Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness

by Stephen Mitchell

  The walls of the palace were painted a brilliant white on the outside and rich colors on the inside. Glazed ceramic tiles covered the surfaces, decorated with geometric patterns or images from nature: flowers, birds, grapevines, palm trees and cedars, red calves grazing in green meadows, green calves grazing in violet meadows. On the floor of the master bedroom, a famous craftsman had painted scenes of the Nile, teeming with fish of all varieties, its banks a flutter of egrets, pelicans, ibises, storks, geese, and ducks. Red, blue, and yellow S-shaped spirals and bull’s heads covered its ceiling, which was supported by limestone columns in the form of giant lilies.

  When he first moved in, Joseph had felt annoyed by all this luxury. It had seemed extravagant, a colossal waste of time and money, and an unnecessary, frivolous tug at his attention. But he realized that the luxury couldn’t be avoided; it was the proper and visible sign of his stature as viceroy, and besides, it delighted Asenath. So he adjusted his mind to the new circumstances, and he quickly came to accept, and even enjoy, what God, in the guise of Pharaoh, had so generously presented him with.

  Running the household and maintaining the building and grounds required a hundred servants: private secretaries, treasurers, a butler, valets, ladies-in-waiting, apothecaries, bakers, brewers, cooks, kitchen maids, gardeners, grooms, stable boys, house cleaners, and pages. Though Joseph found it easy to manage them, he would sometimes feel a subtle strain on his mind during the day, when the palace was swarming with bodies. He would maintain his equilibrium by shutting himself in his library for a few hours. On days like this he would long for evening to arrive, when the servants were gone and he could be alone with his beloved.

  Asenath was beautiful, and people fell in love with her all the time, both men and women. It wasn’t her physical beauty they found so enchanting, though of course that played a part in their response. It was her happiness—her blessedness, you might even call it. It seemed to flow from her heart and fill her eyes with its luster. When you were in her presence, you felt included in this happiness; you felt you were sharing it somehow, as if there were an endless supply in her that was available to you for the taking. While she spoke with you, even if you were a scullery maid or a field slave, you felt that she held you in her gaze as if you were the only person on earth—as if, for those moments, you were the beloved. Joseph witnessed this often, and he loved her all the more for it.

  She was extraordinary in many other ways. She had a high intelligence, as high as Joseph’s, though it took an entirely different form. His was quick; hers was leisurely, and he sometimes had to call on his considerable reservoir of patience as he waited for her to settle on a decision, which, once it happened, was ironclad. Joseph’s intelligence was direct: it moved in a straight line from point A to point B; Asenath’s meandered like an ant, in wavering lines, forward, sideways, backward, diagonally, in circles and epicycles of circles, on its way from point A to point B or, bypassing B, to an unsuspected, astonishing point Z, in a movement that seemed random but had complex mathematical roots. Though Joseph’s prayer life was a practice of listening, his natural mode was visual, at times visionary; Asenath heard things. Her thinking was like music: rhythmical, melodious, and self-consistent. Sometimes, in the midst of a thought, she would burst into peals of silvery laughter.

  She was absolutely uninhibited about her emotions. When she laughed or cried, it was an onslaught of the most intense delight or sorrow. If she got angry at him, as she sometimes did (usually for a good reason), the anger was pure, without malice or blame—a natural phenomenon, like a summer storm or a flash flood—and when it was spent, after five minutes or ten, it left no residue. She would look at him again with loving eyes, as if the emotion had flared up a thousand years ago, as if its momentary cause had been forever wiped from the face of the earth.

  Her integrity was impeccable. She was the most honest human being Joseph had ever met. He could always trust that her yes was a yes and her no a no. There was no pretense or ulterior motive in them. She never spoke to gain his love or approval. She needed no one’s love or approval but her sweet own, which was the underpinning of her spectacular generosity. Joseph experienced this with profound admiration. I have married my equal, he would think. I have joined with my wife, like Adam in the Garden, and we have become one flesh.

  She had her own world of interests, a world of art, music, and devotion to the sun god Ra, and Joseph never felt that he needed to keep her amused. Her days were as full as his were, with matters that captivated her imagination, and when she and Joseph met in the evening, their focus was on each other.

  She was a remarkable listener. Joseph too knew how to listen, but the quality of Asenath’s listening went beyond anything he had ever known. When he began a serious conversation with her, it was as if he had stepped into an atmosphere of such purity that his mind deepened and expanded to meet it, the way breath deepens in the mountain air. He didn’t dominate their conversations; there was a flow; she spoke almost as much as he did, and the loveliest games of wit and seduction spontaneously arose for their mutual delight. But when he spoke and she listened, he could hear himself think newly, differently, as if his idea had been transformed by the act of resonating through her silence, as if it had returned to his ears freed from the stubbornly male, the stubbornly Joseph—had returned to him as much hers as his, like a child who resembles both parents, each in a different way.

  In-Laws

  ASENATH’S FATHER, POTIPHERA (accent on the third syllable), is not to be confused with Potiphar (accent on the first syllable), captain of the guard, who, as you may remember, was incapable of having children. Potiphera was the high priest of Ra in Ōn (rhymes with stone), one of the most ancient cities in Egypt.

  Joseph had no problem with becoming the son-in-law of a pagan priest. On the contrary, he was delighted that Pharaoh had wished him to marry into one of the old priestly families, the high aristocracy of the kingdom, because they—some of them—were the most educated and discerning of people. He had the greatest respect for Potiphera’s devotion to a god who, as giver of life, was in many ways the same generous presence that Joseph himself revered. And this was not just talk; his father- and mother-in-law were among the most decent, honest, charming, disinterested, charitable people he had ever met.

  He greatly enjoyed the periodic visits he and Asenath made to his in-laws. Asenath’s mother was a witty, cultured lady, who had at first been resistant to welcoming a barbarian into her illustrious family, however powerful or honored he might be. But the more she came to know Joseph, the more her judgments softened, until by the third visit she was treating him with as much affection and respect as Asenath could have wished for.

  Potiphera had had no such prejudices. He had immediately recognized the quality of Joseph’s mind, and their relationship had been warm and candid from the beginning. After dinner, when the ladies had retired to the drawing room, he and Joseph would sit together in two of the easy chairs that lined the colonnade, drinking the ancient Egyptian equivalent of vintage port and talking about the divine. Potiphera’s intellect was too subtle to identify Ra with the physical sun alone, much less with the slender falcon-headed man whom the masses worshipped. He shared with Joseph a trust in an all-embracing providence. But he had difficulty with Joseph’s reverence for what was unsayable and unknowable. He was, Joseph thought, too attached to the light to realize that it is also its opposite. In short, his concept of God was too narrow. But then, so was Joseph’s. So was any human mind’s.

  In Joseph’s capacity as viceroy, he was obligated to participate in certain state-sponsored religious ceremonies, and while much of the ritual and mythology, as well as the constant references to an afterlife, seemed trivial and foolish to him, there were moments when he could give the words of the liturgy his wholehearted assent, especially in the Great Hymn to the Sun, chanted in the House of Atum by a choir of two hundred young men and women. “You appear on the horizon,” they sang, and Joseph would feel his flesh be
gin to tingle. He knew all the words that would follow, beautiful and true in themselves and tuned to a melody that curled its way up and down the Lydian scale in slow, willowy waves.

  You appear on the horizon, glorious

  sun, begetter of life.

  When you rise in the eastern sky,

  you fill the whole world with your beauty.

  Though you are far away,

  you send your light to the earth;

  though you shine on men’s faces,

  your pathways cannot be seen.

  You appear to us, and the darkness

  fades, and all beings rejoice,

  and you shine out to the limits

  of everything that you made.

  Men wake and stand on their feet;

  they wash and put on their clothing

  and lift up their arms to thank you,

  then go out to do their work.

  Cattle browse in the pastures,

  trees and grasses flourish,

  geese flutter in the marshes

  and stretch out their wings to the sky

  in adoration of you,

  sheep dance on their hooves,

  birds fly into the air

  and rejoice that you shine upon them,

  fish in the river leap up

  before you, and your rays plunge

  into the Great Green Sea.

  Creator of the seed in women,

  you care for the unborn child,

  you soothe him so he won’t cry,

  you bring him into the air,

  you open his mouth and give him

  everything that he needs.

  When the chick speaks through the eggshell,

  you send him the breath of life

  and bring his form to completion;

  he pecks his way out and stands up

  chirping with all his might.

  How manifold is your creation,

  O one and only God!

  How beautiful is this world

  created as your heart desired it

  when you were all alone!

  How beautiful is this world

  with its billions of living creatures!—

  whoever swims in the sea

  or walks about on the earth

  or flies through the heavens above it.

  Potiphar Again, and His Wife

  PHARAOH HAD ARRANGED FOR many dozens of introductions after the investiture ceremony, to princes and priests from all the ancient, still-powerful families, so that Joseph had only a few minutes with each person who approached his throne to bow or curtsy before him. Everyone wished him well, with the latest, chic-est variations on the courtly phrases they had been using since childhood, and after a while, in order to stave off his incipient boredom, it occasionally amused him to intercept one of these phrases on the wing and hand it back to the speaker with slightly ruffled feathers. Some of the noblemen and -women responded with blank stares; others looked panicked at first, then closed their eyes and bowed discreetly to end the conversation; a few laughed with pleasure at the new viceroy’s wit. But when Joseph became aware of the discomfort he was causing, he stopped the repartee and settled back into his boredom as if into an overstuffed armchair.

  After thirty minutes or so, Potiphar and his wife came up to present themselves. Potiphar was all smiles. He looked like a proud father on the day of his son’s graduation. Congratulations and well-wishes sprang from his lips like the curlicues and flourishes of an antique signature, in language that was entirely conventional yet obviously sincere, since the sentiments were mirrored and confirmed on his beaming face. He had been discreet, he assured Joseph with a bow, about the reason for Joseph’s imprisonment; his wife’s slaves had been sworn to secrecy, on pain of torture; no one else knew, and no one ever would know. Joseph couldn’t have cared less what people said about him behind his back, but he gave Potiphar a warm smile and a thank-you. Then he turned to her.

  She looked stunning tonight, in a shimmery royal-blue sheath that fell from just below her breasts to just above her ankles and was held up by two broad royal-blue shoulder straps. Adorning her chest was a large pectoral made of gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli, ruby, quartz, and turquoise, depicting a blue falcon with gold-and-green wings. Her cheeks were flushed; it was obvious that she was feeling strong emotions, but Joseph couldn’t tell what they were. After the herald announced her name, she made a deep curtsy to Joseph, keeping her eyes cast down on the ground.

  He had thought about her often during his time in prison, and he had never blamed her. She had obviously been out of her mind when she had accused him of rape, unaware of the gruesome punishment she was condemning him to—or if she had been aware of it, that just proved how disordered her thinking had been. He knew how acutely she had been suffering and how trapped she had felt by her uncontrollable desire. It was easy to see how this desire had tipped over into hatred. The poor woman had been desperate. How could he blame her for that?

  He watched her curtsy. He wondered if she was feeling any fear of reprisals, now that he had been granted such power. After she rose, he said to her, very gently, “I hope you are well, my lady. I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment but kept her eyes lowered. Then she and Potiphar stepped backward and away, as the next couple approached the throne.

  Why Joseph Sent No News Home

  “HOW COULD JOSEPH NOT HAVE had compassion on his agèd father?” asked the thirteenth-century philosopher, physician, and biblical commentator Moshe ben Nachman. “How could he not have sent even one letter home to let Jacob know that he was alive? Hebron is only a six-day journey from Egypt. Respect for his father would have justified a year’s journey.” The moral indignation that crackles through his words is beautiful, don’t you think? Painful but beautiful. And when you consider the situation, it does at first seem like a grave offense for Joseph to have broken the Fifth Commandment so flagrantly, even though the Fifth Commandment didn’t yet exist.

  Here is the explanation.

  Once Joseph had been made viceroy and was free to do whatever he wanted, not a day went by when he didn’t think of sending a letter to Jacob or making the trip to Hebron himself. He imagined the homecoming in vivid detail: how he would arrive at Jacob’s tent hardly able to contain his excitement, how he would step through the entrance and run to his astonished father and hold him in his arms. He could see it all, could smell his father’s skin and feel the roughness of his beard against his cheek, with such a sense of reality that it made the present moment feel like a dream. For the first week or so, going home was a daily, almost irresistible temptation.

  The more he prayed about it, though, the less right it seemed for him to do anything of the sort. This is how he prayed: First he pictured himself sending a letter home or actually going home. (He never saw his brothers in the image—only his grieving father.) Then he infused that image with a wordless question, and he waited, listening. The process was like the echolocation of a bat: casting sound waves against the walls of the cave to hear exactly where you’re flying. The echo of his wordless question always returned to him as a no.

  He was, as you can understand, very interested in that no. Everything moral, everything filial, decent, and humane, pointed to a yes. Why shouldn’t he let his poor anguished father know that he was alive? What possible reason could there be to prolong the old man’s grief, even for a day, even for a minute? And yet the no was clear and consistent. He had no doubts. He just didn’t understand the why of it.

  It probably had to do with his change of circumstance. If Jacob knew that he was alive, he would surely want him to return to Canaan and, just as surely, would refuse to leave the land where his father and grandfather were buried. This would be an insoluble problem, which would only cause the old man further, needless suffering, since Joseph couldn’t possibly leave Egypt. He had been entrusted with the welfare of the whole country, and he had a thousand things to do, a thousand things to l
earn, during the seven years of abundance. Of course, in working for the good of the Egyptians, he was working for the good of his father as well. The need was urgent. If he didn’t carry out his plan in the most meticulously thorough way, his father would starve, along with his brothers and their families and everyone else in Canaan. How could he move his focus away from that mission? So wasn’t it better for his father to continue believing that he was dead—a thought he had undoubtedly become accustomed to—than to know that he was alive and unable to come home, a situation that would be incomprehensible to the old man and might even seem to him like defiance and be a fresh cause for grief?

  The echoing no might also refer to his brothers. If they hadn’t repented, his forgiveness would mean nothing to them. Forgiveness, he knew, didn’t have to be deserved or earned, and in any case his forgiveness had already happened, unpremeditated; it was already there for them, whenever they could bear to receive it. But for it to be of benefit, the transaction had to be mutual. Without their awareness of wrongdoing, followed by their sincere remorse, there would be nothing he could do to help them, and he very much wanted to help them if he could. He felt a welling-up of love for these men, and it was easy to imagine what a heavy burden of conscience they might have been carrying all these years. He would have to find out if they had repented. How he could do this, he had no idea.

  The truth was that he was waiting for a sign. Revealing himself to his family was his heart’s desire, but the timing was crucial. He didn’t yet know what to do, and he trusted that not-knowing. He refused to take any action that was motivated by his merely personal desire, however moral it might seem. The action would have to happen spontaneously, without his conscious intervention—that is, it would have to be presented to him on a silver platter by the hand of providence. He was confident that he would be able to recognize it when it appeared.