Judges: Chapter 12

 

Capture the crossing

make breath into death

the sibilant tongue, a knife's edge

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The figure of Jephtha is introduced with ominous parallels to Abimelekh, raising the essential question: will he be loyal to the Father or to the Son, a recreation of the heroic Gideon, or of his faithless bastard? 

Initially, Jephtha aligns himself with the Father, tying every action to the Lord who will "listen", fashioning himself as a recreation of Moses. 

Yet in this chapter, the question moves center stage, as Jephtha finds himself in a replay of Gideon's situation. Like Gideon, who fought along the liminal, definitive banks of the Jordan, Jephtha is at the fords of the river, with a leitword of a'v;r, passage, crossing. As in the case of Gideon, the men of Ephraim "call" (va'yatzek ויצעק, a direct echo of 8: 25)  an urgent gathering, and attack him for not calling them to join the fight. This time, they are more violent in their denunciation, threatening to burn the house down upon Jephtha (something that ironically Jephtha has already done to himself, in promising to sacrifice his one and only daughter as a "burnt offering"). 

  

Yet here the parallel between Jephtha and Gideon breaks down. Even as Jephtha tries to fashion himself as a new version of Gideon who "put my soul (נפש, nefesh)  in my hand, and crossed to fight the sons of Amon", in an echo if Gideon who "send his soul (נפש, nefesh) forth to save you", his reaction to Ephraim's accusations is diametrically opposed to Gideon's. Gideon does not punish an excess of involvement. Instead, he soothes Ephraim by lauding their achievements. Jephtha, by contrast, hurls back accusations. 

"I summoned you, but you did not save me" he counters--a childish non-sequitur that once again reveals his almost naked vulnerability, his damaged psyche as a rejected child. Ephraim, after all, did not ask to lead the war and "save" Gilead--they asked why they were not summoned to join the battle once it was happening.   In contrast to Gilead who uses his "word" (d'v'r) to "defuse their spirit when he spoke this speech" (בדברו הדבר הזה), Jephtha rallies Gilead to "slaughter" over 40000 members of Ephraim in a murderous spree that puts Abimelekh to shame.  

There is a  price to Jephtha's fanatical commitment to the reality of language. Gideon can use language diplomatically, to sooth and loosten. Jephtha, by contrast, destroys.  In the previous chapter, his commitment to the "blurting" of his mouth cost him his daughter. Here, he makes pronunciation itself a matter of life and death: Ephraim are judged on the literal placement of the tongue, as saying an "s" instead of "sh" condemns them to slaughter.

It is ironic and telling that this first civil war takes place between the "sons of Joseph", the twin tribes  who throughout the Book of Joshua hover between two and one, so close they are almost a single entity, as alike as the almost interchangable "s" and "sh".  "You are fugitives of Ephraim," the Ephraimites taunt, "Gilean is within Ephraim and within Menasseh." 

To Jephtha, a fugitive betrayed by his own brothers, this taunt is unbearable. Unable to appease his brother-tribe, he seeks instead to assert a demarcation as clear as the definitive river, as life and death. In doing so, he moves the Book of Judges to its darkest point yet.]

Judges: Chapter 7

 

Rise, to go down

Hold dread in check--

a dammed river

and know it can all

flip in a moment

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This chapter continues smoothly from the previous (indeed, with no break in the Masoretic text). It shares the keywords of yad -arm, and the focus on the spatial tensions between downward and upward motion. Like the previous chapter, it is in dialogue with the exodus, with the locus-like enemy camp and a "night" of redemption; as in the previous chapter, Israel's primordial blessings (I will make you like the sand of the sea that cannot be counted) has been appropriated by their enemies. Gideon's fear is still an underlying force: the people camp in Ein Harod, עין חרוד, a verbal play on the later reference to "all that fear" (כל החרד), so that it can be read as camping on the "spring of anxiety." Yet Gideon keeps his promise and does not question God\, keeping his anxiety in check--even as God slaughs away his men.

In reward, God of His own volition offers a new sign to assuage Gideon's fear--and opens a new intertext. Gideon, we are reminded, is not just a lesser iteration of Moses for a fallen age. As a Mannasite, he is also a descendant of Joseph, the master of dreams. Like Joseph, he is offered someone else's dream, in virtually the same language: "Behold, I have dreamed a dream." As in the case of Joseph, who interprets a dream of bread loaves, Gideon hears of a loaf of bread, swirling like a dervish. This flipping source of nourishment opens the possibility of sudden reversal, where Israel's fallen, starved state can suddenly flip, just like Joseph's in the pit. 

Inspired and renewed. Gideon prepares for battle, while returning to the opening, miraculous battle that started the conquest of the land: like the settled Jericho, the nomad Midianites will be brought low by the sound of surrounding shofars, and God's will rather than by brute physical force.]

Joshua: Chapter 24

God of history
God of faithfulness and choice
He is your belonging
in a land not your own
and the cycles close

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After what seemed like a farewell speech in the previous chapter, Joshua "gathers" (y's'f ) the people together one last time, this time in the fateful location of Shechem--the city Abraham first encountered upon entering the land; the place where Jacob settled when he returned from exile; the place where the eponymous gatherer, Joseph / yosef is finally brought to rest, in the portion (shechem ) promised him by Jacob so many years before: "And behold, I am giving you one portion over your brethren, which I took out the Amorites with my sword and with my bow" (Genesis 48: 22). 

And indeed it is not only the people who are gathered here but history itself, as Joshua draws the full story of the children of Israel, stretching back to a primordial river that predates and prefigures the formative Jordan that opened this book: "on the other side the Rivers sat your forefathers, Terach, the father of Abraham and Nahor" (Josha 24: 3).  Joshua follows Abraham on his fateful journey to Cannan and  to God, touching on key events: the choice of Isaac,  the split between Jacob and Esau, the descent to Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea (which plays so dominant a role in the opening of this book, prefiguring the splitting of the Jordan). Surprisingly, Balaam's forced blessing is also included in the key overview, seen as an opening volley in the conquest of the Promised Land. From there, the crossing of the Jordan, the conquest of Jericho, all leading to single, primal choice: Who will you worship?  

Joshua demands a clear-cut choice, as split as the two banks of a river, or the covenant upon entering the land before the two mountains of Grisim and Eival. Indeed, the covenant here is modeled on that earlier covenant, also including an etched stone. There can be no more walking on both sides.

 

Throughout, Joshua lets Israel know that God is their only true source of belonging.  The land that has become so central is not truly theirs, it is the land of the Amorites (24: 15): they dwell in "cities which you did not build... you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant" (24:13). In contrast to Jacob, who conquered Shechem with "sword and bow", his descendants won with God's intervention, not with "sword and bow" (24: 12).  It is God who has been with them throughout their journey, a faithful God of relationship and history, who demands faithfulness back,

Echoing the altar erected as "witness" between the interlinkage of the Eastern and Western tribes, the tribes all accept and witness their interlinkage with God.

Joshua: Chapter 17

Two or one

One or two

Who gets counted

Why does not

Who is seen

Who disappear? 

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This chapter continues the allotment of the tribe of "Joseph" begun in the previous one, this time detailing the inheritence of the children of Menasseh, "the first-born of Joseph". The themes of the previous chapter continue to resonate, becoming more explicit and extreme. The strange doublness of Joseph--both a single tribe given a single inhertence, and a double tribe receiving a dual inheritence, here comes out into the open. The inheritence of Josph is framed by this question of singlness and duality: the previous chapter begins by defining "the lot for the children of Joseph" before breaking off to define the detailed inheritence of Ephraim; this chapter follows the details of the inheritece of Mennasseh with the "sons of Joseph" coming to complain "Why have you given me one lot and one plot for an inheritence?" The schitsophrenic split between individuality and group identity is reflected in the syntax: even as the tribe of Josph demands a dual inheritence, they speak of themselves in the singlular--"Why did you give me". The utter intertwining of these two tribes is emphasized in the details of Menasseh's inheritence, which is punvtuated by cities that belong to Ephraim. We cannot detail his allotment, without detailing his brother's as well.

On the other hand, the dulaity of Josph's inheritence is here further exsaserbated by the fact that Menasshe is split in two, effectivly inheriting two different sections--one on the west side and one on the east side of the Jordan. The eastern section goes to "Menasseh's first-born", drawing attention to that strange insistence in teh opening verse: "Menasseh, the first-born of Joseph." Indeed, biblically, the first-born is meant to inherit an extra portion. Jacob, in his love to Joseph, gave that double portion to him.  We return to early history of the tribes in Genesis, which has been resonating in teh background since "tribe of Judah" first "approached Joshua-of-Joseph. When Joseph brought his two children to be blessed by Jacob, Jacob gave preference to Ephraim over Menasseh, and Joseph protests, insisting on Menasseh's promigeniture. Both elements continue to resonate here, in the allotment of these tribes. Ephraim is indeed given presedence to Mennaseh, but then the text return to insist that Menasseh is the first born. This contested promigeniture is central to the tribe's identity: this is the only place where the "first born" of a tribe gets a serperate inheritence, neighboring Reuben, another displaced eldest.

Yet in addition to the continued agon with Ephraim, Menasseh's inheritence introduces a completly new element: the question of female inheritence. For the first time, when counting the "children" of Menasseh, the chapter goes out of its way to explicate that they are "male." This is because for the first time, females are also inheriting. The daughters of Tzolphad rise from th ebackground, and break the default story of exclusivly male inheritence. 

In doing so, they also allow for the recollection of the one child of Jacob who receives no mention in this story of inheritence: Dina, daughter of Jacob, who was raped in Shechem and then disappeared from the story of the family.  Menasseh's inheritence begins in "Shechem" (17: 7) and one of his sons is named for that city (and for Dina's rapist), "Shechem" (17 :2).   In the acknowlegment of daughters, her story begins to rise as well],   

Joshua: Chapter 16

Are we one or two

Emeshed in each other

We have no seperate space

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This chapter continues the allotment of the Land to the tribes. From the inheritence of Judah, we move on to detail the inheritence of Joseph. The loaded word "approach" (g'sh), which introduced the interaction between he tribe of Judah and Joshua-of-Joseph in chapter 14 sets into place the allusion to the historic reapproachment of the brothers back in Genesis, which continues to resonate.Alotting the Land is returning to the issues of competition and jealousy that drove apart the brothers in Genesis. Joseph and Judah dominate that story, and it is they that lead the inheritence, in the dual figures of Joshua and Caleb, each of who leads the Land to "rest from war."

"This is the lot of the children of Joseph" opens the chapter, seemingly presenting a single inheritence. Yet Joseph was given the gift of a dual inheritence, and this tension of two-in-one drives the chapter. The chapter begins by presenting a single boundary, "going up from Jericho" (a fitting inheritence for Joseph, the only one of Jacob's sons to never "takes" what is not his).   Yet then it splits, "This is the border of the children of Ephraim." While this might seem to create a clear demarcation within the single block of "Joseph," Ephraim retains "the cities and their villages set aside for the children of Ephraim in the midst of the inheritence of the children of Menasse." The two brothers remain intertwined,  swallowed one within the other. This lack of seperation is echoed in the fact that Ephraim does not completly conquer their territory, but rather ingest the Canannites inhabitants, who "dwelt in the midst of Ephraim, unto this day, and became servants to do taskwork".

If the tribe of Menasse is split, its two sides becoming the sinews holding the two sides of the Jordan together, the tribe of Ephraim also lacks a unified contiguity. There is something in Joseph, beloved, desired, that evades the strict boundaries of self-and-other.]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 33

from word

to blessing

draw it together

Waters above

waters below

pain of not-love

lack 

of knowledge

let us live and not die

let us be one in You

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We come to Moses' final address to the Children of Israel. After a whole book of "the words that Moses spoke"--a book of exhortation, rebuke, warning, promise--Moses "made an end of speaking all the words" (32: 45), and begins is another kind of address: blessing. "And this is the blessing that Moses the man of God blessed the Children of Israel before his death."

In closing with a blessing, the final book of the Torah takes us back to the closing of the first book. Genesis also closes with a blessing before death--Jacob's final blessings to his sons.

These two closings are indeed linked by multiple intertextual allusions. At the opening of the blessing, Moses declares that we are dealing with the "inheritance of Jacob," and closes by declaring Israel "the spring of Jacob." As in Genesis, these blessing combine a focus on the future with a look back on the past. As in Genesis, the blessings are performative, and interweave a whole from the disparate parts. As in Genesis, the leitword is asaf, to gather, to bring together: "And there was in Yeshurun a king, when the heads of the nation were gathered, all together, the tribes of Israel,"

Like Jacob, Moses brings "together, all the tribes of Israel"  by interweaving the children of the various mothers, erasing the painful divisiveness of Jacob's family by creating new connections. Jacob created his new whole by cross-hatching the liminal surrogate children of the maidservants,  not quite Rachel's, not quite Leah's, making them the binder for the two sides of the family, interlinking Rachel and Leah's children through their proxies. Moses follows in Jacob's path, interlinking Bilhal's Dan with Zilpa's Gad through the imagery of the lion; and Zilpah's Asher with Bilha's Naphtali, through the key-word "ratzon" (desire, will). Yet Moses is more ambitious, and actually creates a matrix that unites Rachel and Leah's children directly: Levi, who has renounced all particular loyalties serves as the glue, allowing Benjamin and Joseph to be couched between Judah and Zebulun. 

Once again, Joseph seems to act as a primal binding force, as he merges the waters above and the  "deeps lurking below," reconnecting the split "waters above, and the waters below" that have not merged since the Deluge. Gad also returns to the primal "beginning" (Reishit) that opened the Bible. Throughout, the blessings bind through returning to "the eternal hills," "the ancient earth." Bringing "together, all the tribes of Israel" is tied to going all the way back to the primal divisions of creation, bringing together air, water, seas, sand and hills--all the natural phenomena that define these blessings. 

The centrality of Joseph in the blessing serves as a reminder that the question of redemption in Genesis is linked to bringing Joseph back, to undoing his sale and exile. 

Return to central. In the end, it is the Land itself that will  will act as a binder. In living within the "everlasting hills" Israel will actually, metaphysically, be living living within God: "The eternal God is a dwelling place, and beneath are the everlasting arms... and Israel dwelleth in safety, the spring of Jacob alone, in a land of grain and wine, and his heavens drop down dew."]

Genesis 50: In Writing

We fall

down, down, down

fronting gaping guilt

To be carried

Up, over, through

fall on your face

crags and crevice

of absence

sink in the weight of weeping

How can we carry the past?

the salt flow

bears you down the river

and up from here

I sink in a box

in a pit, in loss

reduced to essence

earth-bone

earth-borne

Can we return

a heavy camp

laden with years?

carry our load

carry our blame

 Come and come back?

solitary

I birth the future on my knees

can’t stand in place

just let the salt waves carry me

down, down

There will come a time of calling

of deeds enduring

unfurling down the road

 promise to carry me

bear the weight of account

what was sent down

must be brought up

hear my call

raise your hand

take mine

bring me forth from hence

Genesis: Chapter 50

Oaths
and future oaths


the lurking deeps



Who will go up?
Who falls?


Carry me

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This closing of Genesis also serves to introduce Exodus. A chapter full of closures, but also hints of slavery and redemption. The oath fulfilled is followed by an oath left unfulfilled, demanding answer.
Jacob is born in state back to Canaan, to be gathered in a moment of homecoming. Yet Joseph promises Pharaoh: "I will return." His hesitant request is a reminder of the fleeting of power, and a dark intimation of things to come. Though Joseph was "put" over Egypt by Pharaoh, in some ways he is still the passive object of Pharaoh's will, bound to Egypt unless granted permission to leave. And indeed, the verse specifies "The children and the animals remained behind"—in a foreshadowing of the later Pharaoh's demand for hostages.
With Jacob’s death, the binding holding the family together dissolves. “We will be your slaves,” the brothers beg, in another intimation of the awaiting enslavement. Joseph’s response not only closes this dark chapter in the family history, but also offers hope for future failures to come. The brothers ask, “Please bear (sa na) the sins of your brothers”—a prototype of Moses’ prayer in the aftermath of the Golden Calf “Please bear (sa na) the sins of this people”. Joseph responds “Do I stand in the place of God?” Failure is not irrevocable. In the end it can “be thought for good, to give life to many people."  Transgression is not erased. As in the case of the Golden Calf, there will be a process of accounting. Pakod yifkod, a precursor to God’s response to Moses: Be-yom pokdi u-pakadeti. Joseph asks a promise of restitution: you send me down here, now take me up. Undo what was done.
The book ends with this promise on hold: Joseph is put in a box, in Egypt. A reverberating cliffhanger. Going “up” from Egypt will not only be a national redemption, but also a spiritual one. Bringing Joseph up is a proof that there is restitution, that sin can be undone.]

Genesis 48: In Writing

At the end of long, twisted road

from the place it began

the dreams that fell

heavy in my palm

slip-slid between my fingers

to the ground

The prayers I prayed

oaths I oathed

doors I closed

naked nights spread on the earth

sights seen and unseen

The unexpected that sprang to greet me

on the lone plane of between

she died on me

earth spreading before, below and after

I had no faith to see your face

now I find you budding beneath me

round, heavy, sprouting

springing through my fingers

To see your face

I found no faith

Now I see your future

Flittering through the deeps

In flashes of flame 

***

All the visions

beginnings

lonely dreams

beneath  bare skies

all the fell into my hand

and trickled from it

What was born,

and bears

birthed in pain and shame

I call by name

Bury the loss

in the weeping moss

along the littered road

with darkening eyes

that can no longer see day

Shepherding the dark

she comes with the sheep

I throw my clenched blessing

into the fish-haunted deeps

Genesis: Chapter 48

Giving over
what was given



past, present, future



Blessing, loss
reversals
redemption












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A return to the past, and an investment in the future. Jacob, who "took the blessing with cunning," now becomes the one who gives blessing, his eyes "heavy" as were his father's, "unable to see." In a recreation of that pivotal scene, the younger once again is give precedence over the firstborn--but this time through a conscious, insistent choice.
Jacob reiterates the primal turning points of his life: the leave-taking from  his parents, where he slept in Luz, and the death of Rachel after his return to Luz, "As for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died on me, on the road...and I buried her along the road." There are splits that are eternal, that cannot be undone. But there is also hope: "To see your face I did not believe, and now God has shown me your seed as well." The focus is on what is born (nolad, molad, ashe yalad), on dreams of the future. The "blessing" given in the past, is given to Joseph in the present, and  given over to his children in the future: "by you will Israel bless." Death encroaches--"Behold, I die"--but the future intimates redemption: the root "gaal", redemption, is introduced for  the first time]

Genesis 47: In Writing

Sojourner, stranger
seated, encased

The living earth
the breathing dust
bought by belonging

Take me home
root me in the deeps
seeds climbing to the sun

merged with my fathers
cradled by my mother
to germinate
when the rains come

Genesis: Chapter 47

Bonds of belonging
let us live and not die!






We are the land
ingested
ingesting





Do not bury me here!






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Tensions of belonging.
Are you a sojourner /stranger (ger) or are you settled (yoshev)?
Joseph continues his battle to redefine possession. As in the case of his brothers, the tension between money, and the food needed for life. "Why should we die before you?" demand the Egyptians. First Joseph "gathers" (a play on his name Yosef--"God has gathered my shame") all the money  to Pharaoh, yet the word used, "liket," is a cognate with "leket"--the leftover wheat over which one has no ownership. "Money becomes worthless" (afes ha-kesef) "the money was gone" (va-yitam ha-kesef). We move into more intimate possessions: from non-specific money, to the mikneh, the belongings and animals to which one has a relation. Finally possession is reduced to the most basic bond of belonging: the very earth (adama) from which humanity (adam) "was taken." Humanity and humous become one: "Nothing is left but our bodies our lands"; "why should we collapse, us and our land?" "Buy us and our land" "give us seed, that we may live and not die, and the land will not be desolate".
Joseph recreates his own sale, as all of Egypt become "servant/slaves" (avadim) to Pharaoh. But it is not an exchange of commodities, but of lives. The bonds of exchange have become existential and relational: "You have given us life (he-heyetanu). Let us find favor in your eyes..." 
In the context of this recreated relation of man to the "earth from which you were taken," Jacob begs: Do not bury me here. Let my dust indeed return to the earth from which I came. Bury me with my fathers]

Chapter 46: In Writing

I will not fear night-terror

the gaping pit of dark

will close my eyes

and lay me down

in the tender shelter of your palm

knowing day-break

when the sun climbs its steep incline

gathering the winds

I am here

recalled by name

To send forth

and know return

see the ladder

build its rungs

To come, and find you coming

over the edge of the hill

flowing with the sheep

familiar taste of tears and loss

your pulse pulsing mine

On its beat

I die

ready to be

with you

now that I see your living face

Genesis: Chapter 46

A return to dreams

Once again, I am here

what goes down
will come up


hands and eyes
grow tender














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Jacob's return to life, is a return to dreams. After the protracted mourning, he suddenly has "visions in the night." The alienation and dissolution of the missing years begin to heal. Jacob is once again "hineni", fully present. God is once again the God "of your father", and Jacob's sons are once again his sons, the dead and lost included in the total, gone,but not forgotten. The dead Rachel is resurrected, at last acknowledged as "the wife of Jacob."
Yet the hints of darkness in the last chapter become here explicit. The "going down" to Egypt is fearful. God must promise that there will be a rise, and ability to escape this pit (e'ale, gam ale). Reverberating is the covenant: "You will know, surely know, that your children will be strangers in a land not their own, and they will be enslaved and afflicted (ya-anu)..."
Here, God makes Joseph's redefinition of the narrative in the previous chapter definitive: the darkness of the "going down" will be the source of life: "I will make you there into a great nation." Or, in Joseph's words: "God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction (oni)" The continuity between generations offers comfort. God promises Jacob that Joseph will be there at his death to "lay his hands over your eyes". Instead of an agonizing decent into the Pit mourning his son, a peaceful sleep, and an eventual "rise." Death--an exile--are  no longer fearful: "I will die now, after I see you face, for you are still alive."
In a final knitting together of the shattered family, Jacob "sends" Judah forth forth to Joseph, as he had once "sent" Joseph to look for his brothers, in a chiastic closing that gives Judah a place in his father's trust.)

Genesis 45: In Writing

To make the night soft

loose my hands

and let the cavernous cry free

to roar outside

reverberate

and come home

To clasp you

neck on neck

lip to lip

feel my skin by yours

tears meeting in a murmur

that fills the silence

shadows solidify

to the shape of your heart

Turn the depths 

to rest

save the remnant,

what  survives the searing winds of life

For life God has send me hither

Do you hear me

make the world with my voice?

present in your gaze?

Speak to me

And in the vibrating voices

The fallen begin  to breath

Genesis: Chapter 44

"What is the deed you
have done?"



Reiteration
Recreation



Who is exposing whom?
What is the exchange?












[for full chapter, see here
The issues set into place in the last two chapters come to a head. The issue of exchange and commodification is highlighted ad absurdum. Once again, the money (kesef) is returned; this time, with the addition of the silver (kesef) cup planted in Benjamin's bag. "Why have you exchanged bad in place (tahat) good?" thunders the steward, utterly ignoring the glistening money sitting at the top of all the opened bags. Only the personalized cup (gevi-i) matters. The full power of Judah's bond is the counterpoint: not value, but an existential bond, a life for a life: "Your servant-slave (avdeha) has bound himself for the youth to his father...Let your slave/servant stay in place (tahat) the youth as a slave to my master, and he shall go up with his brothers."
 "With this you will be tested," Joseph informed his brothers, "when your youngest brother comes here." The hidden issue resonating since Joseph saw "his brother, son of his mother" now comes to the open. The jealousy and breakdown has always been about Rachel--most beloved, always hovering on  the edge of "nothing". "Is it not enough you have taken my husband?" Leah had accused, denying her sister any place in the family. The sale of Joseph reflected the same impulse. Now Joseph recreates the situation with Benjamin, who becomes the "enenu"--the one "that is not," in a thrice-repeated echo of Reuben's despairing cry upon finding Joseph gone.
A change has taken place in the "many days." Judah's matter-of-fact, unemotional approach comes is defense of the relationships he had attempted to reduce to commerce. "He remains alone from his mother, and my father loves him" "My father had said: 'You know that my wife birthed me two sons." This bald re-iteration conveys the emotional truth powering Reuben's desperate offer of killing his two sons--Joseph and Benjamin are the only ones who matter. Yet even as Judah conveys what had driven the brothers to sell Joseph in the first place, he also repeatedly denounces himself: "we will send our father's old age in agony to the Pit."  The attempt to save Benjamin is the acceptance of guilt and a responsibility beyond emotion, rejection and pain.]

Genesis 42: In Writing

What do you fear
What haunts your night
When you fall down, down, down
to dreamful sleep?


We are the sealed ciphers
the gaping hallows
of where you don't look
don't hear
don't see
the black shadows
you trail
on the naked land
the thickening ink
that grabs your feet
on the path you walk

Genesis: Chapter '42

who is heard?
and who is seen?
who is recognized?




to go down again
return
reverse



Be the dreamer,
not the dream

[For full chapter, click here
The two strands of the story begin to come together, as the brother's follow Joseph's footsteps "down." Here, we begin to feel the deep reverberations of the sale, how the family has been shaped and poisoned by it: Jacob fears to "send" Benjamin (as he had originally "send" Joseph). Joseph is the constant hole that "is not"--present and mentioned in his absence. The depth of the rift and alienation becomes heartbreakingly clear at the closing of the chapter, when Reuben offers: "You will kill my two sons, if I do not bring him [Benjamin] to you. Give him to me, and I will return him." Here is a desperation to undo his greatest failure--the inability to "return" Joseph to his father. Yet this desperation also reveals how far Jacob has withdrawn. Reuben, the one who was most concerned for their father, actually believes that this offer would appeal!
 The leitwords are "return" (ve-yeshev, ho-shev, a-shiveno), "see" and "hear," as well as that terrible word that ended the story of the sale of Judah's story: "recognize" (haker).
Joseph "recognizes" his brothers, though he is unrecognized by them. He remembers what he has been thankful to forget, and sets out to force the recognition his brothers do not give him by making them experience his experiences.He "sees" them, as they had seen him from afar. "You have come to see the nakedness of the land" he accuses them twice, an echo of the double stripping of his clothes. He places them "under guard."
There is a response. "I told you not to sin with the boy, and now his blood is being demanded," Reuben says. We should have listened, the brothers acknowledge, we should have heard. The brother whose very name means "hearing" ("Shimon") is separated, and placed in prison, as Joseph was imprisoned. He becomes an echo of Joseph, his cast shadow: "Joseph is not, and Shimon is not." Like Joseph, Shimon becomes "the one"--nameless, separated, alone. ]

Genesis 41: In Writing

In the gaping hollow

world is swallowed

and emptied

In the sere east wind

memories dry, crack

and crumble

Beauty, soft and round

as a lost child

turns hard,

painful to look at

unseen

Within each other

we are ingested

good to bad

and bad to good

a phoenix

dying in its flames

birthed again

renewed in a name

and fire-gold feather

from forgotten

to forgetting

fertile within my scream

spilled out soft

on the crusted earth

a satiating stream

Genesis: Chapter 41

from the
Pit




Out, over Egypt

Remembered, forgotten, forgetting

bad swallowed by good
as good by bad


Duality is one









[For full chapter, click here
A chiastic structure, as Joesph finally is taken from the Pit
Repetition, and change: the leitmotifs remains in place, but with transformations. First, from the timeless monotony of captivity, we enter a specific time frame: two years,and things are moving quickly (they "rushed" Joseph; God is "hurrying" to do). Then, the sale is reversed:
Once again, two closely related dreams, with natural imagery, but this time the dreams serve as a catalyst to freedom rather than captivity; Joseph is taken from prison (now defined as a "pit"); he is dressed (the change of clothes happens twice, a balance to the two strippings); he comes to answer to the "peace" of Pharaoh, as he was once sent to seek the "peace" of his brothers; he is finally, once again, "found" (ha-nimtza), and so is able to "go out" (ve-yetze). From closing in, things "open" (ve-yiftach Yosef).
The "forgetting/ not remembering" is reversed, as the cup-bearer "reminds," and "forgetting" is defined as the coming ruin of Egypt.
Yet in some ways, this is also a continuation of Joseph's experiences: as with his former master, he is put in charge of the "house", with only one above him; he is still passive: everything is "given", there is no "taking": even his marriage is defined as "va-yiten" (vs. Judah's "va-yikach); he is passively dressed, as he was stripped, his name is changed.
Only with the birth of his children--again, the thematic duo--does he "call" a name. "God has made me forget all of my suffering, and all my father's house"; "God has made me fertile in the place of my suffering (onyi). From being forgotten, an active forgetting, yet of a different type: a letting go (nashani, "let go") , a falling away.
Good and bad become intertwined: the "two dreams are one"; just as in the dreams, the bad swallows the good, here, the good begins to emerge from the bed)