The gemara asks, if its empty do I have to know that it has no water? The answer it gives is that although it has no water, it had snakes and scorpions. The questions are many. Doesn't that mean it is not rek, empty? And secondly, there is something very strange here if you think about it. The question of the gemara should be more basic than why it says rek and no water. It should be, why tell us what the status of the pit is at all? When the brothers throw Joseph into the pit, the detail of what was (or wasn't) in the pit is extraneous and does not help us understand the story at all. So the question should be why is this a detail of the story? Only once you accept the details as important you would ask why we have two descriptions, empty and no water, and then we would ask why it says no water if we know its empty.
Let's say we ask the question why its there in the first place. The answer must be that the Torah was telling us that the pit was not a dangerous place for Joseph - there was nothing in there like rocks or animals, and there was no water (which is usually why you have a pit somewhere) to drown in. So the entire point of these details are to say that the brothers did not place him somewhere that was inherently dangerous, but was dangerous if left there too long. Additionally, we could say they put him there to hold him until they figured out what to do with him. That seemed to be Reuven's motivation, so that he could save Joseph later.
This is the obvious reason in pshat, for me. That is, not only was the pit not dangerous, there wasn't even water in it, something you expect in every pit. Joseph was not dead by being dropped in the pit, nor was he in mortal danger.
So what did the rabbis of the Talmud do? If you think about it, they go the opposite direction, for the sake of drash! Not only was it dangerous, it contained the most possibly poisonous and potentially dangerous things one can find in a pit - scorpions and snakes. Joseph's life in fact was in mortal danger, most likely unbeknownst to the brothers. This interpretation protects the brothers, who had not necessarily intended on killing Joseph yet, and yet puts Joseph's life in danger. Why do this? It seems to me that the rabbis thought it important on a drash level to give Joseph's story an element of divine protection. We find the Ramban emphasizing this in other aspects of the story, and many midrashim support such a claim that the narrative is stated in such a way to give over this sense of guidance in the story. That is, except for this area, it would seem. Joseph is in a pit, empty. He ends up getting sold (or taken) by chance by passing merchants down to Egypt. It seems to be random. Yet even in the pit, Joseph was being miraculously protected. God was watching out for him, even with snakes and scorpions in his pit.
This may be yet another reason why it is in the context of the Chanukah story. Rav Daniel Z. Feldman told me in, I believe, the name of Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, that probably the rabbis were reading this week's parsha (Vayeshev) and were thinking of this midrash as they were discussing Chanukah halacha. This may be pashut pshat. But regardless, another significance is that even the events that happen to us, there is a hidden (drash as oppose to pshat) miracle which is God's protection. The Maharal discusses this on the gemara of Mai Chanukah. That is, the war was significant to us, and we find the Al Hanisim prayer focusing on the war. Yet the gemara focuses on the miracle of the lights. Why? Because the pshat miracle of the lights informs us of the drash miracle of the war - it turns out that the war was also a God-guided miraculous triumphant war for the Jewish people.
In pshat, the pit is empty. In drash, we are constantly protected from so many bad events, and the view of the miraculous lights up our dark days.
No comments:
Post a Comment