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My Torah's at 40%, everybody! Isn't that a lovely big round number?
The bit I just wrote is the bit where Yosef has got himself the job of Top Red Cross Food Distributor in the Egyptian famine, and his brothers turn up to get some food. They don't recognise him, but he recognises them, so he decides to wind them up a bit.
Yosef: You're not here for food, you're spies.
Brothers: No, we're not spies, we're all the sons of one man.
Yosef: No, you're spies.
Brothers: No, really, we're twelve brothers except the little one is at home and we don't have the other one any more.
What on earth? This makes no sense at all!
Rashi brings in divine intervention (I never like it when he does that, it's such a last resort), so that the brothers' "we" includes Yosef. Other commentators add the implied clause "and that's why we're here in a huge band, because brothers stick together." Both of these are distinctly unsatisfying. The latter, because it doesn't flippin' prove they're not spies! and the former because it bugs me when we resort to using miracles to explain human interactions.
Seems to me like it's a mirror of Yosef's behaviour the other day, except that this time it's the brothers giving the irrelevant life story details and more or less ignoring what Yosef's saying. But that isn't altogether satisfactory either. I don't get it.
The bit I just wrote is the bit where Yosef has got himself the job of Top Red Cross Food Distributor in the Egyptian famine, and his brothers turn up to get some food. They don't recognise him, but he recognises them, so he decides to wind them up a bit.
Yosef: You're not here for food, you're spies.
Brothers: No, we're not spies, we're all the sons of one man.
Yosef: No, you're spies.
Brothers: No, really, we're twelve brothers except the little one is at home and we don't have the other one any more.
What on earth? This makes no sense at all!
Rashi brings in divine intervention (I never like it when he does that, it's such a last resort), so that the brothers' "we" includes Yosef. Other commentators add the implied clause "and that's why we're here in a huge band, because brothers stick together." Both of these are distinctly unsatisfying. The latter, because it doesn't flippin' prove they're not spies! and the former because it bugs me when we resort to using miracles to explain human interactions.
Seems to me like it's a mirror of Yosef's behaviour the other day, except that this time it's the brothers giving the irrelevant life story details and more or less ignoring what Yosef's saying. But that isn't altogether satisfactory either. I don't get it.
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