Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness

by Stephen Mitchell

  AT FIRST, POTIPHAR WAS INCENSED and deeply disappointed. But after she left the room, her story began to unravel in his mind. She was an accomplished actress, even when she was hysterical, as he knew from ten years of experience. And there was something about her account that didn’t ring true. The glint of calculation in her eyes?

  When he grew calmer and reflected on it, the whole story lost its coherence. Why would Meri-Amun risk his life for a few moments of pleasure, if pleasure is what that violent act would provide? The young man knew very well that slaves guilty of insubordination would be whipped and eviscerated and that the penalty for rape was even more gruesome: your body tied to a post, your genitals smeared with goat blood, a starving dog let loose to devour them—and that was just the first phase of the punishment, if you managed to survive.

  Besides, Potiphar couldn’t believe that he had been so radically mistaken about his protégé’s character. True, the young man might suddenly have taken leave of his senses. But it was much more likely that the craziness issued from Potiphar’s high-strung wife, who in moments of frenzy had been known to fling the most shocking accusations at her husband. Was he really going to summon Meri-Amun to defend himself? And then what? If he did defend himself, speaking with his usual eloquence, wouldn’t his testimony expose the woman to humiliation before her servants, and wouldn’t word of it get out? There were women at court, and men also, who would be only too pleased to circulate such a juicy tidbit of gossip. She would hate being talked about that way, and Potiphar would hate it just as much.

  No, there could be no inquiry. The best way to proceed would be to take the young man into custody for a while. There was a prison on Potiphar’s grounds (a privilege granted only to the highest court officials). It was a small, sand-colored brick building with two wings and three dozen cells, and he assigned Joseph to the wing reserved for prisoners of the crown. Potiphar would not, of course, be able to communicate with him. But he would make sure that he had all the amenities, a supply of books, and the goodwill of the warden.

  As for the crime, if crime there had been, he couldn’t bear to interrogate the young man or even to see him one last time. Who knew what his testimony would reveal?

  Suddenly a wave of sorrow broke over his heart. Meri-Amun was gone—his dear, brilliant, beautiful Meri-Amun. What must he do now? Curtail his pleasures, to begin with; then take over the management of the estate, if he still had the ability and if the gods granted him the requisite strength of heart; or else find someone to replace Meri-Amun (as if there were anyone in the world who could).

  The Insubstantiality of Should

  JOSEPH WAS SURPRISED TO BE in prison, but not entirely surprised. He had been expecting some kind of upheaval, since the story couldn’t end here, with such meager dimensions, and now, in his cell—it was actually a rather large and comfortable room, with a cot, a washbowl and pitcher, a desk, a window, and enough room for him to walk back and forth in contemplation—he had plenty of time to consider the turn of events, since the amiable warden had not yet assigned him any tasks.

  When he looked back at his former situation in Potiphar’s household, he realized how precarious it had become. For a long time he had felt a perfect balance in his life. There were no personal relationships to distract him, and he didn’t need any. He had deepened his equanimity, grown stronger in his realization, and dedicated himself so entirely to excellence in his work that it felt like dedication to God. He was twenty-eight now, and during his eleven years in Potiphar’s service, his skills as a manager, which had begun at a high level, had continued to improve. His master couldn’t have been more pleased with his performance, and there had been no grumbling among the servants; indeed, he was universally admired for his rectitude and fairness. The morale was as high as it could be, and Potiphar often conveyed to him the heartfelt gratitude of the entire staff.

  The only problem had been his master’s wife. But that problem had lasted for months now, and it had turned out to be insoluble. Had Kedar been right when he said that all trouble comes from women? But that couldn’t be true. The trouble in his father’s life had begun in the womb, with the rivalry between him and his twin, Esau, and had continued through the duplicity of Laban, his father-in-law, as Joseph had heard many times in Jacob’s after-dinner musings. And in Joseph’s own life, it was obvious that the trouble that drove him to Egypt had had nothing to do with a woman; it had been caused by his brothers’ hatred, which itself had been caused by his own arrogance and insensitivity.

  He asked himself what similarities there might be between the two situations, then and now. Had he ever been arrogant toward his master’s wife? Had there ever been anything inappropriate in his words or his bearing—anything that would make her feel looked upon as a sexually available woman rather than as the esteemed wife of his master? He tried to remember any breach of decorum in his bearing toward her, or even in his thoughts about her, but he could find no examples. Even after she had confessed her desire, he could find no negative judgment in himself, no lack of human sympathy.

  If there was anything he could have done differently, it had to be in his relations with Potiphar. Perhaps he should have told him about the lewd overtures his wife had made. This thought had arisen once or twice at the time, but he had considered such a step premature. He had wanted to protect his master from an embarrassment that neither of them might know how to deal with. Even so, he should have told him. He should have been forthright.

  But when he meditated more deeply on the subject, he realized that what he “should” have done was just a thought he was superimposing onto reality—or, more accurately, onto a past that now existed only in his imagination. How could he know what he should or shouldn’t have done? How could he know that the best he could possibly have done was any different from what he had done in fact? And when he considered the whole course of events, how could he judge which was better: the unstable position he had been thrust from, in which he would continue indefinitely as Potiphar’s majordomo, with his master’s wife indefinitely pining away for him (for her imagined “him”) and himself unwilling, unable, to assuage her desire; or the present transition, which would lead to who knew what? It would be presumptuous to think of the event as some kind of misstep or backward movement or fall from grace. Who could know the shape of the drama that had cast him as a prisoner for the time being? All he could be certain of was that everything had unfolded in accordance with the will of an intelligence so vast that in comparison his own was nothing—was less than nothing.

  Dreams, Again

  THREE MONTHS LATER, PHARAOH got angry at two of his ministers, the chief butler and the chief baker, and he put them under detention in Potiphar’s prison. The chief butler, because of his access to Pharaoh, was a rich and powerful official; his position was a highly sensitive one, and his trustworthiness had to be impeccable, since there was an ever-present danger of bribery or mischief. The chief baker also ranked high on the list of palace officials, responsible as he was for some of the food that went directly into his sovereign’s mouth.

  Potiphar assigned Joseph to them as their attendant. His job was to visit them every morning and see that their needs were being met. He was also free to chat with them if he wished.

  One morning he noticed that they were upset. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you look out of sorts, both of you. What happened?”

  “We had important dreams last night,” the butler said, “but there is no expert here to interpret them.”

  Both men had had considerable experience with dream interpreters. Interpreting dreams was a popular occupation in Egypt, and at every level of society people consulted professionals. These ranged from the high priest of Amun—who, during court ceremonies, stood before Pharaoh in his elaborate regalia, alongside the most prominent court officials—down to the tawdriest psychics hawking their talents in the marketplace in front of wooden signs scrawled in simplified hieroglyphics with slogans that promised wealth and happiness to every
client wise enough to linger. There were hundreds of dream books as well. Each one proposed a system that was, according to its creator, infallible. All you had to do in order to discover the correct meaning of any particular dream was to take every object in it, substitute the signified for the signifier on one of the long lists of equivalences, simplify the common elements among them as if you were factoring a quadratic equation, then fiddle with the spatial and temporal succession in one of the prescribed ways—and voilà, the meaning would appear before you, as obvious as a cracked egg. The most highly esteemed of these books claimed its descent from a prophet who, a thousand years before, had received his methodology from the god Ra himself, in his red-bodied, falcon-headed form, during a forty-day meditation retreat in the Theban desert. Copies of the book were rare and kept under lock and key. It took many years to master its dream grammar, but once you did and were certified by the proper authorities, you were assured of a position either at Pharaoh’s court or at the court of one of the many princelings on the periphery of the empire, who were as dependent on Egyptian superstitions as on the strength of the Egyptian army.

  “True interpretations come from God,” Joseph said to the butler. “Why don’t you tell me your dream? I can interpret it.”

  He was supremely confident. He didn’t consider himself a prophet, a man through whose mouth God spoke. (The very concept would have seemed ludicrous to him.) What he meant by “True interpretations come from God” was that once you let go of systems and methods of interpretation, and even of the desire to interpret, the dream would interpret itself.

  He had mused about this a great deal during his eleven years in Egypt. Dreams, he had concluded, were simply uninhibited thinking. They presented you with what you knew already but hadn’t had the presence to be aware of. At their best, when they weren’t entirely the random or mischievous play of the mind, they subtracted the habitual and left you with essence: what your life would look like if you stepped beyond personal interest and saw all things as forms of God, in an ever-mutating, never-circumscribed flow. Dreams were, or could be, prophetic of the future only because they illuminated the present. It did not, after all, require prophetic powers to see that a seed would become a stalk or a lamb a sheep.

  He had often thought of those boyhood dreams that had been the spark to the powder keg of his brothers’ hatred. There was an arrogance to them, as he was well aware. But in another sense they weren’t about him at all, the person Joseph. What his brothers, and his father as well, and his sweet dead mother had been bowing down to was a quality that shone through him like a flame through glass—an intelligence, a discernment, which could be called “the clear heart” as accurately as “the clear mind” and which he himself bowed down to in all humility. It wasn’t him; it wasn’t ever his. But if anything in the world could be called holy, that quality could.

  The Butler’s Dream

  “IN MY DREAM,” THE CHIEF BUTLER SAID, “I saw a vine in front of me. There were three branches on the vine, and as soon as it budded it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I picked the grapes and squeezed them into the cup and handed it to Pharaoh.”

  It was easy for Joseph to equate the three branches with three days. Everyone knew that Pharaoh’s birthday was coming soon, and it was the custom for him to deliver his judgments on that day: a list of honors and a list of punishments, recited by the stentorian voice of the high chamberlain amid the clucks and murmurs of the noble crowd. Nor was Joseph puzzled at the dream’s tone. It was a dream of confidence and devotion, and although the butler had been upset, he spoke firmly now, with a smile, as he described how he had pressed the grapes and handed the cup to his master.

  The butler was a short, plump man, with a shaved head, like all the nobility and priesthood, and luxuriant dark-brown eyebrows. Joseph could see that he was devastated by the accusation of impropriety. It was obvious too that he wanted nothing more than to clear his name. Whatever ambition or venality might be lurking beneath the surface of his thoughts, he was a loyal servant of Pharaoh, and it was a good bet, if not a certainty, that at the birthday festivities his merits would be recognized and he would be pardoned. It all depended on his master. From everything Joseph had heard from Potiphar, Pharaoh was an excellent judge of character, and you could depend on his good sense.

  “This is what your dream means,” Joseph said. “The three branches are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh will summon you and restore you to your position, and you will be handing Pharaoh his cup, just as you did before. So set your mind at ease. And when your life has returned to normal, sir, please do me a favor: speak about me to Pharaoh and ask him to release me from prison. I have done nothing to deserve this punishment.”

  The Baker’s Dream

  THE CHIEF BAKER, WHO HAD BEEN listening carefully, said to Joseph, “My dream was just like that. I saw three wicker baskets on my head. In the top basket there were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, and birds were flying down and eating them.”

  He uttered the words in a bass monotone. He was a thin, louche-looking man whose eyes darted up, down, and around, without holding your gaze. Joseph noticed that in the dream there was no contact with Pharaoh. And why, except for guilt, with dozens of servants at his disposal, would the lord chief baker dream himself into a menial position, a mere transporter of baskets, the lowest rank in the kitchen? Why would the breads and cakes not make their way to Pharaoh, but be eaten up by birds before they could get to him? The baskets were obviously days, but what did the baked goods symbolize? Human flesh? And what about the birds? Could they be simply birds?

  The baker’s gloom filled the air.

  Joseph could see no way to be tactful. “This is what your dream means,” he said, looking directly into the baker’s eyes. “The three baskets are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh will summon you and have you hanged, and birds will pick the flesh from your bones.”

  The baker was furious. He wanted to argue. But as he looked into Joseph’s eyes, he realized that there was no arguing with the truth. He was a dead man.

  A Broken Promise

  THREE DAYS LATER, on his birthday, Pharaoh gave a feast for the high nobility, and he summoned the chief butler and the chief baker. He restored the chief butler to his former position, forgiving his peccadillo and welcoming him back with great warmth, and he had the chief baker hanged, just as Joseph had foretold.

  Though the butler had fully intended to keep his promise, he gave no further thought to Joseph. He had been grateful to the handsome young barbarian for easing his mind during the last three days of the horrible captivity, and he would have been glad to do something for him. But the exhilaration of being back in Pharaoh’s good graces, the joy of returning home to his wife and children and to the pleasures of court life, the feasts, the elaborate ceremonies in which his own movements were choreographed down to the minutest details, the horse racing, the hunting, the masques and musical entertainments, the flirtations with young women who were witty or pretty or both, the palace intrigues, the latest gossip about who was in and who was out—all this drowned out his promise like the din of a large crowd.

  In fact, he did everything he could to avoid revisiting those months he had spent in prison under the heavy weight of his master’s displeasure. It was too painful, and why should he purposely invite pain into his mind, now that he was back in the full current of life? Whenever a fleeting image of those months did appear, the young barbarian wasn’t in it. All the butler could see was the bare cell with its wretched cot and himself pacing back and forth like a caged beast.

  In Prison

  TWO MORE YEARS WENT BY. At first Joseph hoped, though he knew better. Then he set hope aside, like a tool that has served its purpose and is no longer needed.

  He didn’t suffer at all during these two years. On the contrary, he enjoyed the simplicity of prison life. He needed nothing more than a desk and books and the sunlight that streamed through the
cell’s one window. Prison food was plain but hearty—bread, cheese, eggs, fish or fowl twice a week, sautéed vegetables, a mug of beer. And since the warden trusted him, he was allowed to move about freely, supervising projects, keeping the prison accounts, studying the Egyptian classics, and occasionally reading aloud to the soldiers on the prison staff from one of the famous manuals of moral instruction or from the great temple hymns, which in their exalted sense of the divine sometimes echoed his great-grandfather’s sense of God. His favorite manual was The Maxims of Ptah-hotep, with its clear, sensitive, practical advice: “Live in peace with what you have, and whatever else the gods give you will come on its own.” “If the one who listens listens fully, he becomes the one who understands.” And this one, which turned out to be prophetic for Joseph: “A woman with a happy heart brings happiness to all around her.” He would recite these passages to the soldiers, one maxim at a time, and allow his audience five minutes of silence to find specific examples in their lives of where the maxim was, or might be, true. For some of the men, this exercise was illuminating.

  Once a week the warden would invite him to his office for a couple of beers and a game of what we might call chess. The talk was very personal on the warden’s part. He told Joseph about his wife, who was ill with some kind of women’s disease, about the two sons he was so proud of, who were doing well in their studies for the civil service exams, and about the many problems and frustrations of his job. Joseph was reticent but convivial. Since he was a good listener, it always seemed that he contributed equally to the conversations. And though Joseph invariably won the game, the warden would pat him on the back afterward and say how refreshed he felt from their time together.

  One day flowed into the next. It was all very pleasant, but Joseph knew that it was just an interlude. God, in His infinitely subtle wisdom, was pausing. He was thinking about His next move. He was holding Joseph between two fingertips as He scanned the squares of the world.