Vayeishev (Part 2) - Genesis 37:1-40:22

When and Where are we?!

If you had been paying attention, there should be a bit of confusion at this point as to the location and timeline.

Why?

Let's review:

In Genesis 31, God tells Jacob (verse 13) to get up and "Go to Beth EL". And Jacob takes his family and leaves. He has some adventures, the least of which is getting a new name, which is rarely used. It isn't even used after God tells Jacob, "You will no longer be known as Jacob".

In Genesis 35, God tells Jacob (verse 1) to get up and "Go to Beth EL". And Jacob takes his family and leaves. He has some adventures, the least of which is getting a new name, which is rarely used. It isn't even used after God tells Jacob, "You will no longer be known as Jacob".

Hopefully you noticed that this is the same story repeated, but with some changes in details and adventures.

The Genesis 35 version is especially confusing, because it has Jacob fulfilling his vow, which he didn't do with the first version (well, he did go to Beth EL) by returning to his father's home. In this one, he does. And it appears that he stayed there, and his father died at the age of  180. And Jacob and Esau buried their father together.

But, based on reverse math (see below), when Jacob will meet the Pharaoh near the end of his life, he tells us how old he was, and we know how old Joseph was when he was sent into slavery, how long he was a slave and in prison, and how long he ruled. And based on that, Jacob was 91 years old when Joseph was born.

And Isaac dies 89 years later!

So that entire chapter 35 can be confusing to those who are paying attention to such things.

So the parashah begins with a bit of background on how Joseph and his brothers don't get along. The brothers have established their home base in Shechem, a place that, in chapter 34, we are told that the brothers wiped out all of the men and took all of the possessions, including the women and children.

It is there that they are hanging out when Jacob sends Joseph to find his brothers who are there grazing their flock.

So where was Jacob and Joseph during this conversation? They are back in the location when they left Esau and had decided to dwell away from Shechem (Gen 33:19). Not too close, but close enough to walk to. In the previous version, Dinah had walked there. In this version, Joseph is walking there.

This is something to really give some consideration when reading the text: it was composed by a number of authors where were not concerned with continuity.

The Math

First, let's get the year that Jacob was born:

Abraham: Born in 1948 (I've covered this before. Just accept it for now).
Isaac born in 2048 when Abraham was 100 (Gen 21:5)
Jacob born in 2108 when Isaac was 60 (Gen 25:26)

So Jacob was born in 2108.

Jacob meets Pharaoh at age 130 (Gen 47:9) in 2238

So now we have a range to work from. What about Joseph?

Joseph abducted at age 17 (Gen. 37:2) in 2216
Joseph was 30 when he visited Pharaoh (Gen. 41:46)

So he was a slave and in prison for a combined total of 13 years.

And Joseph was reunited with his father when Jacob was 130, after Egypt had 7 years of plenty (Gen. 41:53) and 2 years of famine (Gen. 45:6). Or 9 years.

So Joseph was 39 when he was reunited with his father, who was 130 years old. This means that Joseph was born when Jacob was 91 years old. And since Jacob was born when Isaac was 60, Isaac was 151 years old when Joseph was born, and in this story, Isaac was 168 years old, and would live another 12 years.

Conclusion

The Torah is an anthology of stories written by a number of anonymous authors. Many times, it has duplicate stories at odd locations, which are merely retellings of different stories.

It is for this reason that Jewish tradition says, "there is no order to the Torah" (no before and after), because, if you are paying attention, a lot of the narratives are out of sync.

This is but one of several cases that I have already mentioned.

There are many others.