A Tale of Twelve Brothers

A German term meant to convey the idea of history seen through the lens of God’s salvation.

This law seems to relate exactly to situations such as that of Jacob and his two wives. See Kristine Hendriksen Garroway, “Does the Birthright Law Apply to Reuben? What About Ishmael?” TheTorah (2014).

כִּי-בֶן-זְקֻנִים הוּא לוֹ. He was also the eldest son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. The various medieval commentators offer different opinions on just why Jacob loved Joseph, since he was supposedly in his 90’s when all of them were born. Of these, only “Hezkuni” (the 13^th century French Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah) notes that Jacob was even older at the birth of Benjamin, but since Rachel had died during his birth, אין אהבת בנימן קשורה בלבו של יעקב כאהבתו של יוסף – “the love of Benjamin was not joined in Jacob’s heart like the love of Joseph.”

^{בראשית לז:כו} וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוּדָה אֶל אֶחָיו מַה בֶּצַע כִּי נַהֲרֹג אֶת אָחִינוּ וְכִסִּינוּ אֶת דָּמוֹ. ^לז:כז לְכוּ וְנִמְכְּרֶנּוּ לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים וְיָדֵנוּ אַל תְּהִי בוֹ כִּי אָחִינוּ בְשָׂרֵנוּ הוּא.

^{Gen 37:26} Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? ^37:27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.”

As an example, E.A. Speiser pointed out that in chapter 42, in which Reuben is the brothers’ leader, their father is called “Jacob”, while in chapter 43, in which Judah takes the lead, he is “Israel”; Speiser attributed the “Jacob” parts to the “E” source and the “Israel” parts to the “J” source. E.A. Speiser,Genesis (Anchor Bible), Garden City: Doubleday, 1964, 292-294.

As pointed out by Gary Rendsburg,

“For when all is said and done, no matter which school of source criticism one adheres to, we are still left with the Hebrew text as we have it. Instead of dividing up the text into its microscopic parts, scholars have been pulling back the lens and viewing the text as a macroscopic whole.”

Gary A. Rendsburg, “Redactional Structuring in the Joseph Story: Genesis 37-50,” in Vincent L. Tollers and John Maier (eds.), Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1990, 215-232.

A favorite of many scholars is the comparison between our story and the 12^th century BCE Egyptian “Tale of Two Brothers”, now in the British Museum (the “Papyrus D’Orbiney”), which, in some analyses, uses a tale of two estranged brothers as a commentary on the state of a disunited Egypt at the time of its composition.

Scholars such as Samuel Loewenstamm, Donald Redford, Walter Dietrich and others have proposed various “literary histories” of the Joseph story, each with his own reconstruction of the stages by which the story was built up over time. Each of these studies in worth reading in its own right, and each offers important insights into the meaning of the story.

1 Chr. 5:1 is even more explicit:

^{דברי הימים א ה:א} וּבְנֵי רְאוּבֵן בְּכוֹר יִשְׂרָאֵל כִּי הוּא הַבְּכוֹרת וּבְחַלְּלוֹ יְצוּעֵי אָבִיו נִתְּנָה בְּכֹרָתוֹ לִבְנֵי יוֹסֵף בֶּן יִשְׂרָאֵל

^{1 Chron 5:1} Reuben was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father’s bed his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel.

For more on Reuben’s sin, see Shani Tzoref, “Did Reuben Lie with Bilhah? Yes, No, We Don’t Talk About It!” TheTorah (2013)

Presumably, the tradition about Reuben being the eldest, which was so strong that it had to be explained rather than ignored, reflects a memory of a time when Reuben was the most prominent of the tribes, or at least of the southern tribes. However, since we have no specific evidence of such a situation, this suggestion must remain totally hypothetical.

While Joshua 21 assumes that the tribe of Levi was scattered throughout Israel, most of the individual Levites mentioned in the Bible are actually from the area of Judah. The names of the Levitical clans, such as “Hebron” and “Libnah”, also point at the Judahite provenance.

I imagine that in the pre-monarchal period, the ties between Reuben and Judah were stronger—hence the tradition about the four (older) sons of Leah—but that the physical boundary of the Dead Sea caused those ties to weaken, with the ties between Reuben and Gad in the Transjordan being strengthened. Interestingly, Josh. 15:6 mentions an “Even Bohan Ben Reuven” near Jericho on the Judah-Benjamin border. This has been taken as an indication that there were Reubenites living west of the Jordan, but this is hypothetical.

This is reflected, e.g., in Esther 2:5:

^{אסתר ב:ה} אִישׁ יְהוּדִי הָיָה בְּשׁוּשַׁן הַבִּירָה וּשְׁמוֹ מָרְדֳּכַי בֶּן יָאִיר בֶּן שִׁמְעִי בֶּן קִישׁ אִישׁ יְמִינִי.

^{Esth 2:5} There was a Jewish man in the fortress of Susa, and his name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a man of Benjamin.

I see these texts developing over time, being revised and updated in response to changing situations. Thus, I don’t expect then to present a single, monolithic, message. They have layers. I’m not sure about the order or relative chronology of those layers. Obviously, at one level, Joseph is the hero. It would make sense if that “layer” were northern in origin, with the Judah hero being added later to make Judah look like Benjamin’s savior, but there are other possibilities.

I cite Tanchuma here, because this is the source upon which Ramban built his expanded reading. Nevertheless, the idea actually predates Tanchuma and can be found in Genesis Rabbah 48:7.