NOTES for Gen 44:1-34
Today's passage completes the biblical story of how Joseph led his brothers to repentance. At first glance, the story of the cup planted on Benjamin at Joseph's direct order (v. 2) looks like an outright provocation. On the other hand, this episode became a very important stage in the unusual spiritual education Joseph undertook with his brothers. Once again, as before, Joseph's brothers had to learn from their own experience what it is like to be guilty without being guilty. The experiment was extremely harsh, but Joseph had the moral right to carry it out, because he himself had been in that situation at least twice: first because of his brothers, when they sold him into slavery in Egypt, and then in the story with Potiphar's wife, when he was accused of something of which he was in no way guilty, and the accusation itself became possible precisely because Joseph steadfastly followed the moral standards he considered absolutely binding, as given by God. The story with the cup resembles the story with Potiphar's wife most of all: as Joseph himself in that story, his brothers in the story with the cup were guilty of absolutely nothing. And, like Joseph, they had to learn from their own experience what a person feels when he has been framed. This situation would seem to have no direct relation to the brothers' guilt before Joseph. Yet this kind of experience was extremely important: it allowed the one who lived through it to understand what it means for a person to be in a state of complete helplessness, and not physical helplessness, but moral helplessness, so to speak, when, though right, he has not the slightest possibility of proving his unquestionable innocence, so that all he can do is hope in God and His intervention. And when, in such a situation, one of the brothers, Judah, offers to take upon himself the punishment assigned to Benjamin (the criminal law of some ancient peoples, including Semitic peoples, allowed such a substitution), Joseph understands that his brothers are truly ready to meet him.