[Avodah] Your Father Instructed that You Must Forgive Us

[Zev Sero]

On the same topic (Yosef and his brothers):  What was the big revelation
with "aval ashemim anachnu"?  Why did it take until that moment for them
to realise that they'd done wrong?  Malbim explains that until then they
had regarded the accusation of being spies as so bizarre that it couldn't
be taken seriously.  The Egyptian must be stam a rasha an antisemite, and
is making things up against them at random.  So why should they learn
anything from it?  But then the Egyptian comes and tells them that he
fears Hashem and doesn't want to punish innocent people, and tries to offer
them opportunities to prove their innocence, if indeed they are innocent.

That's when they realise that he actually thinks they're spies!  He's not
trying to get them, it's not some sort of libel, he really believes it.
It's like finding an honest well-meaning Xian who honestly believes that
Jews drink Xian blood, and so he has to protect his children from us.
But how could a sane and decent person come up with such a bizarre notion?
That must be from Above.  And so they realised that if they were being
punished in a way that questioned their brotherhood, it must be for
something they'd done wrong with their brother.  So they decided that even
though (as they then thought) their brother had deserved to be killed, they
should have had mercy on him and listened to his pleas.


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