanted to killed him, but he doesn’t kill him, he falls on his neck and they kiss each other, and they basically make a kind of peace, at least between that first generation of Jacob and Esau, a kind of peace.

And Jacob settles in the land, in the land that God gave Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The land of Canaan. And he becomes a wealthy man. He’s got lots of flocks. And he’s got 12 sons, and Joseph is one of them. He is the son that was born to Rachel, his beloved wife. And Jacob and his whole family survive by being shepherds. Jacob and his family survive, with his family, by being shepherds.

They were shepherds, and being shepherds, they have large flocks, they have to have a lot of people that are shepherding these flocks. And he was one of the boys, a younger boy, that was with his older brothers, shepherding the flocks. The text says, opening statement,

The next word,

And his brothers that he was feeding the flocks with, are the sons of two concubines of Jacob, Bilhah and Zilpah. His father’s concubines. Wives, it says in the text, in the English translation. And Joseph brought a bad report of his brothers. In other words, he was the younger brother, and he was tattle-tale.

Joseph is a Snitch

He was telling his father all the bad things that his older brothers were doing. In any family, that wouldn’t settle very well, would it? I don’t think so. Not only in the family, but in any neighborhood. If you havea bunch of boys playing together and doing foolish things, and one of the boys goes and rats, snitches, stooges against his friends, what’s going to happen? They’re going to dislike him, even hate him, maybe even ostracize him, maybe even ignore him, maybe even not want to play with him and not want to be around him.

Nobody likes a snitch. But that’s what Joseph did. The question always rises up in rabbinical commentaries; why did Joseph do that? Was it because he cared so much about what is right and what is wrong and what is fair and what is unfair? Was it because his brothers, or half-brothers, were doing some things that are bad and terrible and damaging the reputation of Jacob and his whole clan, his whole encampment? Or was it just because that was his character, to be a snitch?

Israel Not Jacob

The text doesn’t tell us. But the next verse, verse three of chapter 37, tells us something else. Israel, that’s the other name of Jacob. Jacob’s name was changed by the angel that he wrestled with at the River Jabbok, crossing the River Jabbok, crossing the Jordan to enter the land of Canaan, and the angel changed his name from Jacob to Israel.

Very different names. Totally different meanings. Jacob means somebody who follows you, you know? Who is a follower. Israel is somebody who is a hero, who fought with God and won the battle. Fought with that angel at the river and won the battle during the night. And verse three tells us,

So it’s not enough that Joseph was a snitch, was telling his father all the bad things that his older brothers were doing. Now, his father Jacob loves him more than he loves the other boys. In any situation like that, we are talking about trouble.

Not Normal Behavior

We’re talking about scandal in the family. It’s not natural, not the normal thing to happen. In any family, if you have a child, younger child, who is telling his father what his older brothers are doing wrong, and trying to get them in trouble, it is going to cause problems. And the fact that it says that his father loves him more than all his brothers, it’s no wonder that , his brothers hated Joseph, and would not speak with him, would not play with him, would not associate with him. Would not keep peace with him. They didn’t want him around.

God Intervenes

He was somebody who’s telling the bad things that his brothers are doing to his father, getting them in trouble, and that never works out right. But in addition to all this sociological behavior, another element comes in, in verse five of chapter 37, another element comes in. God intervenes in the situation. God gives Joseph a dream.

And he, being a snitch, goes and tells his brothers, “I saw a dream last night.” If you have a dream like that, don’t go telling it to the object that is involved in that dream, to the people that are involved in that dream. And he said, “Oh, brothers, come here, hear the dream I have. Here is my dream. We were all binding sheaves.” Harvest time, spring time. Let’s say after Passover. Between Passover and Pentecost, and they’re harvesting the wheat, and they’re all harvesting the wheat and tying them together into sheaves. “And behold, my sheaf, the one I harvested, the one that I packed, stood upright, and all your sheaves were around me, and they were bent over, bowing down to me, your younger brother.”

Points Against Joseph

We’ve got already four points that are against Joseph. First, his father loved him the best. Second, he was tattle-tale, a snitch, reporting to his father what his brothers are doing. Third, he saw a dream in which his sheaf was standing upright, and his brothers’ sheaves were bowing down to him, giving him honor and homage. And the fourth point, that he was not wise enough to keep his mouth shut. And he goes and tells his brothers about his dream.

In any society, in any neighborhood, in Jerusalem at least, where you have a kid that does these kinds of things, what’s going to happen to him? He’s going to be, as we say in Hebrew, He’s going to be a kid that is going to get smacked from here and from there in the neighborhood. At best, if he is lucky, he’ll be ignored. But not in my neighborhood, he wouldn’t have been ignored.

So, the brothers are not happy. They get angry. They say, “Are we going to let this little boy, our young brother rule over us? We’re going to let him tell us that he’s going to be the big sheaf standing up, and we’re going to be bending over worshiping him? No, sir. That’s not going to happen.” That was the brothers’ reaction. And it is a normal reaction. You know, people say, “Oh, look how bad his brothers were.” No, they were normal. The un-normal thing was Joseph. Joseph was not the normal guy, because he wanted his brothers to bend down and worship him. That doesn’t work in any society.

More Dreams

But that’s not the only dream. He has more dreams. Another dream, he is the sun, and his brothers are the stars. And the stars are going around the sun, and paying the sun honor and homage. And the brothers and his father rebuke Joseph and say, “What do you think? Who do you think you are? Do you think that I and your older brothers, your father, your mother and your older brothers are going to bow down and worship you?"

Dreams Cause Blowback

Isn’t going to happen. No way. The level of hate and the level of alienation in the family is growing. That’s the normal, sociological pattern that would happen anywhere, in any society, and in any family of that kind. Now, don’t let your minds wander. “Oh, look at these Israelis. Look at these Jews. They hate their own brother.” No. If it would happen in Korea, or in Japan, or in China, or in the United States, or in France, or in any community, that somebody behaved like Joseph, the same thing would happen. They would hate him.

Brothers Wander With the Sheep

They would alienate him. So, as we continue the story, because of time, I have to go faster a little bit. His father says to Joseph, “Your brothers have gone to Dothan.” In the land of Israel, watching sheep and flocks and cows and goats has to be kind of a Bedouin situation. You move where the grass is. They were living there near Rasheva, near Hebron in the South. A semi-desert land, or desert land. So he says, “Your brothers have gone North, up the main road to the crest of the mountains, from Hebron to the Jezreel Valley, and they’ve gone to Shechem, a mountainous green area, a fertile area, a cooler area, to feed the flocks.” He says, “Go check on your brothers.” He had been staying at home, because his father loved him, but now, his father’s sending him on a mission. “Go check on your brothers.”

Joseph Looks for His Brothers

So he goes to Shechem and he looks for his brothers, and he can’t find his brothers. And an old man meets him. I don’t know who this old man is. His name is not in the Bible. But it’s an interesting story. And the old man asks him, “Young man, what are you doing here? What are you looking for?” He says, in these words, “For my brothers, I am looking.”

And this statement is significant, because it shows, especially as the Hebrew text presents it, that Joseph didn’t hate... His brothers hated him. He didn’t hate his brothers. He loved his brothers. He loved his brothers, and he’s not responsible for the dreams that God gave him. I want you to understand this point, what they’re up against . Joseph didn’t make up his own dreams. Joseph did not invent those dreams. They were revelations from God. They were prophetic revelations from God. If he was wiser and understood more his family situation and his brothers, maybe he would have been wiser and kept them a secret, kept them to himself. But he loved his brothers and he wanted to share his dreams with his brothers, which caused his brothers to hate him more.

So he says, the old man says, “Your brothers were here, but they’ve gone up to Dothan.” Dothan was, I would say, about 10 to 15 miles North of Shechem. A fertile valley, very fertile, a green valley in the springtime, a beautiful place. In the time of the Patriarchs, there was a city there, called Dothan.

Joseph’s Brothers Kidnap Him and Sell Him

So, Joseph goes there to see how his brothers are doing, so he can bring a report to his father, but his brothers see Joseph alone, away from home, quite far from home, maybe a couple of hundred miles, between 150 and 200 miles away from home. On foot, alone. And they say to themselves, “Here comes that tattle-tale. Let’s take care of him.” And they start debating among themselves. One says, “Let’s kill him.” Another one says, “Let’s not kill him.” Judah says, “You know what? Let’s sell him. Sell him as a slave. He’ll be away from us, taken away from us, and not with us, and we’re going to make some money out of it.”

They all agree to do that. They put him in a well. I don’t know if the well had water or not. Either way, a well is a dangerous place to be, not only because of the water, but because sometimes poisonous gases gather low. Poisonous gases usually are heavier than the air, and they stay close to the ground, so if you have a well, these gases fall into the well, and they are at the bottom of the well. Very dangerous. And they put him in the well, and they decide to sell him, and they’re waiting for a customer to come and buy him.

They were hoping that, you know, travelers would come and buy Joseph from them. They’re on the route from the North to the South, and caravans are passing along the Via Maris, which is not far from Dothan by the seashore, coast, between the low hill country and the sea coast of the Mediterranean. Where are they going usually? They’re going either from Egypt North, or from North down to the South, to Egypt.

Judah Wants to Save Him

It was his brother Judah who said, “Let’s not kill him. Let’s sell him.” Is Judah doing it to save Joseph or to make money? I say that Judah is doing it to save his brother from dying. That’s why he wants to sell him, and is playing on his brothers’ greed. How do I know that? Because toward the end of the story, Judah is willing to take the place of Benjamin and be imprisoned in Egypt, in order to save his brother. He’s got a good heart. Yeah, he may be a good businessman, but he’s got a good heart, and he’s doing it maybe for both reasons, to make some money and to save from killing Joseph.

Now, they want to sell him to the Ishmaelites. They put him in the well. While he’s in the well, another group comes. A group of Midianites, another nation, also from the other side of the Jordan River. And they hear Joseph probably screaming from the well. They pick him up, they pay nothing, and they take him, and they take him to Egypt, to sell him to Potiphar, a minister in Pharaoh’s government. And the brothers don’t make any money, and Joseph disappears from the well. And the Midianites take Joseph to Egypt to the slave market and they sell him to a minister named Potiphar, an Egyptian minister in Pharaoh’s court, and Joseph is in Potiphar’s house, and very quickly, out of his excellence, Joseph becomes the economus in the house .

Joseph Head of Potiphar’s House

He becomes the master servant of the house, the maître d’, in French, of the house of Potiphar. He was a good-looking young man, a young man. Potiphar’s wife kind of liked him, not for adopting him as a child, but for sexual reasons, and the story rolls on from there. Joseph refuses to have sex with her, with Potiphar’s wife. She screams and claims that he sexually harassed her. The other servants arrest him and he ends up in jail.

Joseph in Prison

The man that had these dreams that all of his brothers are going to bow down to him now is a prisoner in a strange country, in Egypt. And I have to cut the story short for Brad TV, now, but I suggest that you read the whole Torah section, from chapter 37:1 until chapter 40, verse 23.

Read Torah Reading Yourself

Read it, because what happens is this: wherever Joseph goes, he excels. That’s the secret of Joseph. Wherever he goes, he excels, but in his own house, he didn’t excel. In his own house, he was hated by his own brothers, but among the gentiles, Joseph excels. And in prison, he serves everybody, he helps everybody. He becomes kind of like a foreman in the prison. And if people have problems, they come to Joseph to ask him to help them solve the problems. This character of Joseph will carry on to the end of the stories of Joseph, and actually to the end of the Book of Genesis.

Joseph a Kind of Yeshua

And I’m going to end here in our portion, with Joseph in the house of Potiphar as a slave, being accused of sexual harassment of the mistress of the house, of the wife of Potiphar, being put in jail, an Egyptian jail, and he has all kinds of escapades in that jail. You read it. We’re going to continue with the next section in the Torah next week. It gets more interesting and more fascinating, and I’ll tell you a secret. The story of Joseph has many parallels, similarities to the story of Yeshua, of Jesus, and the Gospels.

His own brothers hate him. The gentiles take him from the well, they sell him to a gentile kingdom, empire. Egypt was a huge empire in that period, and in the end, he turns out to be the savior, of Egypt, of the gentiles, and of his own brothers. In the end, they recognize him as who he really is, Joseph, our brother. We’re going to continue this saga, this story next week. God bless all of you. Please read the texts. Shalom from Jerusalem.