Reason and Mystery in the Pentateuch. Aaron Streiter
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brings (va’yavei) his father (el avihem) a bad report about them” compliment Joseph, because the use of “brought” rather than “disseminated” (va’yotza) shows his restraint, as does the fact that he brings the report only to his father. According to Abarbanel and Alshich, Joseph repeats to his father—and only to his father—slander about his brothers that he hears in the marketplace, but that he himself does not believe.
According to Ababanel and Kli Yakar, Jacob loves Joseph more than he loves his other sons because Joseph is superior to them in wisdom, as he shows in the diversity of his responses: by behaving, for example, as a naar, a youth, when consorting with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, but as a ben z’kunim—not “a child of his old age,” but “a wise son who understands the deference due to old age”—when consorting with his old and saintly father. According to Rashi, ben z’kunim may be taken literally; or the words may mean that Joseph is preeminent in wisdom; or z’kunim is a play on two Aramaic words that assert that Joseph’s facial features are identical to Jacob’s. According to Ibn Ezra, the words must be taken literally, and they apply to Benjamin as well as to Joseph. Rashbam agrees that they must be taken literally; but adds that Joseph is the last of Jacob’s eleven children born in Padan-Aram, and that Benjamin is not born until many years after ben z’kunim is asserted. According to Radak, the words cannot be taken literally, because all of Jacob’s sons are born within seven years; they mean that Joseph is preeminent in wisdom. According to Ramban, Joseph cannot be singled out as literally a ben z’kunim, because all of Jacob’s sons are born to him in his old age, and because, as noted, Issachar and Zebulun are about the same age as Joseph; and the words ben z’kunim mean Joseph attends Jacob in his old age. According to Siftei Chachamim, all of Jacob’s sons except Benjamin are born within six years; people become accustomed to calling the youngest of them, Joseph, ben z’kunim; and continue to do so when Benjamin is born, years later. According to Chizkuni, Jacob does not love Benjamin, who is indeed younger than Joseph, as much as he loves Joseph, because Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. According to Malbim, Jacob loves Joseph especially either because ben z’kunim is intended literally, or because Joseph attends him in his old age.
About why, in 37:8, Joseph’s brothers hate him for “his words” as well as for relating his dream, and about why a single dream is referred to as “dreams,” in the plural, opinions differ.
According to Rashi, Ralbag, and Rashbam, “his words” refer to the bad report—the slander of the brothers—that Joseph brings to their father. According to Rabbenu Bachya, Sforno, and Ramban, they refer to Joseph’s seeming arrogance in instructing the brothers, in 37:4, to “Listen to the dream I had.” (Rabbenu Bachya also notes his three-fold repetition in 37:7 of “behold!”—v’hinei—which Kaplan does not translate.) According to Kli Yakar, Joseph does not instruct his brothers arrogantly, but petitions them humbly, to listen to his dream; but they are so incensed by its substance that, despite their resolve not to talk to Joseph at all, they blurt out an indignant response, and hate Joseph the more that “his words” have provoked it. According to Or Hachayim, the brothers object both to Joseph’s assertion that he has had a dream (“his dreams”), and to the fact that he recounts it (“his words”). According to Malbim, their hatred increases because they are convinced that “his dreams” reflect what he has been thinking during his waking hours, and “his words” prove that he wants to be appointed their ruler at once.
According to Or Hachayim, although 37:8 speaks of only one dream, the plural is used because each of the three times Joseph says “behold!”—v’hinei—the brothers assume Joseph is speaking about a different dream; therefore they think that he recounts three dreams. According to Sforno and Alshich, “dreams” denotes the particulars of a single dream. According to Meam Loez, in 37:5 Joseph has a dream that he does not recount, and another dream, in 37:6-8, that he does recount; and thus “dreams” is to be understood literally.
According to Rashi, Jacob rebukes Joseph in 37:10 for seeming to predict that his mother, Rachel, who is dead, will one day bow down to him. Unaware that Joseph is referring to Bilhah, who raised him, Jacob undermines the credibility of the dream in order to nullify the brothers’ jealousy. Ralbag and Or Hachayim agree that that is why he undermines it. Whether Rashi and Ralbag think Jacob regards all of the dream as prophetic is not clear; according to Or Hachayim, Sforno, and Siftei Chachamim, Jacob does. According to Rashbam, Jacob would have rebuked Joseph for the reference to Rachel even if she had still been alive. Ibn Ezra agrees that Joseph is referring to Bilhah. According to Ramban, Jacob’s assumption that the moon in 37:9 in Joseph’s second dream—“The sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me”—refers to any of his wives is mistaken; it refers, in his opinion, to all of his descendants who go down to Egypt, except Joseph’s brothers (“the eleven stars”). According to Rabbenu Bachya, on the one hand, because Rachel could not bow down to Joseph, Jacob discounts the entire dream; on the other hand, he thinks it prophetic and looks forward to its fulfillment.
According to Rabbenu Bachya, commenting on 37:11, though the usual cause of hatred is jealousy, and the brothers already hate Joseph at 37:4, because of the colorful coat, they do not become jealous in earnest until 34:11, when they begin to take seriously the possibility that his dreams are prophetic, and that in consequence he may end up dominating them. (Why they do hate him Rabbenu Bachya does not seem to say; not, it seems, because of the colorful coat, which, he says, rouses only glancing jealousy.) According to Radak, commenting on 37:3, the brothers begin to hate Joseph because they are jealous of the colorful coat, and enraged that Joseph has slandered them. According to Ramban, commenting on 37:4, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah hate Joseph because of their jealousy. According to Malbim, the brothers’ jealousy begins at 37:11, when they realize that Joseph’s dreams may be prophetic, and that therefore he may end up dominating them. According to Alshich, the brothers hate Joseph at 37:4 not because of jealousy, but because they fear that Jacob loves Joseph more than he loves them, and that therefore he will believe the slander about them that Joseph reports to him. According to Or Hachayim and Ralbag, commenting on 37:3, the brothers begin to hate Joseph in 37:4 because they cannot bear the combined pressure of two facts: that Joseph slanders them to Jacob, and that, through the colorful coat, Jacob in effect asserts publicly that he loves Joseph more than he loves them. And they are jealous of Joseph in 37:11 because they think God may have spoken to him in the dreams. According to Daat Mikrah, the sons of Leah begin to hate Joseph in 37:4 because of jealousy, and the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah begin to hate him because he slanders them to Jacob. According to Sforno, the brothers envy Joseph in 37:11 because Jacob loves him so deeply, he will listen to anything he recounts, even a seemingly arrogant dream. According to Abarbanel, the brothers begin to hate Joseph in 37:2, when they begin to suspect that he has slandered them to Jacob; and they stop hating him in 37:11, because they stop suspecting that he has slandered them, and begin to be jealous of him, because they begin to suspect that God may have spoken to him in the dreams. According to Meam Loez and Daat Mikrah, the brothers’ jealousy in 37:11 compounds their hatred.
Because, given the diversity of opinions above, it is not possible to establish why the brothers become jealous in 37:11, and because, as noted, the second of the two assertions in 37:11—“his father suspended judgment”—is cryptic or vague, the meaning of the verse is not clear. In Kaplan’s translation, it is not clear what matter Jacob is thinking about, and suspends judgment about, the brothers’ jealousy, or Joseph’s second dream (or both). In fact, it is not clear what “suspended judgment” means. And Kaplan’s translation is misleading, because the second assertion, translated literally, reads (as Kaplan notes), “his father kept the matter in mind.” But that translation is vague, because it does not specify what matter Jacob keeps in mind, or what his thoughts about the matter are. Traditionalists seem to agree that Jacob is thinking about Joseph’s dream. About what he is thinking, however, they differ. According to Rashi and Sforno, Jacob looks forward to the fulfillment of the prophesy in Joseph’s dream. According to Rashbam, when the brothers inform him, in 45:25, that Joseph is alive, and viceroy in Egypt, he believes them, because through the twenty-two years of Joseph’s absence he has kept in mind the prophesy in the dream. According to Or Hachayim, Jacob does not believe his own dismissive commentary on the dream that he hopes will placate the brothers: that because it is impossible that he and his dead wife will bow down to Joseph, the dream cannot