Jacob Prayed to the God Who Knows When to Say Enough

The Last Son He Had Left

Jacob had believed Joseph was dead for more than twenty years. The brothers had come back from Egypt with grain and with a story about the man in charge who had demanded they bring back the youngest brother before he would sell them more food. Jacob refused. Simeon was sitting in an Egyptian prison but Jacob refused. The famine continued. The grain ran out. Finally the brothers came to him again and Judah pledged himself as surety: if I do not bring Benjamin back to you, let me bear the blame forever.

Jacob sent his son. Before he did, he prayed.

"And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and he will send with you your other brother and Benjamin; and me, as I am bereaved, I am bereaved." The resignation at the end is the voice of a man who has run out of ways to argue. The prayer is not optimistic. It is the prayer of someone asking for the best outcome while acknowledging that the worst is entirely possible.

The Name That Means Enough

The rabbis of Bereshit Rabbah heard in this prayer a specific theological argument. The divine name Jacob used was El Shaddai -- the name God used when making covenantal addresses to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob himself. But Rabbi Pinhas, citing Rabbi Hoshaya, noticed something in the verse. Jacob is not using the full name that invokes divine sovereignty. He is using something shorter, something that sounds like Yah, and Yah is the sound a person makes when suffering has become unbearable. Ya, ya -- enough. Dai. Enough.

So Jacob was praying to the God who is sufficient, the God who recognizes when suffering has reached its limit and knows to say dai. The prayer was not only please protect my son. It was: I am appealing to the divine capacity to recognize when enough is enough. I have lost one son. I have been bereaved. I am asking you to recognize the shape of what I have already suffered and to say, here, now, this is the limit.

The Goblet Hidden in the Bag

What waited for Benjamin in Egypt was a test that Joseph had designed. A silver goblet would be hidden in his bag. Servants would ride after the brothers as they left the city and accuse them of theft. The brothers would return to Joseph's house. The bags would be searched. The goblet would appear in Benjamin's bag.

Benjamin was being asked, without knowing he was being asked, to bear false accusation without breaking. He was being watched to see whether the youngest son of Jacob, the son of Rachel, the full brother of the man who had been thrown into a pit by his own family, had what was needed to stand in the position of accused and remain himself.

The Speech That Broke Joseph

Benjamin passed the test. The goblet was found among his things and he did not crumble under the weight of the accusation. Then Judah stepped forward and offered himself in Benjamin's place. The speech he gave Joseph, recounting an old father who would not survive the loss of this last son of Rachel, was the speech that finally broke Joseph's composure and ended the concealment. The prayer of the bereaved father and the trial of his youngest son met in that room, and the limit Jacob had begged for arrived.