page_title: Vayigash
section_title: Genesis chapter 45
hierarchical_section_title: Vayigash / In classical rabbinic interpretation / Genesis chapter 45
caption_attribution_description: English: Joseph makes himself known to his brethren, as in Genesis 45:1-25: "Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, not angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not."; illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible; illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733) and others, and published by P. de Hondt in The Hague; image courtesy Bizzell Bible Collection, University of Oklahoma Libraries
context_page_description: Vayigash or Vaigash is the eleventh weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 44:18–47:27. In the parashah, Judah pleads on behalf of his brother Benjamin, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, Jacob comes down to Egypt, and Joseph's administration of Egypt saves lives but transforms all the Egyptians into bondmen.
  The parashah is made up of 5,680 Hebrew letters, 1,480 Hebrew words, 106 verses, and 178 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it the eleventh Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in December or early January.
context_section_description: Rabbi Hama bar Hanina and Rabbi Samuel ben Nahmani differed about how prudent it was for Joseph to clear the room in Genesis 45:1. Rabbi Hama thought that Joseph acted imprudently, for one of them could have kicked him and killed him on the spot. But Rabbi Samuel said that Joseph acted rightly and prudently, for he knew the righteousness of his brethren and reasoned that it would not be right to suspect that they might commit bloodshed.
  Rabbi Elazar wept whenever he read Genesis 45:3, for if men became too frightened to answer a wronged brother, how much more frightening will they find God's rebuke.
  A Midrash taught that "Joseph said to his brethren: ‘Come near to me'" in Genesis 45:4 so that he might show them his circumcision to prove that he was their brother.
  Reading Joseph's reassurance to his brothers in Genesis 45:5, "And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither; for God sent me before you to preserve life," our Sages observed that even the wrongs done by the righteous are of service to the world, and how much more their righteous deeds.
  Reading Joseph's assertion to his brothers in Genesis 45:5, "God sent me before you to preserve life," the Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer taught that when a person seeks to injure an enemy, the person bars the enemy from getting any cure, but God is not so. God provides the cure before the blow, as it says in Hosea 7:1, "I would heal Israel even as the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered." So in the days of Joseph, God did not inflict famine on the Tribal Ancestors until God had sent Joseph before them.
  The Tosefta deduced from Genesis 45:6 that before Jacob went down to Egypt there was famine there, but after he arrived, as Genesis 47:23 reports, they sowed the land with seed.
  Rabbi Levi used Genesis 37:2, 41:46, and 45:6 to calculate that Joseph's dreams that his brothers would bow to him took 22 years to come true, and deduced that a person should thus wait for as much as 22 years for a positive dream's fulfillment. Rav Huna in the name of Rabbi Joshua used Genesis 45:6 as a mnemonic for calculating what year it was in the Sabbatical cycle of seven years. The Gemara used Genesis 45:6 to help calculate (among other things) that Jacob should have been 116 years old when he came to Egypt, but since Genesis 47:8–9 indicated that Jacob was then 130 years old, the Gemara deduced that the text did not count 14 years that Jacob spent studying in the Academy of Eber.
  Rabbi Elazar interpreted Joseph's reference to Benjamin in Genesis 45:12 to mean that just as Joseph bore no malice against his brother Benjamin (who had no part in selling Joseph to Egypt), so Joseph had no malice against his other brothers. And Rabbi Elazar interpreted Joseph's reference to his mouth in Genesis 45:12 to mean that Joseph's words reflected what was in his heart. A Midrash interpreted Joseph's reference to his mouth in Genesis 45:12 to mean that Joseph asked them to note that he spoke in Hebrew.
  Rabbi Elazar noted that Genesis 45:14 uses the plural form of the word "necks" and asked how many necks Benjamin had. Rabbi Elazar deduced that Joseph wept on Benjamin's neck for the two Temples that were destined to be in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and be destroyed. And Rabbi Elazar deduced that Benjamin wept on Joseph's neck for the tabernacle of Shiloh that was destined to be in the territory of the tribe of Joseph and be destroyed.
  Examining Genesis 45:22, the Gemara asked whether Joseph repeated his father's mistake of favoring one sibling over the others. Rabbi Benjamin bar Japhet said that Joseph was hinting to Benjamin that one of his descendants, Mordecai, would appear before a king in five royal garments, as Esther 8:15 reports.
  Rabbi Benjamin bar Japhet in the name of Rabbi Elazar deduced from Genesis 45:23 that Joseph sent Jacob aged wine, which the Rabbi reported pleases the elderly. But a Midrash taught that the words "the good of the land of Egypt" in Genesis 45:18 referred to split beans (which were highly prized).
  A Midrash told that when Joseph was young, he used to stu
caption: Joseph Makes Himself Known to His Brethren (illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible by Giuseppe il Nutritore)
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