Parashat Vayeshev 5786

by Rabbi Margie Cella

This week we begin the story of Jacob’s eleventh son, Joseph, to whom he gave a beautiful coat because he loved him more than all his other sons. Jacob’s special treatment of Joseph, coupled with the fact that Joseph brought back bad reports about his brothers to their father, caused them to hate him. Further exacerbating the situation, Joseph told them of two dreams that he had that appeared to foretell all of them, including Jacob, bowing down to him in the future.

When Jacob’s ten oldest sons went to Shechem to tend the flocks, he sent Joseph to check on them. However, when he arrived they were nowhere to be found. An unnamed man found Joseph wandering aimlessly in a field. He stopped to ask Joseph what he was looking for and, upon hearing Joseph’s answer, told him that his brothers had moved on to Dothan. Joseph went after them, and their encounter in the desert ultimately led to them selling him into slavery in Egypt, and deceiving their father into thinking that he was dead by dipping his beautiful coat in goat’s blood. 

So was this nameless being that encountered Joseph in the field human or angel? Most scholars believe that their meeting was exactly what God had intended to happen. Had Joseph never met him, he would have returned home and not been sent to Egypt. But Joseph himself later says that it was his destiny to become vizier of Egypt, to save his family from the famine.

Are there times in your life when someone, perhaps even a stranger, has approached you to offer assistance? We can’t always know how our offers of assistance can change a person’s life. Oseh Shalom, Maker of Peace, help us to reach out and offer assistance to both the strangers and friends in our world.