[Avodah] Yosef's Behavior

[Yitzchok Levine]

RSRH offers the following insights into Yosef's behavior towards his brothers.

42: 9 Yosef remembered the dreams he had dreamt 
about them, and he said to them: You are spies! 
You have come to see the nakedness of the land.

We must attempt to explain Yosef ’s behavior, on the basis of what is
written in Scripture.

We would have thought that, if only for his father’s sake, he would
make himself known to his brothers at once, especially since he had
already recognized the hand of God in all that had befallen him and
had learned to appreciate all his misfortunes — including his brothers’
transgression against him — as Divine instruments for shaping his ultimate
happiness.

Also, a man of Yosef ’s intelligence could not have believed that he
was obliged to put himself at the service of his dreams. If a dream has
import, one can leave its realization to the One Who sent it.
Only considerations of absolute necessity could have brought Yosef
to follow a course of action that otherwise would appear to be senseless
harassment, of which one cannot suspect Yosef, not only because of his
moral character but also because of his intelligence, which no one can
deny. If we place ourselves in his position, we arrive at the following
explanation:

If Yosef had wanted to remain a prince and nothing but a prince
in the eyes of his father and brothers; if he had not cared to return to
his family as a son and brother, he would not have needed to resort to
all these contrivances. However, Yosef who, even as an Egyptian prince,
raised his children in the spirit of the house of Ya’akov; Yosef who,
projecting even beyond his death, insisted that his bones should be laid
to rest in the land of his fathers — this same Yosef felt that he would
have to bring about two changes before he could make himself known
to his brothers:

(a) He should be able to change his own opinion of his brothers;
but above all, (b) his brothers should change their opinion of him.
Their feelings toward one another would have to change completely, in
order for a warm and close relationship to prevail between them. Otherwise,
even if Yosef were physically restored to his family, his family
would be lost to him, and he to them.
It was only natural that Yosef bore resentment toward his brothers,
and that he remembered the callousness in which they had ignored his
entreaties from the pit and disregarded the pain they would be bringing
their father. These feelings could be erased only by proof that his brothers
had undergone a complete change of heart.

It was therefore necessary to test his brothers, to see whether they
would again be capable of depriving their father of a son — and this
time for real and compelling reasons. The real possibility of life imprisonment
and the specter of their families starving at home would perhaps
weigh more heavily upon them than any imagined threat from Yosef ’s
supposed thirst for power (see Commentary above, chap. 37). This test
was of vital import for Yosef ’s own feelings. Only if his brothers passed
this test would he be able to banish from his heart the bitterness that
remained.

But the second, and perhaps even more important, consideration
was this: Yosef remembered his dreams, how they had caused his brothers
to suspect him of lust for power — to the point that they felt
threatened by him and considered themselves entitled to commit even
the gravest of all crimes, in supposed self-defense. If this was the case
when he went about among them in his embroidered coat, how much
more would they now have to fear him when he was not only a “king”
in fact but also had cause to hate them and, in the manner of ignoble
souls, to take his revenge on them!

It was therefore imperative that the brothers should come to know
Yosef ’s true character, and toward this end it was necessary — first of
all — to appear before them in his actual position of power. Until now
they had known him merely as a masbeir, a retail seller; perhaps they had
taken him for a lowly clerk of some petty official. Now he must present
himself to them as the shalit, the governor. They must be made to realize
that he could do with them as he pleased. If, nevertheless, he would deal
kindly with them and repay evil with good, he would have reason to
hope that this would cure them of their erroneous notions about him.
In short, at the moment when he would identify himself to them
as their brother Yosef, the blindfold would drop from their eyes, and
it would be possible for both Yosef and his brothers to completely erase
the past. Only thus could Yosef hope to be truly restored as a son to
his father and as a brother to his father’s children.

If we are not mistaken, these same considerations were also the ones
that kept Yosef from establishing contact with his father during the
years of prosperity. What good would it have done his father to regain
one son and lose ten others, and to see tension and enmity prevailing
between his sons?!

To attain this end, all of Yosef ’s contrivances were essential and —
in our view — entirely worthy of Yosef ’s wisdom.
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