[Avodah] Your Father Instructed that You Must Forgive Us

[Zev Sero]

Meir Rabi wrote:

> But our problem is, It makes no sense. A forced confession is not a 
> confession and a forced apology is not an apology and a forced 
> forgiveness is not forgiveness.

It doesn't matter.  So long as he continues to act as if he forgave them,
and doesn't kill them all now that Yaacov is safely dead (as Esav had
planned to do to Yaacov), they don't care whether he truly forgives them.

I wonder whether at this point they had *yet* realised that they'd been
wrong about Yosef all those years ago.  Not just that they were wrong to
have been so heartless as to have ignored his pleading, and that they
should have had mercy and reduced his sentence, but that they'd misjudged
him in the first place.  Perhaps it was only now, when he continued to
treat them well despite Yaacov being gone, that they came to realise it,
or perhaps they never did, and thought that he was another Esav, whose
only virtue was kibbud av.


-- 
Zev Sero                                     May the light of Chanukah
zev at sero.name                                brighten your life