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And so, in the very last act of the Exodus saga, each nation would have it the way they liked it.
If you prefer to deny a Creator, then live in a world without one! At the sea, Pharaoh and his minions inhabit an uncreated world, a world that is an expression of the primal chaos of pre-Creation. This world has no divisions. It is a world in which light is suffocated by darkness, water encompasses all, and both breathable air and habitable land are invaded by the menace of unrestricted, chaotic water.[49]
having seen the Exodus as it actually came to pass—Egypt’s armies routed at the Sea of Reeds by the most dramatic divine miracle that ever was—it seems only natural to wonder: Was either of those other plans ever really the way things were supposed to turn out?
What, if anything, was lost when those plans failed to come to fruition? And if something terribly important was lost, is that loss permanent? Is there some sort of unrealized potential in the Exodus whose loss we should mourn, or perhaps seek to recapture?
This parallel story has much to teach us about the real Exodus, which it throws into sharp relief, highlighting the triumphs of the Exodus, and the aching pathos of its missed opportunities.
And I shall strengthen the heart of Pharaoh,[50] and he will chase after you... (Exodus 14:4)
...and I shall be honored through Pharaoh and all his army… (Exodus 14:4)
the Almighty himself: a victor doesn’t rejoice at the downfall of his enemies, particularly if the victor is God. God is the creator; even His enemies are His creations. There is something bitter in the taste of victory over them.
That climactic episode is one bookend to the Exodus story. I would like to return to the other bookend of the Exodus story, all the way back in the book of Genesis, before Egyptian servitude begins: the story of the death and burial of the patriarch, Jacob. I believe that these two bookends match up in remarkable ways.
We will be able to see the Exodus that actually occurred through the prism of the Exodus that might have been.
According to the Sages, when Joseph agreed to Jacob’s request, He saw evidence in it of his son’s abiding righteousness. Despite Joseph’s many years in Egypt, he had not assimilated into the heathen culture. Jacob now felt his legacy was “complete,” and he bowed in gratitude.
The problem is: should it really have taken Jacob seventeen years to realize this?
But what was so important about this burial request? Why, exactly, would this one request tell Jacob what he felt he needed to know about Joseph? To discover the answers to these questions, we must review some of the history that has transpired between three men: Jacob, Joseph, and the Pharaoh that lived in Joseph’s day.[53]
R. Yoel Bin Nun suggests that Joseph may have believed he had just been thrown out of the family. Was his father in on it from the beginning? Maybe.
Pharaoh is beginning to create with Joseph. Pharaoh is acting out a precise inverse of Jacob’s role in this story. Whatever disappointment Joseph might have felt toward his own father—How could you have sent me away? Where were you when I was stripped, and begging to be taken out of the pit?—it is all being redeemed by the actions of Pharaoh, who will be a father-in-exile for him. Thirteen years ago, his father sent him away. Now, a new father will bring him close.
The notion that Joseph was regarded by Jacob as his firstborn seems preposterous, on the face of it; many children had been born to Jacob before Joseph. But there was a sense in which Joseph could qualify as firstborn. He was the firstborn of Rachel—and Rachel, after all, was the wife Jacob had always intended to marry.
So, as Joseph rises to power in Egypt, he becomes the son of two “fathers.” The reader is left to wonder: is there a competition of sorts between the two men?
Will the power, love and acceptance showered upon him by his adoptive father loosen, and ultimately break, the bonds that tie him to his actual father and brothers—especially given Joseph’s uncertainty over what happened back on that fateful day at the pit?
And Joseph called the name of his firstborn Manasseh, [in gratitude] ‘that God has caused me to forget my travails, and all my father’s house’ (Genesis 41:51)
And the name of the second he called Ephraim, ‘because God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my oppression’ (Genesis 41:52)
In an instant, R. Bin Nun argues, Joseph’s world is turned upside down. Suddenly, he learns the truth about his father. This whole time, my father thought I was dead! For all these years, father had somehow been deceived. He never threw me out of the family, no! Every moment I’ve been away, he has been mourning me…
Reread Joseph’s words to the brothers. Settle in Goshen so “you shall be close to me.” And not just you, Joseph’s brothers. No. “You, your children, and grandchildren.” Joseph wants to watch his brothers’ children and grandchildren grow up. He has been isolated from his real family for so long; now, it is closeness with them that he craves.
Decades earlier, Jacob had received a double promise from the Almighty: he would have many descendants, and these descendants would be given the Land of Canaan as their ancestral homeland (Genesis 28:13–14).
Do not fear going down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there (Genesis 46:3)
Something is on Jacob’s mind as he stands before Pharaoh. It is a sense that somehow, he has not lived out his dream. He is in the sunset of his life, and still only a sojourner, like his forefathers.[61] Wasn’t he meant to settle in Canaan and begin the work of nation-building? But he just couldn’t do it. Yes, he and his family would survive here in Egypt; they would not starve. But is this really where he was supposed to be?
years. Joseph wants his father and brothers near him, but he certainly doesn’t want them to feel like displaced persons. He wants them to feel at home, so he gives them an achuzah in Egypt.
This is the background for Jacob’s fateful talk with Joseph.[62] Seventeen years after he first set foot in Egypt, Jacob summons his son for a crucial discussion. It is a discussion Jacob had avoided until now. But finally, as he approached death, there was no choice. He would say what needed to be said. And it will be up to Joseph to choose with which father his deepest loyalty rests.
Joseph was like a son to two men—an actual, biological father, Jacob, and a figurative father, Pharaoh. That was all well and good as long as the interests of those two men, Jacob and Pharaoh, aligned with one another. But what would happen if one day they didn’t?
But it makes perfect sense. This really was the moment that Jacob knew that Joseph was a loyal son. Providing for the family was one thing. That choice did not really require him to put his relationship with Pharaoh under any strain. But a state funeral in Canaan? Trying to honor that request could come at a real price for Joseph. When Joseph swore he would do it, Jacob understood what that meant. In a contest between competing fathers and their respective interests, Joseph had just chosen Jacob.
Egypt is not our place. Home is Canaan, the land God promised to us. That is where our family has an achuzah waiting for us, an ancestral holding.
No, Jacob was after something else entirely. Before he died, he was acknowledging, and lovingly redeeming, something painful in Joseph’s past, something symbolized by the birth of these two children.
A benevolent Pharaoh had become a replacement father, giving Joseph a new name and a wife. And with that wife he had sired these two sons—sons he named for his sense of pain and alienation from his family, and for his hope of starting a new life in this foreign land: Manasseh, “for God has allowed me to forget all my travail, all of my father’s house”; Ephraim, “for God has given me children in the land of my oppression.”
Jacob wanted Joseph to know that he would embrace his grandchildren fully and without reservation. Joseph, with his oath to bury Jacob in Canaan, had bridged the divide that separated him from his father, and now Jacob would reciprocate. Joseph had accepted his father’s future, in which Egypt would fade away, and now, Jacob would accept his son’s past, in which Canaan, tragically, had seemed to fade away. These children that had once been symbols of Joseph’s alienation from his father’s house—Jacob would hold them as dear as his very own.
When we add it all up, this means that, through Ephraim and Manasseh,Joseph accounts for two of the tribes of Israel, whereas every other child of Jacob only accounts for one. Those familiar with Deuteronomy might catch the allusion here: Joseph has a kind of “double share” in his father’s legacy, a fact that resonates with later biblical laws regarding inheritance. The Torah entitles a bechor,
a confirmation that yes, he could finally be called a true bechor.[65] Whether Joseph was biologically firstborn was no longer the point. Joseph had acted as bechor in this family, serving its interests selflessly.
Only Joseph holds the moral force to take the venom out of an attack of dispossessed children. And remember: not only does he fend off these kings, he wins them over; they join their crowns to his. One wonders if the Talmud is painting a picture not only of the past, but of a possible future, gilded with hope for reconciliation within the extended family of Israel. If, after all the pain, anger and misunderstanding in his past, Joseph can solemnly give Jacob honor—if, after everything, he can wed his destiny to that of his family—then perhaps other fragments of dispossessed families can find
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When it rained for forty days and forty nights, that was a bridge between one world and another. The old world was closing down, and a new one coming into being. When Moses spent forty days atop Mount Sinai, he too journeyed to a new world: he left the terrestrial sphere, and entered a transcendent one. And, according to the Egyptians, that was precisely the point of embalming someone: it was to prepare the dead for a journey between worlds. The dead could be “healed,” if the body could be preserved—for the spirit would ultimately ride that body on an odyssey to another world.
Joseph hadn’t had the heart to tell them that this was all Egyptian mourning. Awkwardly enough, from the perspective of the Israelites, they had not yet even begun to provide Jacob’s body the only honor Jacob ever wanted for himself. They had not yet made good on their promise to bury him in the Land of Canaan.
My father made me swear, saying: Here, I am going to die. In my grave that I’ve carved out for myself in the Land of Canaan, that’s where you must bury me. And so now, let me go up, please, and bury my father—and I shall return (Genesis 50:5)
An entourage from Egypt accompanies them—a delegation of such stature that it could only have been sent by the king himself. All of Pharaoh’s servants set out with the family, along with the elders of the king’s court.
And along with [the family and the entourage], chariots and archers went up, as well; the camp was very great (Genesis 50:9) Chariots and archers—what would they be doing here? There was no military necessity for them. This was a funeral, after all, not a campaign of war! But a moment’s reflection settles that question: they were an honor guard. Pharaoh had sent them, too, to escort Joseph’s father on his final journey.
For Pharaoh, it didn’t matter. If this was how the family thought Jacob should be honored, then that’s how he’d be honored—and Egypt would be a part of it. Public relations concerns were simply not going to be a factor. The loyalty of Egypt to its adopted father would not stop at Egypt’s door.
The story of Jacob’s burial, in the end, is the story of two heroes. The first is Joseph, who risked everything to bury his father according to his wishes. He risked the loss of power, prestige—and perhaps most of all, his good standing in the eyes of Pharaoh. But the second hero, unlikely as it may seem, is Pharaoh himself. He resisted the urge to impose upon the venerated Jacob an exclusively Egyptian identity. He allowed Jacob to be who he was—Israelite, not Egyptian—and still he and the populace would cherish him; still he and Egypt would regard Jacob as royalty. They would accord him all
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And so, with the Torah’s account of the splendor of Jacob’s funeral procession, its account of the triangle linking Joseph, Jacob, and Pharaoh comes to an end—except that, in a way, it has not yet begun. For the story the Torah is telling us about Jacob’s funeral has one more glorious act to it, an act that will take place centuries later. Everything we have seen thus far is a shadow of something much larger, a drama that will play out on the greatest possible stage.
Goren Ha’atad, you will recall, is where the procession paused to eulogize Jacob before arriving at their ultimate destination. It was there that the Canaanites looked on and expressed their wonder at how great an expression of mourning all this was for Egypt.
In the Exodus, God specifically had the people avoid the more direct route (Exodus 13:17–18). Instead,
Maybe we have been too hasty in characterizing what each of these two stories is essentially about. Yes, it seems like one is about a burial procession and the other is about an exodus of former slaves, but maybe that’s not how the Torah sees it. Maybe the text sees the “burial” aspect of things and the “slaves leaving” aspect of things as just window dressing: in essence, the stories are exactly the same.
The Exodus that actually came to pass—that was what we eventually called Plan C. It involved the violent destruction of a recalcitrant Egypt and the complete defeat of a bullheaded Pharaoh.
Thus says the YHVH, God of Israel: Send out My people, and let them rejoice before Me in the desert (Exodus 5:1)
Had Plan A worked, Pharaoh, in that moment right at the beginning of the Exodus, would have allowed the people to go into the desert, in a grand procession, for the sole purpose of honoring their Father, the way Father said He wanted to be honored. Now do you see the connection between the Burial of Jacob and the Exodus?
