פרשה: ויחי · עלייה: חמישי (הוד)

גד גדוד יגודנו, "Gad, a troop shall troop upon him, etc." Jacob links his blessing to his name, interpreting his name as meaning "a troop, a camp," as well as גדיה. The author refers the reader to the Sefer Ha-aruch which describes the word גד also as meaning "to draw," "to lead," and "to surround." Accordingly, the meaning is that Gad will surround his enemies. When Jacob continued: והוא יגוד עקב, this means that he will utterly destroy them to the heel, i.e. the lowest extremity. Gad will surround the entire camp of Israel and fight on their behalf. עקב may also refer to the fact that he would help them to receive their reward, their inheritance, [all this is a reference to when the two and a half tribes led by Gad undertook to form the vanguard in the conquest of the land of Canaan in Numbers 32,32. Ed.]

מאשר שמנה לחמו, "Asher's food will be rich, etc." Perhaps the emphasis is on the letter מ preceding the name אשר, and Jacob meant that Asher would be a "self-made" individual, i.e. tribe, producing all his wealth from within himself, either through his efforts or through his merit.

בן פורת יוסף, בן פורת עלי עין, "Joseph is a fruiful son, fruitful to the eye, etc." The reason Jacob repeated the word פורת, fruitful, may have to do with Joseph's fertility being twofold We have already explained (Sotah 36) that Joseph had originally been intended to father twelve tribes; the second reason was that he resisted the temptation to sleep with Potiphar's wife, i.e. עלי עין, he overcame the temptation to follow his eyes, proved superior to visual allure.

Jacob continued with בנות צעדה. According to Tanchuma the wife of Potiphar called all the wives of the Egyptian elite and had Joseph perform personal valet services for them. Being surrounded by all these ladies was equivalent to this אצעדה, bracelet, Jacob describes here. עלי שור, the point of the exercise was to ogle Joseph. The Torah testifies that in spite of all this Joseph refrained from looking at all these provocative women. Seeing that Joseph did not make improper use of his eyesight he and his descendants in turn were rewarded by remaining immune to the evil eye.

וימררהו ורבו וישטמהו בעלי חצים. "They made life bitter for him, they quarrelled, and arrow-tongued men hated him." This is a reference to the time when the brothers first planned to kill Joseph (37,20). It is also possible that Jacob describes what we find in the Sefer Hayashar that the brothers wounded Joseph in many parts of his body before they threw him into the pit. The torture they subjected him to is described by וימררהו. Afterwards, when the brothers took counsel and discussed throwing him into the pit and then to sell him as a slave, they had differences of opinions, i.e. ורבו, they quarrelled.

The hatred of the "arrow tongued men" are a reference to the wife of Potiphar and her companions all of whom wanted to sleep with Joseph, i.e. they demanded "his arrows." [Our sages often refer to ejaculation of semen as equivalent to the shooting of an arrow. Ed.]

On the other hand, the word וימררהו may be an allusion to Satan, i.e. the evil urge, who seduces one to commit a sin. This may have been the cause of ויפזו זרעי ידיו, "that his virility was channelled through his hands." The power of the evil urge is illustrated by a story involving the pious Rabbi Amram in Kidushin 81. That story ends with the evil urge escaping from the body of Rabbi Amram in a fiery column after Rabbi Amram had almost succumbed.

The forces of the קליפה may be termed מרה, bitter. This is perhaps what the Torah wanted to allude to when it described Joseph's life as having been made bitter. When we follow this approach the word ורבו describes the constantly increasing pressure of the evil urge, and the reference to the hatred expressed by the owners of the arrows are to the forces urging man to sin. Their promise to reward him with the pleasures of the flesh are expressions of their hatred for him. They hate every manifestation of holiness. In spite of all these temptations Joseph remained steadfast like a lion and did not "shoot his arrows."

When Jacob speaks about מידי אביר יעקב, this means that the same G'd who has proven Jacob's Mighty One also saved Joseph from succumbing.

Jacob concludes: משם רעה אבן ישראל, a reference to Psalms 118,22 where we are told that "the stone that the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone." This appears to be an allusion to Joseph who had also been rejected at first by his brothers. Joseph's righteousness made him the chief cornerstone also known as the רעה אבן ישראל, the cornerstone who is Israel's shepherd Proverbs 10,25 that "the righteous is an enduring foundation" expresses the same idea.

מאל אביך ויעזרך, "From the G'd of your father who will continue to help you, etc." Jacob tells Joseph that his accomplishments are due to the G'd of Jacob; he even hints that Joseph drew on his father's merit so that he could have accomplished all that he did. Jacob prays that G'd should continue to help Joseph, ויעזרך. He adds ואת שדי, saying that yet another attribute (dimension) of G'd has assisted Joseph, the attribute that is particularly suited to the soul of Joseph, a mystical dimension familiar to students of the Kabbalah. It was this attribute which blessed and helped Joseph maintain his purity in a foreign land in the house of a pagan dignitary such as Potiphar.

When Jacob spoke about ויעזרך..ויברכך, he may also have wanted to stress that G'd's help notwithstanding, Joseph deserved credit for his own efforts in resisting this temptation. G'd blessed him as if Joseph had accomplished all this by himself. The author refers to his commentary in this context on Psalms 37,33 where he elaborated on this theme.

Jacob may also have based his blessing on the well known statement by our sages in Berachot 10 that when someone credits someone else with his own accomplishment, G'd may credit him with it instead, whereas if one claims that one's own merit accounts for one's good fortune, then G'd will teach one that it was only someone else's merit that resulted in that person's blessings. Jacob said that because Joseph credited his father's merit with assisting him at a critical juncture, G'd would credit Joseph himself with having mastered his temptation.

Jacob may have expressed another message in his blessing of Joseph. Baba Batra 58 teaches that G'd does not perform miracles for people who will not remain righteous. Jacob therefore said that up to that point Joseph enjoyed G'd's blessings מאל אביך, because of his father's merit, whereas from now on ויעזרך G'd would assist him not to succumb to temptation in order to justify the miracles He had already performed for him. [I have not been able to find the source of this statement. Ed.]