Joseph's Diadem and the Blessings Ishmael and Esau Wanted

Midrash Aggadah Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 49:26 View source

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 2, 2025

The ancestral blessings were not universally loved. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan includes a striking aside in Joseph's final benediction. "The blessings of thy father be added to the blessings wherewith my fathers Abraham and Izhak have blessed me, and which the princes of the world Ishmael and Esau and all the sons of Keturah have desired" (Genesis 49:26).

Three branches of the Abrahamic family are named as outsiders longing to get in. Ishmael, the son of Hagar. Esau, Jacob's own twin. The children of Keturah, Abraham's third wife (Genesis 25:1-4). All of them princely, all of them well-endowed with land and progeny — and all of them, according to the Targum, watching the stream of covenantal blessing pass them by.

The Aramaic closes with regal imagery. All these blessings unite "and form a diadem of majesty for the head of Joseph, and for the brow of the man who became chief and ruler in Mizraim." The Egyptian crown Joseph wore was a human diadem. Jacob places a second one on his son's head, invisible and eternal. The brother who was sold into slavery and forgotten in a pit receives the coronation his enemies envied. It is a quiet Jewish theology of blessing: what the world cannot take by force gets given by a dying father in a whisper.

Themes

Patriarchs Wisdom Righteousness

Biblical References

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