Young Joseph Poem by gershon hepner

This is the story of a brother who
annoyed his brothers by his interference;
inspiring jealousy, this ingénu
became the author of his disappearance.
The story teaches us that what goes round
comes round again to haunt us, we cannot
avoid the consequences on the ground
before we’re laid to rest and start to rot.

When Joseph was a lad of seventeen
and guarded flocks of sheep he used to humor
the sons of concubines, most keen
to spread about each one a dreadful rumor.
His father called him “son of my old age, ”
and from his other sons became remote––
the evil rumors left him in a rage.
He made them jealous with a special coat
he gave to Joseph. It was multicolored,
and the way it glistened made him gloat,
implying every brother was a dullard.

There’s one more person who wore such a cloak,
Tamar, King David’s daughter, whom her brother
Amnon raped and then was judged, ad hoc,
by Absalom who killed him. There’s another
heroine, Tamar, whose tale comes after
that of Joseph’s multicolored coat.
It’s curious that the bible story’s drafter
links Joseph to Tamar, because a goat
appears in both the tales. One goat deceives
old Jacob when he’s by his sons misled
to think that Joseph has been torn, and grieves.
Another goat leads Judah into bed
with fair Tamar who dresses as a whore,
and after nearly burning at the stake,
gives birth to Perez, who was born before
his brother Zerah, almost by mistake,
because the midwife thought that Zerah would
come out the first, and tied his hand with scarlet,
a color that saved all the neighborhood
of Rahab––like Tamar considered harlot.
The heartache David felt for Absalom
who killed the rapist of his sister––called Tamar––
was very much like Jacob’s taken from
his son whose colored coat made him a star.

Joseph’s brothers could not speak in peace
with him because they hated him so much.
He dreamt a dream and told his brothers: “Cease
what you are doing. What I say should touch
you all. I dreamt a dream about my sheaf
which stood up in the field while all your sheaves
surrounded it and bowed to me, their chief.”
They said to him: “But nobody believes
what you are saying! Will you be the ruler
of all of us, and do you think you’ll reign? ”
From that time they were even cooler
towards him, causing him a lot of pain.
Next day he had another dream. “The sun,
the moon, eleven stars, all bowed to me! ”
He told his father too. This was the one
that caused him to rebuke him: “Joseph, we
are not amused by this outrageous dream.
Will I, your brothers and your mother come
to bow to you? To me this does not seem
appropriate.” It seemed that there was some
anomaly in what the dream reported,
because his mother had already died,
suggesting that the dream was most distorted,
or even that the dreamer may have lied.
His brothers of their brother were most jealous,
but Jacob kept in mind the words because
for Joseph’s future he was still most zealous,
supporting him despite the dream’s strange gloss.


It’s possible that Joseph’s dream’s about
some great descendant of the youthful dreamer,
a man who had enormous clout
like Joseph, and like him a great redeemer.
I think the man to whom the sun and moon
bow down is Joshua, Joseph’s great descendant.
God stopped the sun and moon for him, a boon
which made him over all his foes ascendant.

One day his father said to him: “My son! ”
He said “Hineni, ” meaning “Here I am! ”
prepared to do the things that must be done
to please the Lord with gifts, like Abraham
who used this word when God called him to take
his son and offer him as sacrifice.
The journey Joseph had to undertake
was like the one that Isaac made. Precise
the dangers of a journey to Shechem
where Jacob told him he must go to learn
about his brothers’ welfare. Quest for them
was like one for an altar where they burn
beloved firstborn children. Joseph went
like Abraham and Isaac on a path
where peril beckoned, giving his assent
not to assuage what might be Heaven’s wrath
for misdemeanors poorly understood,
but as a son who surely was most loyal,
no questions about fire, knife or wood,
because he knew his destiny was royal.
His father’s choice indeed was not capricious
but based on his awareness that this child
was very justifiably ambitious,
with qualities of leadership profiled,
a youth whose dreams would some day be fulfilled,
to rule not only over brothers but
his father who by him was always thrilled.
The path his son would take was no shortcut,
because before he could attain his goal
he would be tested, with no glockenspiel
to rescue him when he had lost control
and no end was in sight for his ordeal,
nor even magic flute that Papageno
played walking through Sarastro’s burning fire
as hot as chili sauce whose jalapeno
explodes the tongue as nails explode a tire.

Commanded by his father, he departed,
but could not find his brothers where he thought
they ought to be. Although he was downhearted,
he never tried to cut his mission short
by turning back. Then suddenly he met
a man whose mission was mysterious––
some say he was the angel Gabriel!
He said: “I have a problem that is serious:
I seek my brothers, and beg you to tell
me where they are? ” He said: “Indeed I can.
They’ve gone to Dothan, not too far from here.”
Consider this! There’s only one more man
we find in Dothan, called Elisha, seer
who tells the king of Israel, like a spy,
of all the things the king of Aram does.
When Joseph told his father of the deeds
of all his brothers he gave such reports
for which the word is” dibah”, news that feeds
spy-handlers working in the royal courts.
It also has this meaning when the spies
bring back misinformation that inspires
rebellion against Moses––mostly lies
spread then by word of mouth, not AP wires
which spread their journalist lies much faster
when they report Israeli “shocking crimes”
alleged by Arabs, so that each disaster
is misreported by the New York Times.
The land to which the Israelites were going
ostensibly was fertile and produced
abundant crops, so Moses said: “It’s flowing
with milk and honey.” “We have been traduced, ”
said all the spies, and claimed that Canaan ate
its population, with these words recalling
the brothers who said famine was the fate
of Canaan where the rations were appalling.
When Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt he
Accused them all of them of being hateful spies,
ironic, surely, since we clearly see
he was the spy they tried to ostracize.

As soon as Joseph reaches Dothan all his brothers
can see him from the distance, and exclaim:
“Here comes that man of dreams! Has he dreamt others
he wants to tell us or more of the same? ”
It’s not a good idea to have a dream
where you’re the hero, lord of all the others,
because it makes it seem you wish to scheme.
That’s how he was interpreted by brothers.
“Let’s kill him and then throw his body in
a pit, ” they said, “and claim a feral beast
has eaten him.” “But that would be a sin! ”
cried Reuben, making an attempt at least
to save his life. “Let us not harm the lad,
but throw him live into this pit, ” he said.
Then eagerly they did as Reuben bade,
and took their brother’s colored cloak and spread
it on the ground and threw him in the pit,
as Reuben had suggested. It was deep,
without a dropp of water, and they quit
most quickly so they would not hear him weep,
because his cries for help made with persistence
were all unanswered––even Reuben shut
his ears to them. They sat away some distance
to eat. Their hearts were closed but not their gut.

What happened then to Joseph would occur
to Jeremiah who was also thrown
into a pit just like a saboteur
might be today in any battle zone.
It echoes, too, the heartless way that Abe
expelled young Ishmael with so little water
his mother couldn’t save her thirsty babe,
till from an angel both received some quarter.
I think the former story echoes that
of Joseph, and the latter is Vorlage,
a German word about which scholars chat,
identifying sources of a saga.

Then came a caravan of Ishmaelites,
descended from young Ishmael whom once Sarah
had expelled, protesting: “Only I have rights
to Abram’s bed! ” though Hagar’s rights seemed fairer
since she had borne to him a son and heir
while Sarah was still barren, now not keen
on Ishmael who would laugh and didn’t care
for Sarah who had changed her name to Queen,
extremely jealous of the slavegirl whom
she’d put into her horny husband’s bed.
She hoped the wilderness would be their tomb,
for lacking water they would soon be dead.
They left with hardly any to imbibe,
and would have died had God not shown to Hagar
a well of water. Now the selfsame tribe
proved for the first, but not the last, time dagger
in the heart of Israel, surely measure
meted out for measure to descendants
of ancestors, who must repent at leisure
for acts performed to pitiful defendants
whose cries God answers. Read this up in verses
twenty-two and three, the twenty-second
chapter, Exodus. Jehovah nurses
the punishment of fathers, which is reckoned
for future generations, like the third and forth.
Although delayed, their fate is agonizing
once He exhibits His eternal wrath.
The very name of Ishmael alludes
to this same law: “The Lord will hear.”
From what befell young Joseph one concludes
that God heard Hagar’s crying loud and clear.
Make no mistake: God visits His chastising
on great-grandsons of those He sees oppress
a stranger. Hagar was a stranger and
God punished her oppressors with distress
of Joseph when acquired by a band
of Ishmaelites who came from Gilead,
where Jacob had escaped from Laban’s cruel hand,
a wandering Aramean and a nomad.

These Ishmaelites brought laudanum and gum
and balsam in their caravan, en route
for Egypt from which Hagar once had come.
Now Joseph was their trophy slave and loot,
once Judah said to all his brothers: “What
would be the gain if we should kill our brother?
This is a deed that clearly we should not
perform. Now I propose to you another:
let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and let
him live. He is our brother and our flesh.”
Impossible for any to forget
that in his dreams they were the grain he’d thresh,
and bow down to his sheaf, which was the tallest.
That’s why they now were selling him for cash,
worth twenty silver pieces as the smallest
of all his family, now turned to trash––
two shekels for each brother. There was one
who could not join them in this selling spree,
young Benjamin, the baby brother, son
of Rachel, sharing Joseph’s pedigree,
potentially a foe of all the clan,
as they believed that Joseph had to be.
Once Benjamin grew up he was the man
who nearly cost them all their liberty
when Joseph would ironically accuse
this youngest brother of a crime he’d never
committed, threatening them that they would lose
the chance for Hebrews to be free forever.

When Reuben came back to the pit and saw
the lad was gone, he tore his clothes and said:
“The lad is gone––where can I go? ” The law
was clear that if his brother should be dead
his penalty would be the same as Cain’s
when, after killing Abel, he was sent
to wander as an exile in the plains
of Nod, the heavens as his only tent––
for exile is the punishment for those
who kill without intention one another:
that’s what a killer to a stranger owes,
a fortiori he who kills his brother.

His siblings knew that Joseph was not dead,
but never told their firstborn brother. Why?
It’s simple: words are rarely said
when men conspire and their victims die.
The rule for killing is the rule of silence,
and Joseph’s brothers kept this rule, most strict
to cover up with it their cruel violence,
for silence is more hard to contradict
than words that prosecutors can select
to make defendants in the wind twist slowly,
while silence rules with powerful effect,
allowing the most guilty to seem holy.
Such silence happened while Cain fought with Abel…..
until he killed him, words were never spoken:
most killers won’t put thoughts upon the table,
except in Wannsee, where all rules were broken
by evil men whose final dread solution
was foiled. Six million Jews were murdered and
the crime had very little retribution,
but guilty nations gave the Jews their land.

In silence then they all took Joseph’s cloak,
and slaughtered a young goat so they could dip
the cloak into its blood, and slip the yoke
of guilt by joining in a partnership
where all agreed that what had happened hadn’t.
They brought the cloak to Jacob who declared,
by love for Joseph blinded and now maddened
by grief, and for deception unprepared
though he himself his father had deceived
as well as Esau, his fraternal twin:
“It’s Joseph’s cloak that I have now received:
by wild beasts he has been torn! ” ––his spin
precisely what his sons had all intended.
He tore his garments and wore sackcloth, grim,
complaining that he felt his life had ended.

His sons and daughters could not comfort him,
because he said: “I’ll go down to Sheol
a mourner––by my favorite son received
when sorrow brings me to my final goal.”
Thus Jacob the deceiver was deceived
as he’d deceived his father wearing skin
of goats that fooled the old man’s failing eyes.
The moral is: you lose the way you win,
for truth is unaware of compromise.
Premit altum corde dolorem
describes Aeneas’s, not Jacob’s, grief;
no Ishmaelites could petrodollar him
to bring him mercenarily relief.
He had to wait some twenty years until
he’d learn that Joseph truly had survived;
till then it seems he almost lost the will
to live, but when he saw him he revived,
deluded, still believing that this Joe
was fit to lead his brothers whom he’d saved
from famine, though with hindsight we all know
they’d be enslaved like those he had enslaved,
Egyptians from whom first he bought their land,
made them slaves so they could have some grain.
What goes round comes round, you must understand,
God’s punishments are linked in an unbroken chain.


5/10/04,5/14/05