The story of Yosef and his brothers is
one of the most confusing episodes to study in the Torah. How these great men
could dislike someone as great as Yosef, and how Yosef could be so naïve to
bring such hatred upon himself, are two of the more pressing questions in this
story. Another big question is whether Yaakov realized how big the problem was,
and what he tried to do about it. We will touch on that subject this week.
The second aliyah begins, “וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל
יוֹסֵף הֲלוֹא אַחֶיךָ רֹעִים בִּשְׁכֶם לְכָה וְאֶשְׁלָחֲךָ אֲלֵיהֶם”
“And Yisrael said to Yosef, ‘Your brothers are shepherding in Shechem. Go,
and I will send you to them…” (Bereishis 37:13). Yaakov asks Yosef to go
and check on his brothers and see how they are doing. If Yaakov knew how much
the brothers disliked Yosef, this is a terrible idea! Not only is he sending
the one person that they cannot stand, he’s sending him to check on
them! This is a recipe for disaster. To his credit, Yosef immediately says that
he will go.
The Ohr HaChaim explains that Yaakov knew
that there were issues between his sons, and therefore, he sent Yosef with
extra protection. The pasuk writes that Yaakov tells Yosef to “go” to his
brothers, and that Yaakov will “send” him to the brothers; the
explanation behind this double sending is that first Yaakov told Yosef to go, and
then he put the extra protection on him. What was this extra protection?
Chazal teach us that שלוחי מצווה אינם ניזוקים, someone on a mission to do a mitzvah
will not come to any harm. When Yaakov “sent” Yosef to his brothers, he gave
him the mitzvah of Kibud Av to protect him from any harm the brothers would
want to do to him.
However, another question arises from this explanation. If Yosef was
doing a mitzvah, then how was he sold as a slave? Wasn’t he protected from
anything bad? The first answer is that since at the end of the day, everything
turned out great for Yosef, he became the ruler of the most powerful country in
the world, the fact that he was sold and mistreated at the beginning is not considered
that he was harmed.
Another answer the Ohr HaChaim gives, is that Yaakov told Yosef to go to
Shechem specifically, to check on his brothers. When Yosef arrived there, the
brothers had already moved on and Yosef went to follow them. At that point,
Yaakov’s protection ran out and Yosef was exposed. Yosef assumed that his
father’s protection would follow him wherever he went for the mitzvah, but this
was not so.
This last answer seems a little too convenient to actually be true. Let’s
say Yaakov had been more general in his directions instead of being specific,
let’s say Yosef had decided not to follow his brother’s from Shechem,
what would have happened then? The answer is that Hashem needed something very specific
to happen; he needed Yosef to get down to Mitzrayim in order to set things up
so that when Yaakov and the family arrived years later, everything would be
ready for them. If this exact order of things hadn’t happened, Hashem would
have figured out another way of doing it. But at the end of the day, we see from
this parshah that, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’ No matter how much Yaakov wanted
to protect Yosef, and no matter how badly his brothers wanted to harm him, the
only thing that was going to happen to Yosef was what Hashem had planned for
him.
Shabbat Shalom!
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