Benjamin Named His Ten Sons for the Brother He Lost

Joseph did not recognize his brother at first. It had been twenty-two years. Benjamin had been a toddler the last time Joseph saw him, and was now a grown man with a grown man's beard and ten sons of his own. The last time Joseph had seen him, their mother Rachel was still alive. This time, her face was on Benjamin's, and Joseph nearly broke.

He hid it. The viceroy of Egypt, the dream-reader, the man who had survived a pit and a dungeon and a Potiphar's wife, steadied himself long enough to ask one careful question. And that question, according to Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, the seven-volume rabbinic anthology published between 1909 and 1938, was the one that gave the whole game away.

"Do you have a brother from the same mother?" Joseph asked.

Benjamin's answer was the answer of a man who had spent his entire life living around a hole. "I had one," Benjamin said, "but I do not know what has become of him."

Joseph kept his face steady. He moved to the next question, the kind of neutral, polite question a foreign dignitary might ask. "Do you have a wife? Do you have children?"

Benjamin listed his ten sons. Bela. Becher. Ashbel. Gera. Naaman. Ehi. Rosh. Muppim. Huppim. Ard. They are not pretty names. They are not the kind of names a father gives to a son out of affection. Joseph, who had grown up speaking Hebrew, heard them one at a time, and each one cut a little deeper. "Why," he finally asked, "did you give them such strange names?"

And Benjamin explained, and his answer is one of the quietest and most devastating monologues in all of rabbinic literature. Bela, because my brother was swallowed up among the nations. Becher, because he was my mother's firstborn. Ashbel, because he was taken as a captive. Gera, because he lives as a stranger in a strange land. Naaman, because he was exceedingly lovely. Ehi, because he was my only full brother. Rosh, because he was at the head of his brothers. Muppim, because he was beautiful in every way. Huppim, because I never saw his wedding canopy. And Ard, because he went down into the earth. Every son Benjamin had brought into the world was a coded memorial to Joseph. Benjamin had carried that grief so long that he had built an entire household out of it.

The man sitting across from him was the grief.

Bereshit Rabbah, the fifth-century collection of rabbinic commentaries on Genesis compiled in the Land of Israel, fills in what Joseph did next. According to Genesis 43:30, Joseph "hurried, because his mercy was aroused toward his brother, and he sought to weep; and he entered the chamber, and wept there." Joseph got up. He walked out of the room. He found an empty chamber, closed the door, and let himself cry until he could compose himself. Then he splashed water on his face and came back out to host dinner.

And at that dinner, something strange happened that only the rabbinic tradition catches. Ginzberg records that Joseph gave his own portion of food to Benjamin. His Egyptian wife Asenath gave her portion. His two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, gave their portions. Benjamin suddenly had four extra plates of food piled in front of him, on top of the regular share each brother had received. None of the other brothers understood why. They did not dare ask.

And then wine was poured. The other brothers stared at their cups. Legends of the Jews says that for twenty-two years, since the day they had dipped Joseph's coat in goat's blood and lied to their father, the brothers had taken on themselves the vow of a Nazirite, the biblical ascetic who renounces wine. Twenty-two years without a sip. Joseph, too, had refused wine, grieving for the father he thought he would never see again. The entire family, across two continents, had been silently fasting from the same bottle.

That night at Joseph's table, they finally drank.

But even then, Joseph did not reveal himself. He kept testing them. He needed to know if the men who had once sold him for twenty pieces of silver would now stand between a younger brother and slavery. He planted his silver goblet in Benjamin's sack and sent them on their way. When the steward caught up with them and "discovered" the cup, Judah stepped forward and offered himself in Benjamin's place, refusing to return to his father Jacob with another missing son. And that was the moment Joseph finally broke.

According to Ginzberg, the final straw was not even Judah's speech. It was Benjamin himself, pleading for mercy, saying, "From the names of my ten sons, which I gave them in memory of my brother's life and trials, you can see how dearly I loved him. I pray you, do not bring down my father with sorrow to the grave." When Joseph heard those ten names recited a second time, and understood that Benjamin had built his entire family tree around an absence, Joseph could not refrain himself any longer.

He cleared the Egyptians from the room. He spoke, for the first time in twenty-two years, in his mother tongue. "I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?"

The brothers did not answer. They could not. They were staring at the man they had buried.

According to one beautiful midrash preserved in Ginzberg's retelling, Benjamin wore a stone called yashpeh, jasper, on the breastplate of the High Priest many centuries later. The stone, tradition says, changed color with his emotions. Red when he was angry at his brothers for selling Joseph. Green when he felt the pull of loyalty. Black when he despaired of ever seeing Joseph's face again. The name yashpeh, the rabbis said, comes from the Hebrew yesh peh, "there is a mouth." Benjamin had a mouth. Benjamin could have told their father Jacob everything. He could have named the brothers who had done it. But he never did. He swallowed the story, and he named his sons for it instead, and he let the stone on his chest tell the truth he would not say aloud.

In the room that day, twenty-two years of silence finally had somewhere to go. Joseph put his arms around Benjamin and wept. And Benjamin, suddenly, finally, understood why he had named a son Bela, "swallowed up among the nations."

His brother had been a nation all along.