Joseph Gave Benjamin Five Garments Because He Saw Mordecai

The Gift That Looked Like a Mistake

The reunion had just happened. Joseph had cleared the room of his Egyptian servants, called his brothers close, and revealed himself through tears: I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? The brothers, who had spent twenty years under the weight of what they had done, stood before him in shock. Then the moment of recognition passed into the moment of reunion, and gifts were distributed.

To each of the eleven brothers Joseph gave two changes of clothing. One for weekdays, one for the Sabbath. Then he came to Benjamin. To the youngest he gave five.

It looked like a mistake repeated. Joseph of all people understood the consequences of the coat of many colors. He had been thrown into a pit and sold to traders because his father had given him a garment that set him apart from his brothers. Now, on the exact day of reconciliation, he was doing the same thing: distinguishing the youngest from the rest with a more generous gift. Had he learned nothing?

What Joseph Was Actually Doing

The answer ran the other way. Joseph had not forgotten the lesson of his coat. He was not creating a new hierarchy. He was doing something else entirely: he was looking ahead, not back. The midrashic tradition records that Joseph gave Benjamin five garments because he had seen, across the centuries that lay ahead of him, that a descendant of Benjamin named Mordecai would one day stand clothed in five royal garments in the court of a Persian king. The five were not a reward for Benjamin. They were a prophecy about his line.

Mordecai, the man who would not bow to Haman, who would put on sackcloth when the decree of annihilation was issued against the Jews of Persia, who would walk through the streets of Shushan in mourning clothes while Esther gathered her courage inside the palace. That same Mordecai would, when the decree was reversed, be dressed by royal command in five layers of royal clothing and led through the streets of Shushan while Haman led his horse.

Mordecai's Dream of Two Dragons

The Book of Esther as it appears in the Hebrew text does not record a dream of Mordecai's. But the Greek additions to Esther, preserved in the Septuagint, open with precisely this: Mordecai dreamed of two great dragons facing each other, ready to fight. All the nations gathered against the nation of the righteous. The nation cried out to God. And then a spring became a river, and light came, and the lowly were exalted. Mordecai understood the dream when its fulfillment arrived: the two dragons were himself and Haman. The nation that had cried out was Israel. The spring was Esther.

Joseph, the rabbis understood, was looking past his own reunion toward that later scene when a man of Benjamin's line would stand at the center of a second reversal, a second saving of the people, a second transformation from condemned to delivered. The five garments Benjamin carried out of Egypt were addressed not to Benjamin but to a man who would not be born for three centuries.

Why the Number Five

The tradition is specific. When Mordecai was honored by Ahasuerus after Haman's fall, he was clothed in royal apparel of blue and white, a great crown of gold, and a garment of fine linen and purple. The Scroll of Esther lists his garments, and the count that the midrash derives from that list reaches five. Joseph's gift to Benjamin matched that number. The gift was calibrated to fit an event that had not happened yet.

This is the kind of vision the tradition assigns to Joseph throughout his life. He read the dreams of others accurately. He read the patterns of the world's grain supply accurately. The tradition extends that vision backward into the room where he stood distributing garments on the day of his reunion, and says: he saw this too. He saw Mordecai in the Persian court. He counted the garments. He gave Benjamin five.