Faith
I’D LIKE TO PAUSE HERE AND CONSIDER Joseph’s trust in not-knowing. Though he’d had to discover it for himself, in the back of his mind was the example of his great-grandfather Abraham, who had discovered that faith has nothing to do with what we believe; it’s the realization that what we can’t know is wiser than all our knowing. This realization is a difficult one, because it destroys the illusion that we have control over our lives. It leaves us where we are in reality: between a past that couldn’t have been other than what it was and a future of pure possibility, which can’t ever be what we imagine. For someone who has seen beneath the surface of the chattering mind, this infinitesimal, instantaneously vanishing space between past and future becomes habitable; it becomes home. In its clarity, the whole world becomes clear.
There were things that Joseph did know. He never wavered from his certainty about the coming famine and the measures to counteract it, though the specific details were fuzzy at first and came into focus only as he approached them, learning as he went. He knew that he was capable of governing the land of Egypt. He knew, from the first moment he looked into her eyes, that Asenath was the love of his life. These realizations were immediate, vivid, and self-evident. Still, he subjected each of them to an unsparing examination. He wanted to be certain of his certainty, to test whether it was in any sense a convenience of the ego or a veneer that overlay hidden modes of arrogance or incapacity. He was a scientist of the mind and strictly observed what the physicist Richard Feynman called the first principle of science: “You must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
But experiences of knowing were as rare as they were incontrovertible. When he didn’t know what to do, as with the question of revealing himself to his family, he respected that state of mind. He was at ease with the not-knowing, whether it lasted seven minutes or seven years, and he remained alert to any irritable reaching after a certainty that was based on his own desire rather than on reality. Any kind of premature or partial knowing would be a death, as if he had bitten into the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which stood in the Garden, beautiful and seductive, beside the Tree of Wisdom, also known as the Tree of Life.*
He would know what to do about his brothers when he needed to know it, and not a moment before. Providence was not something that descended from the heavens or was imposed onto reality from the outside. Providence was reality. It was woven into the texture of everything that happened. That was why he could trust whatever happened, whenever it happened.
Famine
DURING THE SEVEN ABUNDANT YEARS, when the earth produced crops in a profusion that not even the oldest great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers had ever witnessed, Joseph traveled throughout Egypt and gathered all the surplus grain and brought it into the cities, and in each city he stored the grain that was grown in that area. He understood that physical blessings are always temporary and need to be supplemented by an intelligent economic policy, which can be administered only by a central government. In that sense, government too is a blessing from God. Without it, class inequalities would deepen, and the poor would languish. So he collected vast quantities of grain. Some of his awed deputies said that this grain was immeasurable, like the sands of the sea.
Before the years of famine arrived, two sons were born to him and Asenath. They divided the naming: Asenath chose the boys’ names in Egyptian and Joseph in Hebrew. The two names she chose had been in her family for hundreds of years; both were variations on ancient temple phrases that gave thanks to Ra, the All-Radiant, the All-Compassionate. As for Joseph, he named the firstborn son Manasseh (He Who Causes to Forget), meaning “God has allowed me to forget myself,” and the second son Ephraim (Fruitful), meaning “God has made me fruitful in my adopted land.” Manasseh took after his esteemed, adorable mother, and Ephraim was in many ways a young version of himself. He loved them both, deeply, equally.
Then the seven years of abundance came to an end, and the seven years of famine began, just as he had foretold. There was no rain. The crops failed. Some of the palace elite, in private, began to parody the Great Hymn to the Sun: “You appear on the horizon, ominous / sun, begetter of death,” they would chant with bitter irony, sotto voce.
When the people cried out for food, Pharaoh issued a brief proclamation:
To my subjects, the people of the Black Land: Go to my viceroy, Zaphnath-paneakh, during this famine. He is in charge of distributing the grain, as of everything else in our country, and he will feed you.
Joseph had his deputies open the storehouses and sell grain to the Egyptians. He didn’t set one price for all people. For noblemen and rich landowners, he quadrupled the base price, then six months later he doubled it again. There were outraged murmurs, but Pharaoh had made it clear that resistance to Joseph was resistance to himself. Besides, the rich had no choice. Though they had known of Joseph’s efforts, they hadn’t been aware of any need to store grain for themselves, and like the prodigal grasshopper, they came empty-handed to Joseph, the provident ant. For the middle classes, Joseph kept the price reasonable—a strain, but not beyond what they could afford. To the poor, he gave grain free of charge. Any grumbling about the unfairness of this policy occurred behind closed doors in the homes of the rich and the well-to-do.
The famine grew worse, not only in Egypt but in all the neighboring countries. Those who could, sent envoys to Joseph; those who couldn’t, died.
V.
Joseph Reveals Himself
In Canaan
HOW MANY YEARS HAD IT BEEN since Joseph left his home in Canaan? Let’s see. He was seventeen at the time, and he spent eleven years in Potiphar’s service, two years in prison, then he was made viceroy. So that’s thirteen, plus the seven years of abundance and, say, a year of famine, which makes a total of twenty-one. During those twenty-one years, Jacob was occasionally drawn out of his grief, but not for long. He was able to celebrate when his sons got married and had children of their own (the eleven sons had a total of twenty-five wives, and by now there were forty-nine grandsons and thirty-seven granddaughters). But it seemed to him as if it were someone else’s family that was prospering. His pleasure, tepid at its warmest, seemed to be happening to someone else. He couldn’t help thinking of Joseph even during the wedding ceremonies, wondering what kind of woman could possibly have been good enough for him or imagining the boy’s beautiful face onto the children he would have had.
After Joseph disappeared, it took Jacob years to surface into life from the depths of the despair he had fallen into. The best times for him, the days when he was able to regain some small measure of equilibrium, were when he was tending one of his flocks, alone. He would enter the rhythms of these peaceful creatures, and his mind would slow down, so that he almost felt that he was one of them, with no past or future, lying down in green pastures, standing beside the still waters, walking through the valley of the shadow of death, which to him meant the whole earth, and fearing no evil, since their minds were incapable of projecting a future. Then, with a jolt, he would become human again, as he remembered Joseph, or even Rachel, greeting him with a smile and an embrace when he got home, and the mental act of comparing the past to the present would shatter his peace.
The famine didn’t deepen his sorrow—nothing could have done that; it was too deep to deepen. Actually, the famine brought him out of himself, since he had to take measures to ensure his family’s survival. Things looked grim. The lakes and streams were drying up. There had been no rain that winter or the one before, and day after day the sun blazed down onto the parched fields. The animals were gaunt; you could see their ribs sticking out. The humans looked gaunt too. Children wept from hunger. People were frightened. At night Jacob would lie awake with anxiety, helplessly trying to find a solution. Sometimes, listening to the wails that came from the women’s tents, he would feel overwhelmed with guilt, as if he had broken some solemn promise to God.
One day he learned that there was grain a
vailable in Egypt, enough to be sold to foreigners. So he said to his sons, “Go to Egypt. Hurry. Buy grain for us, so that we don’t all starve to death.”
Ten of Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt to buy grain. (Since the rations to foreigners were being distributed on a per capita basis, this called for the presence of as many of them as possible.) Only Benjamin stayed in Canaan. Jacob was afraid that he would meet with some disaster if he went. Benjamin was thirty-two now, with three wives of his own and ten sons, but at times Jacob still treated him like a child.
In the months immediately after Joseph’s disappearance, Jacob had clung to Benjamin as a shipwrecked sailor clings to a spar. He could hardly bear to let him out of his sight. He was distraught every time the boy got sick or returned late from an errand. The thought that he might lose the last remnant on earth of his beloved Rachel tore at his heart and woke him in the middle of the night. Benjamin was forbidden to travel anywhere that would require him to sleep away from home. This fear-encrusted attention was onerous for the young man, and he had periods when he resented his father and was even furious at his mother and Joseph for dying and leaving him on earth as their poor substitute. But almost always when he appeared before Jacob every morning and evening to receive his blessing and a kiss on the forehead, it wasn’t a tyrant he saw, but a frightened old man who desperately loved him.
The Brothers Travel to Egypt
IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE FAMINE, Joseph stationed interpreters at the border with Canaan, men who could speak the local languages (Jebusite, Kenite, Girgashite, and so on). One of them was proficient in Hebrew. He was entrusted with special instructions: as soon as any Hebrew-speaking travelers arrived, he was to send immediate word to Joseph and bring them directly to his palace.
It took seven days for the brothers to reach Egypt with their thirty donkeys. At the border they found a refugee camp: thousands of tents, starving children with glazed eyes, old men slumped over in despair.
Egypt looked as barren as Canaan. Nothing was growing in the arid fields. The sun loomed overhead without the relief of a single cloud.
But at least the Egyptians weren’t starving. They looked fairly healthy, and the brothers could see no walking corpses, skeletons wrapped in skin, as among the poor of their own land. People here seemed to be going about their business as in normal times. The guards assigned to take the brothers to Memphis were in good spirits. One of them kept whistling a cheerful tune.
The seat of government and the royal palace had been moved from Memphis to Thebes centuries before, but Memphis, known then as Ankh-Tawy, the Life of the Two Lands, was still Egypt’s most important commercial center. It stood at the mouth of the Nile delta, and it was the obvious site for Joseph’s palace. On their way to it, the brothers passed the largest building in the city, the ancient temple of Ptah, lord of truth, master of justice, “the god with the beautiful face,” the demiurge who had thought the world into existence. They had never seen such magnificence before.
Equanimity
JOSEPH HAD ARRIVED AT A STATE of spiritual maturity in which stressful emotions such as anger, sadness, and disappointment no longer arose—or arose so rarely that he could count the years between episodes. (“Seizures,” Asenath would call them.) His default state of calm was extremely steady, and he could depend on it from day to day, from hour to hour. It was an inner equipoise that was unaffected by pleasure or pain, gain or loss, praise or blame. He was detached from events in the sense that they no longer disturbed his mind, but this detachment was not a mode of separation; it was a mode of freedom. It allowed him to deeply connect with people, whether they were in trouble or at peace. No one ever experienced Joseph as aloof.
Equanimity is sometimes thought of as a dry or cold state of being, devoid of feeling. It’s not. Joseph’s inner life was filled with passionate emotions: deep love for his family, intense aesthetic pleasure, the joy of playing with or against Asenath’s nimble wit, wholehearted devotion to Pharaoh and to Joseph’s new country, the thrill of letting his intelligence gallop through an intellectual challenge, fulfillment in difficult work well done, and always, throughout the day, gratitude for the generosity of the given world. When an emotion surged through him and his heart beat faster—as when he was making love with Asenath, or when he sat beside her during the birth of each son, on the edge of attention, filled with compassion for her pain—he was always, at the same time, in touch with the seemingly bottomless reservoir of calm that lay beneath it all.
During the famine, in spite of all the human misery that was constantly being reported to him, he never questioned the goodness of the vast intelligence that was the source of everything, because he had questioned it thoroughly while he was in the pit, so many years before—had submitted it to a doubt that was like a consuming fire. His trust had become second nature, as intimate as breathing.
Though he didn’t yet know it, his brothers’ arrival was about to stir powerful emotions in him: rejoicing, love, fulfillment, compassion, tears of pure resonance with no sorrow in them. But in the midst of all these emotions, he would always remain the observer, the listener—amused, serene, both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
They Bow Down Before Joseph
JOSEPH AND ASENATH WERE HAVING their noon meal in the private dining room. It was just the two of them, with Manasseh and Ephraim, aged five and three, who were being particularly well-behaved young gentlemen today. Two nursemaids stood there on call, as well as a footman who served the meal, which was a simple one of smoked goose with berry sauce and sautéed vegetables, a modest salad, and fruit. The fruits and vegetables came from Joseph’s personal greenhouse, which, even during the famine, was expertly cared for. For dessert, there was a lemon soufflé. (Note: Chocolate and vanilla wouldn’t be available in the Eastern Hemisphere for another three thousand years.)
As they were finishing, the butler entered and bowed to Joseph. “Your Highness,” he said, “there is a message from the border. Ten Hebrew-speaking barbarians have arrived, wishing to buy grain. They will be here today.”
Joseph stood up. He exchanged a look with Asenath, then quickly followed the butler out of the room.
“Tell the Hebrew interpreter to meet me in the Great Hall, an hour from now,” he said.
The butler bowed and hurried off, a little confused. Wasn’t Hebrew the viceroy’s native tongue?
On his way to the Great Hall, Joseph’s heart was beating even faster than when he had received the news, and he felt a warmth rising to his cheeks. Could these be his brothers, finally? But why ten and not eleven? Was Benjamin not with them? Was he dead? Was another of them dead? But it had to be them. This had to be the beginning of the endgame. “Dear God,” he prayed, “if it be Your will…” He could get no further. He didn’t need to.
Two and a half hours later, when the brothers were ushered into the Great Hall, they bowed to the ground before him. Joseph recognized Reuben immediately: the same large, rugged body, the same face, though of course much older now, with hair and beard turned gray. Then he recognized them all.
“Where have you come from?” he said in Egyptian. His tone was harsh. The interpreter imitated the harshness in Hebrew.
“From Canaan, my lord,” Judah said as they lay stretched out on the marble floor, not daring to look up. “We have come to buy grain.”
Joseph remembered his dreams. He had remembered them many times before, but now, with his brothers prostrate before him, the memory was so vivid that he felt as if reality had superimposed itself onto the dreams, or vice versa, so that it was the sheaves, or the stars, that were bowing down before him now in the form of his brothers. He was deeply moved.
The feeling was one of fulfillment, not of triumph or vindication. None of this was personal. Here he was, sitting on the viceregal throne, amid the barely imaginable splendor of his court, surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries, ministers, bureaucrats, fan bearers, and heralds, all standing at attention to carry out his commands, an
d he hadn’t arrived here through any intention or effort of his own. He was just an actor. The whole drama of sin and redemption, of death and rebirth, was being played out through him, and all his suffering and success had been present in embryo in those dreams. Time had collapsed. The arrogant, innocent seventeen-year-old boy had, in a flash, reappeared in this thirty-eight-year-old man’s body; the coat of many colors had become the white linen robe of office; the vigorous young shepherds had turned into gaunt middle-aged men with weather-beaten skin, grizzled beards, and eyes dimmed by suffering and deprivation.
What next? He had to get his brothers to bring Benjamin and their father to join him here. How he could do that he didn’t know. He had many unanswered questions. Were his brothers sorry for what they had done? Was he meant to play a role in their repentance?
One thing was clear: it was not yet time to reveal himself.
More Harsh Words
AS SOON AS JOSEPH GAVE THEM PERMISSION, the brothers picked themselves up from the floor. They were twenty feet away from the dais, flanked by officers of the guard. Joseph scanned their faces, his chin cupped in his right hand.
They looked weary. He wanted to finish the drama soon, but there was still too much uncertainty. Was Jacob alive? Was Benjamin? Had they been persecuting the boy? Did they even remember their crime?
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