Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness

by Stephen Mitchell

  This is the land of mud, where the dead are planted feet upward. How it will all turn out he cannot guess. He is free only to watch, to listen, to let his mind find its equilibrium in the pitch dark of itself.

  Sold

  EARLY AFTERNOON: A BREAK in the negotiations. One of Kedar’s sons filled cups of burnished marl with honey-enhanced wine from Ashkelon and served them to the chief slave dealer and his assistants. As they drank, Kedar chatted with him in fluent but guttural Egyptian. The two men had been doing business for many years and respected each other. Each knew the other’s best moves.

  The price for Joseph had been more or less determined during the first minute of the examination. The slave dealer had uttered some perfunctory grumbles about Joseph’s height, but the rare beauty of his face and body was undeniable, and Joseph’s intelligence and wit shone through their brief conversation. (Tema served as interpreter.) Kedar had begun at three hundred silver coins and had slowly, deliciously, and with many apparent scruples, much moral dignity, let the price, little by little, drop. It was at two hundred seventy now, after four hours of passionate dealing. It wouldn’t be allowed to fall below two hundred fifty. Both men knew that.

  Four other slaves had already been sold—three scrawny Amorite peasant boys and a girl—at eleven silver coins for the lot. The process had taken less than half an hour.

  Joseph looked on and listened. He loved the sound of the Egyptian language, the subtly nuanced consonants, the uvular trill of the r, which sounded like birdsong, the flowing movement of the long, leisurely sentences, so different from the blunt forthrightness of his native Hebrew. He couldn’t tell what was going on, except that Kedar and his adversary were enjoying themselves immensely. From time to time they turned to him and pointed, as if they were arguing over the precise monetary value of a shapely leg or an elegant eyebrow.

  He felt no apprehension about his future status, whatever that might be, because by now he had learned not to think himself into a future. He was well aware that he might be sold to a callous or even a cruel owner, who might beat him or work him to death. But he didn’t let the images connect, to frighten himself with possibilities. For all he knew, the worst of this experience was already over. He was excited to see what would come next.

  After three more hours, they struck a deal. Both sides were pleased. Kedar, having made sure that the coins added up to two hundred sixty, eased them into a large leather purse. Then he rode off with his caravan to sell the rest of the merchandise.

  The slave dealer brought his purchases to his master, a eunuch named Potiphar, who was the chief officer of Pharaoh’s bodyguard.

  Potiphar

  POTIPHAR WAS A TALL MAN with a placid temperament, having been gelded at the age of ten. He had been bred as a courtier, and he was everything a courtier should be: a witty conversationalist, an elegant dancer, an adept at card games, a hunter, a drinker, a bureaucrat, and a shrewd politician, who knew just when a compliment would delight or a snub sting. Because he was immune to sexual indiscretions, and therefore less vulnerable to palace intrigues, he was considered to be particularly trustworthy. He had known Pharaoh since childhood (they were second cousins) and had been rewarded for his faithful service with a palace in the city, a country estate, and a wife from an old noble family, a woman of superior education, whose ambition was gratified by her husband’s steady rise in court circles. She was comfortable with her enforced chastity, not missing what she had never had. Looking beautiful, basking in the favors of Pharaoh, and being talked about with admiration and envy by everyone who mattered—that was enough, she thought.

  Joseph’s Ascent

  POTIPHAR SOON BECAME AWARE of Joseph’s extraordinary talents. The young man, assigned to table duty, was so handsome and graceful that one couldn’t help noticing him. The formal dinners afforded no opportunity for closer observation, so Potiphar summoned the slave to his office, a spacious, high-ceilinged room lined with gods made of alabaster, porphyry, and marble. As he interviewed Joseph, he was dazzled by his eloquence and the breadth of his understanding. He spent more than an hour with him, and he was sorry to see him leave. (By this time Joseph’s Egyptian was more than adequate for a conversation, though he would sometimes stumble over the conventional pieties that ornamented the language like the trills of a Baroque melody.)

  To say that Potiphar took a liking to him would be an understatement. Potiphar’s heart was touched. He felt rejuvenated in the young man’s presence. He wanted, then longed, to see more of him. Soon he made him his personal attendant and gave him an Egyptian name: Meri-Amun, Beloved of Amun, the Hidden One, who by this time was identified with the sun god Ra.

  The promotions to chief secretary and majordomo happened quickly and naturally; there was no grumbling among the other slaves at the barbarian’s heady rise, since he was universally esteemed; the master’s affection didn’t seem excessive nor his confidence misplaced. Under Joseph’s direction, daily business began to take care of itself with minimal stress on the whole staff. Everyday chores became a pleasure for them, and throughout the palace there was a perpetual hum of contentment in the air, as if the great goddess Bast were curled up on the rooftop, purring.

  The Golden Touch

  JOSEPH OBVIOUSLY HAD THE GOLDEN TOUCH. Everyone could see it, from the chief steward to the lowest-ranking scullery maid. It was not only his extraordinary intelligence that made his work prosper, or his mastery of detail, or his affability, which gave pleasure to all the slaves who worked with, and later for, him. There was something else. People called it prescience. They thought that some god must be whispering into his ear during the wee hours of the night.

  It was, of course, nothing of the sort. Joseph couldn’t see into the future, but he could, with his meticulous focus, see into the interstices of the present, out of which success and failure are born. It was like moving through a dense crowd, not thinking about where to go or how to get there, but letting his own movement find the gaps between bodies, letting it effortlessly flow through them until, as if his path were one long exhalation, he found himself on the other side of the room. He trusted this unthinking movement. It was the opposite of the arrogance that had been his default mode in his former life. The great things he was destined for were none of his business. His business was to see where the openings were and to glide through them.

  The Great Commandment

  WHAT PEOPLE SENSED IN JOSEPH was a wisdom that was actually a mode of love. Through his death and rebirth, he had found a way to live the still-unhanded-down Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is actually a description, not a commandment, since love of God is not something we can summon by an effort of the will. It’s something we arrive at, naturally, as the mind deepens and matures; and we come closer to it the more clearly we understand that what is most valuable in this human life of ours is the unnamable, the inconceivable. It is everything, and also nothing, because it is beyond our categories of thought. It includes its own opposite: both/and, neither/nor. In the words of our teacher Spinoza, it is that which, when discovered and attained, allows us to experience continuous, supreme, and never-ending happiness, whatever may happen to us.

  The Kabbalists called God (eyn sōf), “the infinite,” “the unending,” and that is accurate too, as far as it goes. But what about the finite, the ending? Isn’t God there (i.e., here) too? Isn’t God that (i.e., this) too? “The whole earth is full of His glory,” the seraphim chanted to Isaiah. Do we need to transcend the here and now in order to understand what is most important? Is that desirable? Is it even possible?

  “Where have you come from?” an ancient Chinese Zen Master asked a monk who was seeking his instruction. “From the Monastery of Spiritual Light,” said the monk. The Master said, “In the daytime, we have sunlight; in the evening, we have lamplight. What is spiritual light?” The monk, baffled, was silent. The Master answered for him: “Sunlight. Lampligh
t.”

  There is nothing mystical about this. Wisdom is a mode of love because it’s a mode of presence—that is, of attention. The questioned mind sees itself in the same way that it sees the world: with awe and with deep gratitude. And it expresses its wonder in the language of pure reason as clearly as in the language of ancient scripture. Listen to the words of our teacher Einstein: “The scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, in comparison with it, the highest intelligence of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

  From awe there are just a few steps to humility, from humility to wisdom, and from wisdom to happiness. The Book of Proverbs isn’t kidding when it says, “Happy is the man who finds wisdom.” That’s simply the way of it. Joseph understood this.

  Pity

  BUT SOMETIMES, STILL, amid all his good fortune, he felt consumed by pity for his father. He would see an image of the old man weeping for his lost son and feel a tug at his heart and a childish desire to comfort that image. “Don’t worry, Father,” he wanted to tell it. “I’m alive. I’m well.” And then he would wake out of the trance and realize that he had fallen into a mental trap. All this pity—what good was it doing? It didn’t benefit Jacob in the least, and it left Joseph feeling sad and wrung out with helplessness. So he was compounding his father’s suffering with his own. He was suffering over Jacob’s suffering—over his own imagination of Jacob’s suffering, really—and to what purpose? It was absurd.

  Pity couldn’t possibly be an appropriate response, because it cut him off from his own life energy. It was just as obvious that he wouldn’t be able to help his father for a long time, if ever, however dearly he wished to. Jacob would have to find a way to help himself, as we all do ultimately. But Joseph had to stop thinking of him in this way. For weeks he struggled to find a point of equilibrium.

  Finally, he decided to devote part of his morning prayers to contemplating his father in all his imagined misery, without any desire that he should be happy or that he should change in any way. This was extremely difficult at first, and it made Joseph heartsick. Then, over the months, it gradually became easier. Finally, he was able to see the image of Jacob’s grieving face without any sense of pity or sorrow, but with a deep compassion that left his own heart at peace.

  A Brief Chapter of Transition

  ELEVEN YEARS PASSED. Joseph’s good fortune came to extend over Potiphar’s whole household and over everything he owned: the palace, the country house, the fields, the flocks and herds, the ships, the thoroughbred horses, the brewery, the copper mine, the in-house bank, and the in-house factory, a comfortable, pleasantly decorated building where female slaves spun flax into thread and wove linen garments.

  Eventually Potiphar left all his affairs in Joseph’s hands, so confident was he of the young man’s extraordinary abilities.

  Better Not

  THE LAST OF THE WEEK’S GRAIN has been locked in the storehouse, the last numbers tabulated, the staff given their weekly message of encouragement and appreciation. Potiphar is out playing cards. (When he comes home, past midnight, drunk, gold clinking in his pockets, Joseph will undress him and tuck him into bed.) It is all working out smoothly, for now. The household is in perfect order. The profits accrue by themselves.

  Joseph leans back in his adjustable chair and puts his feet up on the mahogany desk that was last year’s birthday present from his boss. Was the story really going to end here, in loyalty, comfort, and superior accounting? He is fond of Potiphar, a sweet man, really, a cream puff of a man, for whom he wishes nothing but the best. But he knows God’s ways. He had better not get too comfortable. He had better not lean back too far.

  Potiphar’s Wife

  WE DON’T KNOW HER NAME. It has vanished from history (if it ever belonged there) and then from legend, until she stands beyond names now, in what William Blake might have called an incandescence of ungratified desire.

  She was still a young woman, just three years older than Joseph. She had a passion for the beautiful, which manifested itself everywhere in her life. Her clothing and jewelry were supremely elegant, and her art collection was famous for its refinement. How could she not appreciate the young Hebrew slave, with his brilliant dark-brown eyes, his exquisite features, and his shapely body?

  Over recent months, her interest in him had shifted from an intrigued noticing to a fascination and finally to an all-consuming obsession. Now she could barely take her eyes off him when occasionally he served in the role of butler and directed the footmen at a dinner party, and only the realization that her stares were rude and self-compromising could force her to look down at her plate or turn to one of her dinner companions.

  She thought of him day and night. She wanted to resist the images, but they kept arising in her mind unbidden. She tried to talk herself out of this infatuation. The young man was a wretched slave, after all. He came from some obscure, unclean race. Yes, he was clever and highly esteemed by her lord husband, but undoubtedly he must be a fellow of low tastes and a coarse sensibility, however modest his outward demeanor might be—someone who could never appreciate the finer things that were her lifeblood, someone who in an intimate situation would no doubt disgust her as soon as he opened his charming lips.

  But her reasons lacked conviction, and before long the images in her mind shifted to the sexual, the graphic. She was horrified at first. She tried to shut them out, but they kept appearing, then proliferating. Finally, her resistance snapped. She gave herself over to these images like someone who has been starving herself slim and suddenly breaks down and stuffs her mouth in the pantry. She even began to take the initiative, consciously elaborating the images into fantasies that made her quiver with lust and humiliation.

  The more she indulged her obsession, the more her misery grew. Where would it end? How could she bear the disgrace if she did what she burned to do? But how could she endure in this wretchedness if she did nothing?

  Temptation

  TEMPTED? OF COURSE HE IS TEMPTED—a flash of thigh through the sheer linen, her tongue slowly curling over her full lips, the beautiful long-lashed eyes meeting his and lingering, until he has to turn away. Or afternoons in the shadowed corridors, with no one nearby, a half-whispered Fuck me oh please fuck me. But never does he succumb, even as he waits for sleep, when her lithe image glides through his mind, stopping at the threshold of desire, wide-open-lipped, moist with longing. It isn’t a matter of right and wrong, but of his own heart’s wholeness, the truth he is in love with. Nor can he take on the role of hero, the splendid pattern of chastity, God’s good boy, and allow himself the indulgence of not imagining her distress. He imagines it every day. But until a clear response is forced upon him, his duty is to keep walking the ever-narrower path between yes and no, the tightrope where one false step means (apparent) disaster.

  A Clear No

  FINALLY, ONE AFTERNOON, SHE GRABBED his arm and tried to pull him close, and he had no choice. “Please, madam,” he said, “my master has entrusted me with everything in his estate and has held nothing back from me but you. You are very beautiful, and I am deeply honored by your attention. But I have to refuse.”

  Day after day she spoke to him, but there was no possibility that he would consent. His loyalty to his master was unshakable; he would as soon have cut off his own arm as betray him. Yes, his master’s wife was a sexually alluring woman. But right away he had seen where that path led, and he had, like a sorcerer, drawn a magic circle around her in his mind, a circle she didn’t have the power to step out of. And though he saw how miserable she was, and though he felt compassion for her, he knew that whatever she was longing for—intimacy? fulfillment?—was not in his power to give, even if he were to yield to the daily, mortified pleas and the helpless sobbing she broke into as he walked out of her presence with slow backward steps, his heart aching for her pain.

  “Rape!”

  ONE DAY, WITH H
ORROR, SHE REALIZED that the slave would never consent. There would be an infinite series of pleas and rejections, and she would keep sinking deeper and deeper into her despair. Her stomach turned in disgust at how pitiful she had become. Why couldn’t he understand that and offer her at least a little sympathy? He had no idea of her loneliness or of the humiliation she was suffering, this pampered young man who had been given everything: good looks, good luck, the confidence of his master, the admiration of everyone in the palace. Why shouldn’t he suffer too?

  And how dared he resist her command? Who was he to resist? A slave, a barbarian! He was probably lusting for her anyway, secretly, and these arrogant scruples he purported to feel were just masks for his overweening ambition. He wanted her as much as she wanted him—even more, undoubtedly. And if she refused, the filthy little slave would take her by force. She was sure of it.

  The next time he came in to do his work, she grabbed his cloak and said, “Fuck me! Now!” But he got away, leaving the cloak in her hand, and hurried out of the room.

  She screamed for her personal attendants. “Rape! Rape!” She was overwrought at first, almost inarticulate with rage and malice. After she calmed down, she said, “It was the Hebrew slave. He tried to rape me, but I screamed, so he ran out of the room, leaving his cloak behind.”

  When her husband came home, she said to him, “That Hebrew slave you’ve been pampering—he tried to rape me, but I screamed, and he ran out. Here is the cloak he left behind.”

  The Story Unravels