Yosef’s brothers felt they were halachically entitled to eliminate Yosef. They convened a rabbinic court and determined that he was out to get them, so they had a right to defend themselves; their lives were at stake. They didn’t realize that on some miniscule level what was driving their decisions was a bias (negia) of jealousy that they had towards Yosef over their father’s favoritism towards him.
But when they saw Yosef coming towards them, the Medrish Tanchuma (2) in this week’s Torah portion of Vayeishev relates that “they saw him from a far… took him and threw him into a pit… there was no water but there were snakes and scorpions in it. What did Reuvein do? He went and sat atop of one of the nearby hills intending to go down and take Yosef out at night. The nine other brothers were sitting all together in another location all with the same intent to kill him. An Arab caravan came traveling by. They said, ‘Let’s go and sell him to these Arabs, they will bring him to the ends of the desert (i.e. away from us and not a threat anymore). They sold him for 20 silver coins. They each got 2 coins and bought a pair of shoes with them. Does it make sense that such a handsome young man (of the age of 17 at the time) could only be sold for 20 silver coins? Rather because he was thrown into a pit with snakes and scorpions, he was so scared his facial countenance changed, he went pale and looked green, therefore they sold him for 20 silver coins to buy shoes. They then said amongst themselves that we should set up a cherem, boycott, to excommunicate anyone who would tell their father Yaakov. Yehuda said, Reuvein is not here and a cherem, would only be effective with a minyan of ten people. What did they do? They brought Hashem in to be the tenth to establish the cherem, to ensure no one tells their father. When Reuvein came down that night to take Yosef out of the pit and didn’t find him, he ripped his clothes and cried. He went back to his brother and said ‘The boy is missing and I have come back.’ They told him about what happened and about the cherem, and he was quiet. And even Hashem, even though it writes in Tehillim (the last pasuk of perek 147) “He told His words to Yaakov” but this He never told him about because of the cherem. This is why Yaakov said, ‘Yosef was torn apart.’ Rebbe Mana said, for the sale of Yosef the tribes were smitten, and they didn’t have an atonement for their sin until they died…and as a result of what they did a famine came upon the Land of Canaan for 7 years and the brothers of Yosef went down to Egypt to buy food and provisions from the Egyptians and eventually found Yosef alive, and the cherem was lifted. Yaakov heard he was alive, and the Torah says ‘the spirit of Yaakov their father was alive again.’ Was he dead? Rather he was revigorated from the cherem and the Ruach Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit that had disappeared from him came back and rested upon him again.” (Click here for Hebrew text.)
If the brothers were wrong, and in fact Hashem punished them and didn’t fully forgive them until their deaths, then why did Hashem collude with them to hide the story from their father Yaakov? Indeed this caused their father intense anguish for decades, to the point that the Bechor Shor says Yehuda couldn’t stand watching his father sitting in such mourning, and that’s why the next perek says that Yehuda had left the family for a time. Hashem is All Just, All Truthful; how does it seem honest and justified to be involved in such a coverup?
The Etz Yosef, quoting Rabbeinu Bachye, says that “Hashem’s partnership and enjoining in this coverup was vital for the sake of the safety of the Jewish People and the Honor of Hashem. They were afraid that if G-D forbid the matter was leaked and revealed to Yaakov of what happened, he would curse them with an eternal curse. The result being that the Jewish People coming from the seed of Yaakov would never come about, and there would be no one to spread and publicize the teachings of G-D.”
Hashem runs the world through the laws of nature for the most part, using miracles as a last resort. Based on the natural psychology of a human being, it is possible that even someone as great of a tzadik as Yaakov Avinu, if he would have heard what actually happened, the results would have been cataclysmic, reverberating to the end of time. There would have been no Bnei Yisrael to be the light onto the nations, princes of the King Of All Kings, to be the shining example of His word, the Torah. However, that being said, Hashem did exact due punishment on the brothers. Still in all, isn’t a lack of transparency a level of dishonesty; Hashem is by definition all-honest and truthful ;so how could He have taken part in a coverup?
We must emphatically say that a lack of transparency is not untruthful or dishonest by definition, and can be justified and needed at times for the sake of preserving stability and the ultimate truth. There are certainly times when hiding something could lead to lies and not fixing or solving things that could be damaging, but there are other times, like in this case, where taking care of the problem “privately” without making a big deal out of it, and making it known to everyone, is not only justified but the right thing to do.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Dovid Shmuel Milder