This parsha brings us right into the midst of the story of Joseph. It is not easy to comment on just this part of the story. Joseph’s adventure should be experienced in its entirety for full dramatic impact (and in fact, it is a small novella of its own, a gem within the larger story of Genesis).

But since we only read a portion of the story this week, let’s highlight one facet. We have now come to the part in which Joseph reveals himself to his brothers as the one they sold into slavery many years earlier. That unbrotherly act, says Joseph, turned into a force for good because Joseph has since risen to a position of power, which enables him to save many lives during the famine.

In fact, Joseph emphasizes, “it was not you who sent me here, but God” (45:8). Of course his brothers did send him there; but behind the scenes, as it were, God was the main actor. To underscore this, he repeats in verses 5 and 7 that “God sent me.”

This is the tension in the story: people do evil and God accomplishes good in spite of, or even through, the evil. This is a key theme in Genesis, and in fact, the whole Bible. And it’s often a tension in the story of our own lives that is hard to process.

As we move in the text down to 46:3–4, God now speaks to Joseph’s father Jacob and reiterates the promise he had made to Abraham and to Isaac, adding a bit more about the nation of Egypt. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”

Oh, what a universe lay between “I will go down” and “I will bring you up”! For there would be four hundred years of bitter slavery between those two promises. But at this point God does not let on to Jacob about that, though he had—very, very briefly—given a hint to Abraham in Genesis 15:13.

We are to understand that the same God who was there when Joseph was sold into slavery would also be present when the entire nation is enslaved. As Joseph’s story ended in something good, so would the story of the nation as a whole.

Notice that shortly after God reiterates to Jacob, “I will make you into a great nation,” we come to a long list of names in 46:8–27. This might seem like a total tangent. But this list works to show that the promise of a great nation is beginning to take shape, even while the people are in Egypt.

This list is only one of many instances where Scripture gives us a data dump, so to speak, of names. Most notorious is the opening section of 1 Chronicles, where the names extend chapter after chapter. But is it only a data dump? What are we to do with all these names? Surely, we are not meant to read through them name by tedious name—what purpose would that serve?

Name lists often means something to us. Think of a synagogue’s “Tree of Life” wall, or Yad Vashem’s lists of “Righteous Gentiles.” These lists can serve many purposes: remembrance, rootedness, and a sense of belonging. They place later generations within the story of those who came before. Against all odds, the story of Abraham’s descendants rolls on. In fact, it continues to roll on throughout the Tanakh and then is taken up again in the opening chapter of the New Testament. Matthew 1 uses a long genealogy to tie the story of Jesus to the history of the Jewish people.

The seminal 20th-century Jewish thinker Martin Buber once contemplated the place of Jesus within the larger Jewish family:

From my youth onwards, I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance, which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand…. My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before. I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel’s history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.1

The Jewish family tree, which begins to branch out in Genesis 46, includes … Jesus?!

It may sound odd, but if not for God’s promise to Jacob, there would not have been a Jesus nor any Jews to be his followers (as many Jews were in the first century). And how would that have changed history?

Consider this: Joseph was sold into slavery; the entire nation was enslaved; and each year at Passover, we recount not only that we were slaves to Pharaoh but also, as Chabad remarks, “We are slaves. Slaves to our own inhibitions, fears, habits, cynicism, and prejudices.”2 The book of Genesis tells us how Joseph left his slavery behind; the seder tells us how the Jewish people were redeemed from slavery; the New Testament proposes that we can be freed from spiritual slavery.

And all because God fulfilled his promises to the patriarchs! As the Talmud says in Megillah 29a:

Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are before the Holy One, Blessed be He. As every place they were exiled, the Divine Presence went with them. They were exiled to Egypt, and the Divine Presence went with them … They were exiled to Babylonia, and the Divine Presence went with them … So too, when, in the future, they will be redeemed, the Divine Presence will be with them …3

 

Endnotes

1. Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 12–13.

2. Aron Moss, The Real Hagaddah, Chabad, accessed 2/17/25.

3. Megillah 29a, Sefaria, accessed 2/17/25.