Naphtali Saw the Storm Coming in a Vision of Ships and Stars

Naphtali was the fastest runner among the sons of Jacob. His father blessed him with the image of a deer, and the tradition remembers him as the one sent on all the urgent errands, the one who could carry a message from Dan to Beersheba and back before the sun had moved far. Speed was his gift. And perhaps because he moved through the world so quickly, he saw more of it than most.

The two visions Naphtali received, preserved in the Testament of Naphtali and drawn into Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, one of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs compiled between the second century BCE and the first century CE, are among the most detailed prophetic dreams in all of the apocryphal literature. They did not come to him in a sanctuary or during prayer. The first came while he was pasturing the flock. The second came seven days later, standing at the shore of the sea.

In the first vision, Jacob called his twelve sons together in a field and told them to take hold of whatever they could seize. They looked around and saw only the sky. So each one ran and grabbed a heavenly body. Levi seized the sun. Judah grabbed the moon and was lifted up with it. The nine other brothers each mounted a star. Only Joseph remained on the ground.

Jacob asked Joseph why he had not done as his brothers. Joseph answered with a kind of resigned philosophy: What availeth the woman-born in heaven, since in the end he must stand upon the earth? But while he was speaking, a bull appeared with wings like a stork and horns like a wild ox, and Jacob told Joseph to mount it. Joseph climbed on, and for four hours he gloried in the creature, walking and running and then flying upward until he drew level with Judah.

Then Joseph struck Judah with his staff and demanded the rods Judah carried. Judah refused. Joseph struck him again and again until he had taken ten of the twelve rods by force. Then Joseph told his ten earthbound brothers to stop following Judah and Levi and come with him instead. They obeyed, all of them, leaving Levi with only Benjamin beside him. When Levi saw this, he descended from the sun full of grief. And then a mighty storm separated Joseph from everyone, and they were all scattered, each one alone.

Naphtali went to his father and told him. Jacob clasped his hands. Tears flowed from his eyes. He said: My son, for that the vision was doubled unto thee twice, I am dismayed. I shudder for my son Joseph. I loved him more than all of you, but by reason of his perverseness ye will be carried away into captivity, and scattered among the nations. Thy first and thy second vision had the same meaning. The vision is one.

The second vision came at the shore. Jacob stood with all twelve sons beside the sea. A ship sailed past with no sailor and no pilot. On its mast was written: This ship belongs to the son of whom God has blessed. Jacob dove into the water and they all followed. The ship held all the goodness of the world inside it. Each brother took an oar. Levi and Judah climbed the masts to keep watch. Jacob held the two rudders. Joseph alone refused his oar until Jacob gave him the rudders instead.

As long as Joseph listened to Judah's guidance from the mast, the ship sailed peacefully. Then Joseph stopped listening. He steered his own course. The waves drove the ship onto a rock. It foundered. Every brother swam for the nearest plank of wood. Levi and Judah were thrown together. The rest were scattered to the ends of the earth.

Jacob arrived and found his sons cast about on the water. He asked what had happened. They told him: Joseph had not kept to the course, had been jealous of Judah and Levi, had steered wrongly. Jacob dove in again and repaired the ship, pulled them all aboard, and reproved Joseph: My son, thou shalt no more deceive and be jealous of thy brothers, for they were nearly lost through thee.

When Naphtali told this second vision to his father, Jacob clapped his hands and sighed and would not answer for a long time. Finally he said: The repetition of thy vision hath made my heart sink within me. For thy first and thy second visions are both but one.

These dreams shaped Naphtali's lifelong instruction to his children: do not join yourselves with the sons of Joseph. Follow only Levi and Judah. The sun and moon, the great masts of the ship, the fixed stars of the family: these were Levi and Judah, the priestly line and the royal line, the two constants around which everything else would have to orient itself or be lost in the storm.

The visions were not private consolations. They were maps. Naphtali spent the rest of his life trying to hand the map to his children before the storm proved him right.