Joseph—the Brilliant Failure

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Published 30 years ago, the following analysis of Joseph’s character has become a classic among a small group of cognoscenti. The author, Maurice Samuel, was a Jewish literary critic and novelist whose work appeared in Saturday Review of Literature and other journals. He died in 1972.

According to Samuel, Joseph was a failure—the Messiah would come not from Joseph’s loins but from his brother Judah’s, according to Jacob’s blessing. Joseph was a failure, despite his brilliance, because of his insensitivities (especially in his dealings with his brothers) and his impurities (especially in his relation with Potiphar’s wife). The excerpts printed here are limited to flaws in Joseph’s character.

Whether or not one agrees with Samuel’s analysis, it is unquestionably a powerful one. It differs—and this is Samuel’s point of departure—from another extraordinarily powerful interpretation of Joseph, Thomas Mann’s epic Joseph and His Brothers.

Samuel calls Mann’s book “one of the greatest achievements of the human imagination.” It is also for many, including me, one of the few great reading experiences of a lifetime. But for Samuel, Mann’s interpretation of Joseph is wrong; it is magnificent, but it is not the Joseph of the Bible.

Herewith is Maurice Samuel’s assessment of the biblical Joseph.—Ed.

Adapted from Certain People of the Book by Maurice Samuel (New York: Knopf, 1955), “The Brilliant Failure,” pp. 299–350. Reprinted by permission of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

I stand awestruck before Thomas Mann’s monumental Joseph and His Brothers.^a So does the author, and why should he not? “Pyramidlike” he calls it, and it is. Contemplating it with a touch of stupefaction, he reflects that it “differs from its brother monsters at the edge of the Libyan Desert only in the fact that no hecatombs of scourged and panting slaves fell victim to its erection but that it is the product of years of patient labour on the part of one man….”^b He does himself less than justice. Joseph and His Brothers is assuredly one of the greatest achievements of the human imagination. I know of longer books, and have heard of more diligent writers; but no other work of modern times and no other personality behind it, have cast such an 040enduring spell on me. It is only of late that I have been able to assert myself against it and find the courage to insist that the Joseph who wanders through the enchanting sixteen hundred pages of Thomas Mann’s evocation is not the Joseph intended by the biblical text. C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas Joseph.

One major distortion in the book flows from Mann’s relationship to Joseph. Mann shares Jacob’s sinful preference for the beloved first son of “the lovely, too-soon-departed Rachel.” I gladly admit that Mann does his best to expose Joseph’s faults, and he makes it clear that he is doing his best. That is perhaps the trouble. His admissions of Joseph’s misdemeanors are at once overfrank and understated. He makes them so elaborate and fascinating that in our delighted appreciation of the writing we forget that certain grim and ugly truths are involved.

Let me illustrate. Mann introduces us to the fabulously attractive and almost unnaturally gifted young Joseph at great length before he takes up his story. The description is permissible and acceptable, as well as entrancing. But once he gets down to the irrefutable bedrock facts about Joseph’s actions, he automatically betrays his unwillingness or his inability to face them. He uses a technique of evasion which concedes only to retract; and he does it with so much wit, so much bribery of style, that we do not want to renounce the pleasure of surrender.

He begins, as he should, at the beginning, and refers to the actual Text, reproducing it without shading or mitigation. I quote Thomas Mann: “The story goes on to tell how Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah his father’s wives.” Mann continues: “We have instances of the fact which the saga further states: namely, that Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.”

The instances of Joseph’s talebearing he refers to are found in the Tradition.^c Joseph told his father that his brothers were in the habit of eating the flesh which they cut from living animals; and that they were carrying on with the women of the countryside. Whether they actually did these things is doubtful, and for our purpose does not matter. We are concerned with Joseph’s talebearing, which Mann honestly sets forth, as indeed he must. But he adds immediately: “It would not be hard to find a point of view from which Joseph could be regarded as an unlicked cub. It was the brothers’ point of view. I do not share it; or, rather, I might entertain it for a moment, but I would give it up. For Joseph was more.”

Certainly Joseph was more; sagas are not written round unlicked cubs who have not in them the seeds of greatness. But that ingenious and disingenuous, smiling understatement: “It would not be hard to find a point of view…” We glide along with it, out of politeness, out of respect and liking for the author, out of tenderness for his feelings. And the playful phrase: “an unlicked cub”! It was at the fifth or sixth reading of the entire work, when I was looking for the causes of my dissatisfaction, that I thought of consulting Mann’s German text. The phrase in the original is: “ein unausstehlicher Bengel.” “An insufferable brat” comes nearer, I think, to the intention. Even so it is a softening, a kind of tongue-clucking and headshaking of minor condemnation. The brothers did not think of Joseph as an unlicked cub or as an insufferable brat; not at all. They saw him, correctly, as a poisonous infection in their relations with their father. They forefelt lifelong consequences in his sneaking, underhand habits; and they did that to Joseph which one does not do to an unlicked cub or even an insufferable brat.

Let it be noted that Mann himself is not quite satisfied with his first description of Joseph’s behavior. After he has softened us up he goes back for more admissions. He does not spare us the effects of Joseph’s “innocent prattle”; he does not avoid the picture of the anguish inflicted on the brothers. He takes up in detail the following Biblical passage:

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“And Joseph dreamed a dream; and he told it to his brethren; and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them: ‘Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and bowed down to my sheaf.’ And his brethren said to him: ‘Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?’ And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said: ‘Behold, I have dreamed yet another dream: and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me.’ And he told it to his father, and to his brethren; and his father rebuked him, and said unto him: ‘What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down to thee to the earth?’ And his brethren envied him; but the father kept his saying in mind.”

Mann carefully separates and fills in the two occasions. The first dream Joseph tells only to his brothers, to their alarm, and rage, and partial incredulity. To the telling of the second dream he inveigles his father, so that by his [Jacob’s] presence and acquiescence he may compel the brothers to believe wholly the unbelievable, to accept the inacceptable. The scene, as Thomas Mann powerfully depicts it, is in the open field, the time a rest period in the harvesting. And when Joseph blurts out his second and more terrific dream, about the thirteen celestial bodies, Mann tells us: “Nobody stirred. Jacob, the father, kept his eyes severely cast down. It was very still; but in the stillness came an evil, mysterious, and yet distinct sound. It was the gnashing of the brethren’s teeth. Most of them kept their lips closed, but Simeon and Levi showed their teeth as they gnashed…. It is hard to say whether Joseph grasped its significance. He was smiling quietly and dreamily to himself, with his head on one side…. Jacob looked timidly around the circle. It was as he expected: ten pairs of eyes were fixed wildly and importunately on him. He summoned up his powers. And sitting at the boy’s back he addressed him, as harshly as he could: ‘Yehosiph! What sort of dream is this thou hast dreamed, and how couldst thou dream so unsavory a thing and tell it unto us? …’ ”

After rebuking Joseph “as harshly as he could,” Jacob, we are told by Mann, gave free rein to quite other thoughts as he walked home alone: “The reproof had cost him much to utter; he only hoped that it had satisfied the brethren. If any real anger had spoken in it, that could be only on the score that the lad had not told the dream to him alone, instead of being so mad as to make the brethren witness of the telling…. Probably he [Jacob] understood how shrewdly Joseph had used the brothers as protection against himself, and himself as protection against the brothers. For he even suppressed a smile in his beard, as he went homewards, over the cleverness of this double-dealing…. Quite absurdly, he prayed God that the dream might have come from Him —which was utter nonsense, seeing how unlikely it was that He had had anything to do with it. And tears of sheer tenderness came into his eyes at the thought that his son’s innocent prattle might represent, though vaguely and uncomprehendingly, actual premonitions of future greatness. Ah, poor weak father-heart! He might well have been angry to hear that he and he brethren would come to bow down before the good-for-nothing—that was perplexing for him to hear, for did he not adore him?”

Note the phrase “innocent prattle,” with which Jacob describe[s] Joseph’s wild boasting without drawing a comment from Thomas Mann. “Unlicked cub” and “innocent prattle”—they go together, they link Mann to Jacob; and they also link the brothers in bitterness and hatred. To get the full weight of my charge against Mann we must go to the end of the story, pausing first for a brief, partial comment on Joseph’s character as I see it.

To Joseph had been granted, side by side with stupendous practical abilities, the unanalyzable and fatal gift of personal magnetism. He had that mysterious power to bewitch or to wound, which in contact with others gave him that advantage in the psychic field which a Samson has in the physical. The possession of either kind of strength is of course accompanied by the overwhelming need to make use of it. When not absorbed in a task, a strong man likes to throw people around, in playful exhibitionistic roughhousing or in brutal bullying, according to his character. Joseph had to do things with individuals; in the excess of his magnetic energy he could not leave them alone, he could not let a relationship spring up tacitly and naturally. He had to dictate it. If he could not force liking, he would force dislike.

He played with individuals. Individuals were to him material for psychic exercise, therefore material for dramatic exploitation and the enhancement of his personality. He was an actor who always had to “upstage” his fellow actors, and he expected them to like it.

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This side of him was offset by an equally great endowment as a manipulator of public affairs. But there the exercise of his powers was directed not primarily at personal aggrandizement and self-inflation, but at the satisfaction of his craftsmanship. He was farsighted and responsible in public service, blind and reckless in private relations.

When a man plays with people he becomes a “player” in the old sense of the word, an actor and actor-manager. Assigned a destiny, he tries to make “good theater” out of it, squeeze from it the maximum of histrionic effect. And he does it “harmlessly.” He does not mean to slight the others; that is what we say; and that is what “innocent prattle” implies here.

But is that true? Does any man ever boast without the intention to make his listeners feel inferior? Or make an insulting remark without intention to wound? Of course if he is a “goodhearted” person he will want them to like the feeling of inferiority, and to smile away the pain of the wound. He will, in fact, want it both ways, for that surely is the maximum of power over others.

We now leap over to the closing acts of the Joseph drama. Many years have gone by. Joseph has become governor of Egypt, and his brothers come before him out of famine-stricken Canaan to buy corn. They do not recognize him, for the boy of seventeen is now in his fortieth year, and he is in Egyptian garb; he is, moreover, surrounded by the pomp in which important people conceal themselves.

And how does Joseph behave toward his brothers? He responds at once to the obvious, irresistible dramatic suggestiveness of the situation. You can 045almost hear him say to himself: “This is too good to pass up!” And: “This was tailor-made for me.” And he enacts those famous scenes which even orthodox Jewish children, as unfamiliar with the stage as their teachers, have found to be a “natural” and have been re-enacting for hundreds of years. Joseph’s treatment of his brothers at the reunion is perhaps the key to the meaning of the Joseph story; but though Mann has much to say, in his most fascinating vein, about the reunion, its bearing on the deeper meaning of Joseph’s life is not hinted at.

Let us turn to the Text. We read that when the brothers appeared before Joseph in Egypt: “He made himself strange to them, and spoke roughly with them….” Not because he harbored any resentment. He had never hated them; and he knew by now that everything had been for the best. Everything: the bashing he got at their hands, the tearing up of his beloved coat of many colors, the selling of him to the wandering merchants who had pulled him out of the pit—everything had served his destiny. But he makes this explanation to the brothers only after he has had his “innocent” little bit of fun at their expense, has tormented and frightened them, and reduced them more than once to utter despair; after he has jeopardized the life of Benjamin, the youngest of the brothers, and even of old Jacob in Canaan.

“He made himself strange unto them, and spoke roughly with them.” So the Text reads. He accused them of being spies. He watched their consternation and he toyed with it, while they, poor devils, stammered their protests at this unbelievable turn of events, and argued and argued with him, to no effect of course. It was like arguing with a lunatic—an omnipotent lunatic. They thought of their families at home, their wives and their little ones, and old Jacob—very old by now—waiting for bread. And here was this mad governor of Egypt.

They said: “Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come…. We are upright men…. We thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not.” How deep their perplexity was, what kind of terror they were sweating out, we gauge from the fact that they brought up 046everything before this governor—including the memory of the brother they had sold into slavery twenty-two years before. “As Pharaoh liveth, surely ye are spies.’ ” repeated the governor—forswearing himself. And he had them locked up for three days.

The Text does not tell us what he, and they, were thinking about during those three days, but it is not hard to guess from the subsequent conversation. Joseph, as Mann sees it—and I with him—was working on “the play”; he was mulling over various ideas for the maximum of good theater, the most effective way of prolonging and heightening the suspense. And the brothers, having once brought up at the audience the subject of the long-forgotten Joseph, were pondering their far-off miserable crime. For my part, I believe with the Tradition that they had talked about Joseph even on their way down into Egypt. The Tradition tells that they had meant to look for him, knowing the direction taken by the merchant to whom they had sold him. They were prepared to find him in want and misery; they intended to seek him even in brothels, say the rabbis. Once more the Tradition is psychologically sound. The brothers remembered Joseph’s beauty, and they had believed him to have been fundamentally little more than a vicious good-for-nothing. Put the two together and where would they lead you? Nevertheless they wanted to find him and rescue him, at whatever risk to their relations with their father, who would thus learn the truth about Joseph’s “death.” Let us make the worst of it and assume that they were also pleased by the thought that they would be his saviors instead of he theirs, that they would pick up out of the gutter him who had once thought to lord it over them. Even so, how much better they come off than Joseph, holding up as he was, for his histrionic pleasure, the supplies for the starving families in Canaan!

On the fourth day Joseph admitted them again to audience, and said: “This do, and live; for I fear God: if ye be upright men, let one of your brethren be bound in your prisonhouse; but go ye, carry corn for the famine of your houses; and bring your youngest brother unto me; so shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die.”

He spoke through an interpreter, pretending not to know their language; but he overheard them as they muttered frantically among themselves. They were still carrying on the fierce argument of the last three days. They said to each other: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear.” And Reuben, who had been the least vengeful of the brothers, and who had prevented the others from murdering Joseph on that fateful day in Dothan; Reuben, who, according to the Text, had said: “Shed no blood, cast him into the pit which is in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him”; Reuben now kept reiterating his past innocence, or comparative innocence, as though appealing on his merit to God Himself. “Spoke I not,” he interposed in the hurried conference, with Joseph an unsuspected eavesdropper, “spoke I not unto you saying: ‘Do not sin against the child’?” It was a terrific scene of course, in the magnificent Egyptian hall. Joseph himself could not stand it. He broke down in the middle; he had to run off stage—that is, out of the hall—to weep in the wings. But he wiped his eyes, returned, and took up the role with renewed zest.

He, for his part, had put the three-day interval to excellent use and now had the dramatic development under control, with many ingenious turns and twists. He would release the brothers—all except one—and send them back with provisions for the starving families. Then they were to return to Egypt later for the hostage, who happened to be Simeon, the eldest, and they would bring with them Benjamin, the youngest, to whom old Jacob had transferred some of the blind love he had felt for Joseph. But just to make things more interesting Joseph instructed his steward to return each man’s purchase money, not openly, but by concealing it in the sacks. Was not that a clever touch? The brothers would be utterly bewildered. And so we read how the brothers discovered the money in the sacks when they were already on the road back to Canaan: “And their heart failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying: ‘What is this that God hath done unto us?’ And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that had befallen them.”

It hurts us to think of Jacob’s consternation and terror. He was a very old man. For the moment he is in Canaan, the land smitten with famine, hungering with his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and the nine brothers return, with food, but without Simeon the eldest, and with a demand for Benjamin the youngest.

A cry of despair bursts from Jacob’s lips: “Me ye have bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away; upon me are all these things come.” These are strange as well as bitter words. “Me have ye bereaved of my children….” I find everyone, including Mann, surmising that somewhere, in an obscure, self-concealing part of him, Jacob knew that the brothers were responsible for Joseph’s disappearance; and he did not quite grasp the terrible thing he was saying. But the words are strange only in the sense that the ways of the mind are strange, even when known. What Jacob really meant to say, or would have said he 047meant, if he had been challenged, was this: “You’re always coming back one short. I sent Joseph to you in Dothan you came back without him. I sent Simeon with you to Egypt, you have come back without him.” Twice is not always, we know; but when two out of twelve children in a family die of the same disease, what do the parents begin to think?

Then Reuben made an utterly ridiculous suggestion. He would guarantee, he said, Benjamin’s safety. How? “Thou shalt slay my two sons if I bring him [Benjamin] not to thee; deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him back to thee.” Utterly ridiculous, were it not that we catch a glimpse of the desperate straits of the clan—while Joseph is rubbing his hands in artistic satisfaction in Egypt. We read on:

“And the famine was sore in the land. And it came 049to pass, when they had eaten up the corn which they had brought out of Egypt, that their father said unto them: ‘Go again, buy us a little food.’ ” He had waited perhaps for a miracle. He had been remembering God’s promises, and particularly the one at Luz: “Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth. …And I am with thee and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” He waited while the supplies dwindled, and the daily ration was cut down, and the cries of the children rang through the settlement. He could not understand. No doubt salvation would come in the end, but if his seed was to be as the dust of the earth, why was he losing his sons one by one? Was that how God intended to do it, through his agony, for the greater display of His miraculous powers? Was the old story of the rejection of the many to be repeated, but in lingering form? How could he bear it?

In the end he had to say: “Go again, buy us a little food.” He knew what the answer would be. It came from Judah: “The man did earnestly forewarn us, saying: ‘Ye shall not see my face except your brother be with you.’ ” And Jacob had his own futile, heartbreaking response ready: “Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye yet had a brother?” And Judah answered miserably that there had been no reason not to tell. How could they have suspected it would turn out thus? “The man asked straitly concerning ourselves, and concerning our kindred….” It had all been simple and aboveboard. Thus it is that we stand around confronting a calamity, and go over the details of the irreparable past—if we hadn’t done this, or said that, as if it would have helped in the slightest! As if the implacably playful Joseph, for instance, would have been deflected from his game by this or that remark, this or that omission, on the part of the brothers.

And they went away again, the nine, taking with them Benjamin, the tenth; and Jacob was left there without a single son, not one out of the twelve—the loneliest and most tragic figure imaginable. They took with them such presents as the time afforded, and double money, to return the original amounts and to pay for the new supplies. And they set forth across the southern desert, a two- or three-week journey. They pressed forward, calculating, measuring out the supplies among themselves, thinking anxiously of the rations at home. They could be back, with luck, in four or five weeks; God grant that no one died of starvation in between. And they came at last into Joseph’s presence.

If you have forgotten some details of the story, if you think that Joseph is now satisfied, that having had his innocent little revenge, he calls the shocking comedy off, then you do not know your man. The actor has an insatiable appetite for encores, especially if he is acting out himself. Joseph practically repeats the first act, with Benjamin now in the cast. The details vary a little, the spirit and technique are the same; and Joseph weeps again, and again enjoys his tears.

They stand before him, and their first thought is of course to, return the money they had found in their sacks. They could not explain it; they could only offer it again, together with money for the new purchases. Not at all, says the governor of Egypt: “Peace be to you, fear not; your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks; I had your money.” And forthwith he produces Simeon, all unharmed, gives orders to have their beasts looked after, and invites them to a noon banquet in his residence. It is wonderful!

So they came to Government House, with their presents in their hands, and they bowed as low as the ground before Joseph. We read: “And he asked them of their welfare, and said: ‘Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke?’ ” Well might he ask. And what a mess it would have made of his ingeniously planned performance if Jacob had died, of hunger and heartbreak. But they reassure him: “Thy servant our father is well, he is yet alive.” These are striking words: “He is yet alive.” But Joseph is too intent on himself to get more than their literal meaning. “And he lifted up his eyes, and saw Benjamin, his mother’s son, and said: ‘Is this your youngest brother of whom ye spoke to me?’ And he said ‘God be gracious unto thee, my son.’ And Joseph made haste; for his heart yearned toward his heart yearned toward his brother; and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there. And he 050washed his face, and came out; and he refrained himself, and said: ‘Set on bread.’ ”

“Refrained himself” is very good. He did not send out Egypt’s swiftest camels with orders to ride relays day and night on the Imperial roads to bring provisions to his father. He did not reveal himself to his brothers. He refrained himself. The brothers feasted with him, “and they drank, and were merry with him.” I take it that “merry” is ironical; or half ironical. It is not likely that they enjoyed stuffing themselves, and guzzling Egyptian wine, at that particular moment. But it was an immense relief to be received with such friendship, astonished though they must have been. Joseph certainly wanted them to be merry, to believe that all their troubles were over. That was what made his next trick so frightfully amusing. It was the first trick, with a new twist. Once more the brothers’ sacks were filled to bursting, and once more their purchase money was surreptitiously returned, hidden among the provisions, by the steward; but for variation Joseph’s silver goblet, his “divining cup,” was shoved into Benjamin’s sack.

They left at dawn, eager to get back with the good news and the good food. One can imagine their joy, their gratitude, and impatience. Not a bad fellow, that governor, even if a little meshugga [“crazy,” in Yiddish]. (Do not start, dear reader; the word has good Biblical warrant.) It had all been a stupid mistake, probably the work of an over-zealous member of the Egyptian Intelligence. The governor had made decent amends, he had entertained them at a great if—for them—somewhat untimely banquet. But as they talked thus, urging their beasts forward, the steward and his posse overtook them.

This is another part of the Text which I always read hurriedly: how the steward accuses the brothers of having stolen Joseph’s silver cup; how they deny it, with the suspicious vehemence of the innocent, and declare that if it be found with one of them, that one shall be put to death, while the remainder of them shall become slaves; how the goblet is found in the last sack examined, Benjamin’s; and how they rend their clothes and are led back to the city. I read hastily out of shame for Joseph as well as out of distress for the brothers. Still, I read. It is not permissible to avert one’s eyes from the unpleasant; but this wantonness of Joseph’s, this frivolity, this cruelty, is particularly embarrassing.

It is no use asking me not to be stuffy, and to have a sense of humor. I just do not like this kind of fun. Nor do I like to see audiences at Joseph plays having a good time identifying themselves with Joseph, and shrugging it off afterwards, saying that the brothers didn’t really mind, and weren’t really suffering. I may have something of a complex on the subject. I remember that at my high school there was a big, redheaded boy who, for reasons never made clear to me, found much pleasure in bullying me “good humoredly,” but with considerable vigor, and making two of my boyhood years miserable. We met afterwards when we were young men, and to my astonishment he shook my hand with genuine affection, slapped me on the back, and referred sentimentally to our happy innocent school-days together. It dumbfounded me to realize that I was one of his pleasantest boyhood memories; and it would have been impossible to explain that he was far from that to me without making myself out to be a humorless idiot. If I have a complex on the subject it is a useful one.

No, I cannot share Joseph’s “good-humored kidding” of his brothers. I keep thinking of them as real persons, as men and fathers. I think of their despair. They return to the city, their hearts dead within them, to play their parts in the last tremendous scene which Joseph had prepared, so that he might wring the last delicious drops out of the situation.

Once again they lie before him on the ground, this time in the garments they have torn in their lamentation, symbols of the ripped-up coat of many colors. “What deed is this ye have done?” he asks. And now the brothers know definitely that they are expiating their crime against Joseph, and they believe all is lost. Judah says: “God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants; behold, we are my lord’s bondmen, both we, and he also in whose hand the cup is found.” Then Joseph magnanimously offers them the impossible; namely, that he keep the thief, Benjamin, but release the others: “As for you, get you up in peace unto your father”—the very condition that would most certainly mean the death of Jacob, as Judah explains in his magnificent speech.

And at last it all comes out. Joseph cannot “refrain himself” any longer. He orders all the Egyptians from the hall and declares himself to his brothers. He says: “Be not grieved; nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life…. Hasten ye, and go up to my father, and say to him: ‘Thus saith thy son Joseph: “God hath made me lord of all Egypt; come down unto me, tarry not.” ’ …And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt.” And with that: “He fell 051upon his brother Benjamin’s neck. And he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them; and after that his brethren talked with him.”

“Come down unto me,” is his message to his father. “Tarry not!” All of a sudden he is in a tremendous hurry. The old man might die after all, and he would be robbed of the climax to the climax. To the brothers, too, he says: “Hasten ye!” And his last instruction to them is: “See that ye fall not out by the way.” That is just a facetious touch—they have nothing more to quarrel about. They have only move fast.

I have dwelt at great length on his play-acting; we must give equal weight to his industriousness, his managerial craftsmanship, his grasp of realities, and his integrity in service. A third quality was interwoven with these by his beauty and his charm—the knack of inspiring. He could not otherwise have been the successful administrator of a vast estate, a prison, and an empire, in turn. He must have been a wonderful superior to work for. When he turned his charm on for his employers—and I do not mean that he did it craftily and cynically, he was charmed by himself, too—he was irresistible. What must have been its effect on his underlings?

On Potiphar’s estate he had come to understand the workings of the [Egyptian] agrarian system. He had become absorbed in the life of Egypt, and his awareness of his original task—the salvation of his family—grew dim for long periods. It might be argued that he never really understood that task until the brothers appeared before him begging for bread; but we must reject this view because it runs counter to Joseph’s character. He had to believe that some day he would vindicate himself against his brothers. The dreams of his boyhood make that clear. Also, on the other assumption, we would never be able to explain why, having become an important figure on Lord Potiphar’s estate, he never communicated with his family; or why, later, knowing that his brothers would have to come to him in the famine years, he did not forestall their misery by taking action during the fat years. He was waiting for them, but intermittently, with long stretches of indifference. His mission from God lived in the interstices of his attention, which was concentrated on the welfare of his adopted country. This was what he saw predominantly as the purpose of all his experiences.

As an Egyptian Joseph displayed only the degree of badness which cannot be disassociated from the exercise of power; as a son of Israel he was superfluously bad. And his attitude toward his family inflicted permanent damage on the psyche of the folk.

The reunion with his brothers in Egypt was Joseph’s great historic opportunity; for, side by side with the physical rescue, the redemption of reconciliation offered itself, only to be spurned with what I would call frivolity if the roots were not so deep and the consequences so far-reaching.

I can imagine that he said something like the following to himself: “I’m entitled to this bit of fun at my brothers’ expense. In justice to myself. … ”

Well, what harm was there in the little comedy? Look what Joseph did for his people! He not only brought them down to Egypt; he exerted himself for them in every imaginable way. The Text spreads itself on his benefactions. Though his brothers were shepherds, and “every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians,” he interceded for them, and presented five of them to Pharaoh himself. We read: “And Pharaoh spoke unto Joseph saying: ‘Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee; the land of Egypt is before them; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell. … And if thou knowest any able men among them, make them rulers over my cattle.’ ” Further: “And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh commanded. And Joseph sustained his father, and all his father’s household, with bread, according to their little ones.” What more could he have done?

Nothing. There was only much that he could have left undone.

Seventeen years later, when old Jacob died, the rescued brothers drew together in fear. We read: “And when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said: ‘It may be that Joseph will hate us, and will fully requite us all the evil which we did unto him.’ And they sent a message unto Joseph, saying: ‘Thy father did command before he died, saying: “So shall ye say unto Joseph: ‘Forgive, I pray thee now, the transgression of thy brethren, and their sin, for they did unto thee evil.’ ” And now, we pray thee, forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of thy father.’ And Joseph wept when they spoke unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his feet; and they said: ‘Behold, we are thy bondmen.’ And Joseph said unto them: ‘Fear not, for am I in the place of God? And as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass; as it is in this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear me not; I will sustain you and your little ones.’ And he comforted them, and spoke kindly unto them.”

For seventeen years they lived in dread of their father’s death, secure only in the thought of his presence. The reader will object: “That was not Joseph’s fault; they could not get rid of their guilt complex.” Did Joseph ever try to help them? It was 068a good start, even the most biased reader will admit, to have staged for the reunion in Egypt those dramatic scenes with which half the world is familiar, and in which all who know them take such delight. If their effect has persisted on a hundred generations, what must it have been on the brothers, participant-victims? Think how, through the seventeen years before their father’s death—and afterwards too, in spite of Joseph’s reassurance—they woke in night-sweats, reliving the accusation that they were spies, the days of imprisonment, the discovery of the money in their sacks, the horror of their return without Simeon, old Jacob’s anguish, the long wait in Canaan with the dwindling rations, the return to Egypt with Benjamin, the “theft” of the goblet: reliving the sick, bewildered memory of the hungering ones at home, and the fantastic behavior of the governor of Egypt. This was what Joseph had rubbed into them, and to wash it out was now impossible. We may say, literally, that he had rubbed it into them with a vengeance.

And as for Joseph, he rid himself easily enough of his guilt complex. Indeed, if we examine the speech he made to the brothers after the father’s death, we perceive that he no longer acknowledged—if he ever did—his responsibility in the family tragedy. “As for you,” he says, “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good.” And had he meant it for good when he had goaded them into their murderous outbreak at Dothan, in his boyhood? Had he meant for good his histrionics in Egypt? Not a word from him to equalize their footing. He was the rescuer, the forgiver, the blameless one, the generous one. He wept. The way of the benefactor is hard, he reflected; beneficiaries are so touchy, especially, when their consciences are not clean. “And he comforted them, and spoke kindly to them.”

We are dealing here with matters which go far beyond the errors and sufferings of certain individuals, far beyond, into the past and the future of Joseph’s people:. He was play-acting not only with his brothers, but with the destiny of the folk of the blessing. A tradition of fratricidal strife had dominated the seed of Abraham since the time of the bond with God, an inheritance from primitive times. Here was the opportunity to bring the tradition to an end, to bury the hereditary hatchet in a magnificent act of family statesmanship. But Joseph gave all his understanding and statesmanship to Egypt; he ignored the opportunity nearer home, and confirmed the tradition of the folk division which, centuries later, under another form, led to the splitting of the kingdom.

With astonishing pointedness the great story ends where it began. So much has happened—and nothing has happened! The sheaves are bowing to Joseph, the stars are saluting him. But he and his brothers still stand apart, mistrust between them; old men, terrified, lying in the dust before the fortunate one, himself no longer young. And the father’s last act—if the brothers did not in their terror make up his instructions—one of mediation.

Published 30 years ago, the following analysis of Joseph’s character has become a classic among a small group of cognoscenti. The author, Maurice Samuel, was a Jewish literary critic and novelist whose work appeared in Saturday Review of Literature and other journals. He died in 1972. According to Samuel, Joseph was a failure—the Messiah would come not from Joseph’s loins but from his brother Judah’s, according to Jacob’s blessing. Joseph was a failure, despite his brilliance, because of his insensitivities (especially in his dealings with his brothers) and his impurities (especially in his relation with Potiphar’s wife). The excerpts […]