From Bane to Blessing: The Food Leitmotif in Genesis 37–50 *

1. The Function of Food in the Narrative of Jacob's Sons

The narrative of Jacob's sons in the book of Genesis is pervaded by food, feasting, and famine. ¹ In this tale food appears in both likely and unlikely places. ² We expect to hear about food in Joseph's policy of grain storage during famine (Gen. 41.46–49), but food is a less predictable reference when the text reports that ‘Potiphar knew nothing but the bread which he ate’ (39.6), or that the brothers, after imprisoning Joseph, sat down to ‘eat bread’ (37.25). ³ Rather than simply indicating the famine context for the tale, attention to the appearance of these food references shows them to be typical of the literary craftsmanship of the narrative. ⁴ They appear as regular indicators of the rivalry between characters and signal the power dynamics among them. Thus, food functions as a leitmotif in the story. It is used to signal the presence of material relevant to a primary theme of the narrative. ⁵ It is, in fact, a narrative device that both signals the presence of the rivalry theme and highlights its overturn. This article will argue that in the narrative of Jacob's sons food language signals the presence of material relevant to the plot's power dynamics. These dynamics are heavily impacted by favoritism, both human and divine. ⁶ When seen as part of this larger symbolic thread, the meal around the pit (37.25) and the meal in Joseph's house (43.26–34) are not just incidental events in the narrative. Rather, they together set the conditions for the event of reconciliation. Reconciliation must occur away from the table because a rivalrous response to Joseph's special status, symbolized by food in the narrative, must be rejected before reconciliation can occur.

Scholarship on the narrative of Jacob's sons has revealed the significance of thematic emphases in this artfully crafted unit. ⁷ Work on the garment motif has shown that garments function ‘explicitly or implicitly, as status indicators’ within the broader narrative. ⁸ However, while scholars have observed the prevalence of words and images related to food and eating in the narrative of Jacob's sons, the thematic importance of this motif has not been fully explored. In his wide-ranging study of uses of food in the Old Testament, Nathan MacDonald observes the recurrence of food in the narrative of Jacob's sons and comments that ‘this is usually overlooked by commentators’. ⁹ His assessment is accurate. ¹⁰ Brueggemann and von Rad, for example, are dismissive of an overarching schema of famine imagery. Brueggemann calls the famine ‘only the occasion for the narrative’. ¹¹ Von Rad explicitly rejects the idea that the grain in Joseph's early dreams is related to his later policy of grain storage. ¹² Even among scholars who observe the recurrence of food imagery, this element merits only passing reference in the commentaries. McKeown, noting the culinary job titles of Joseph's fellow prisoners, suspects that the cause of their imprisonment is Pharaoh's dissatisfaction with the food presented to him and claims ‘Such details are of little interest to the narrator, whose main concern is to bring the subject of dreams back into the story’. ¹³ Like the narrator he describes, McKeown observes this food imagery and then moves on to other themes. This passing acknowledgment by McKeown misses the opportunity to explore the thematic importance of food imagery which is more than an incidental detail in the narrative of Jacob's sons, as this article will demonstrate. Food imagery and language play a similarly undeveloped role in Westermann's commentary. Westermann comments on famine as a motif in the patriarchal narratives. ¹⁴ However, he apparently sees this motif largely as a signal of the difficult material conditions in which ancient Israelites lived. In practice Westermann treats the food imagery as tangential to his commentary's analysis. For example, he notes that the brothers sit down to eat a meal after imprisoning Joseph in the pit, but does not attach significance to this meal nor is it tied in any enlightening way to the remainder of the story. ¹⁵ Similarly, Reno notes that the brothers eat at the pit, but interprets it as an indicator of wasted time, writing, ‘the brothers then dillydally, taking time to eat’. ¹⁶ In each of these cases the observed occurrence of food imagery appears unimportant when considered in isolation. However, as I will demonstrate, these references to food and eating are not isolated incidents in the narrative of Jacob's sons. Instead, they form a recurrent thread throughout the narrative. By considering them together, I will show that they are valuable indicators of the text's thematic emphases. As such, the food imagery in this narrative merits more sustained attention than scholarship has given to it thus far.

Though food imagery has been underexplored in the narrative of Jacob's sons, scholarly interest in food within the Hebrew Bible more generally has increased significantly in recent years. ¹⁷ MacDonald's book, mentioned above, is one among a number of recent studies focused on food and the Bible. ¹⁸ MacDonald devotes slightly less than two pages to Genesis 37–45. He observes the parallels between the meal around the pit and the banquet in Joseph's house and also comments on the place of food imagery in the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker. However, MacDonald does not engage in a thoroughgoing exploration of the significance of this recurrence throughout the narrative. ¹⁹ A similar assessment could be made of Diane Sharon's book Patterns of Destiny, which examines occasions of eating and drinking in the Hebrew Bible and discusses several of the food occurrences in the narrative of Jacob's sons. ²⁰

I contend that the recurrence of references to food and eating in the narrative of Jacob's sons is a set of valuable interpretive cues granted to the reader by the text's own conventions. Studies such as MacDonald's and Sharon's rightly observe the presence of the motif and helpfully place it in the larger context of food imagery in the Bible more broadly. However, the frequency and thematic importance of this motif in the narrative of Jacob's sons demand a focused study of its interpretive value within the whole of this narrative. In the analysis that follows, I will demonstrate that attention to food imagery as a literary leitmotif is a useful key to reading this text in light of its literary artistry. The leitmotif is initially a signal of the rivalry among the brothers, broadening in its scope to include the Egyptians as the narrative progresses. Ultimately, the absence of the otherwise prevalent leitmotif at the moment of reconciliation underlines the narrative's rejection of rivalry as an appropriate response to the father's favoritism. In the end, the leitmotif is gradually transformed into a symbol of blessing in harmony with the plot's resolution and its emphasis on familial reconciliation.

2. Food and Sibling Rivalry: The Food Leitmotif in the Complication ²¹

In the initial complication of the narrative (Gen. 37.5–36), the food leitmotif performs an introductory function and is tied explicitly to the rivalry between the brothers. Food imagery first occurs in Joseph's initial dream (37.7–8). The narrative's coupling of grain imagery and the dream as means of delivery surely foreshadows the means of Joseph's eventual dominion over his family. ²² Von Rad's claim that ‘one ought not to see in it a reference to Joseph's later policy of storage’, does not take sufficient account of the similarities between these events, which include: the double dreams of both Joseph and Pharaoh (37.5–11; 41.1–8), the references to bowing (37.9–10; 41.43), and the importance of food as an element of the dreams in both episodes (37.7; 41.1–36). ²³ In this opening plot complication scene food is present not as a physical item in the narrative's dramatic action, but only as an element in Joseph's dreams. His dreams point to the contested relationships within his family. In light of the foreshadowing and programmatic nature of these dreams, we may see the food leitmotif in this opening episode forging a relationship with the theme of sibling rivalry in a proleptic fashion.

When the brothers sell Joseph, the food leitmotif signals the brothers’ rejection of Joseph's claim to power and the plot's moment of crisis. The brothers’ initial comments demonstrate the integral tie between this episode and the preceding dream reports. They say, ‘Look, this lord of dreams is coming’ (Gen. 37.19), a speech that draws together the centrality of dreams in the previous episode and the claim to power involved. The reference to lordship (‭לעב‬) indicates that the brothers are not here merely interested in disillusioning an idealistic youngster. Particularly in light of their vehement protests against the claims of Joseph's dreams in the previous episode, the brothers’ plan to kill him in order to ‘see what will become of his dreams’ (37.20) stands out as an attempt to thwart the claim to power made by the impetuous youth. In this episode, rivalry erupts into action as the brothers quite literally take matters into their own hands and the favored son finds himself thrown from his high position, landing in the bottom of a pit (37.24).

Two seemingly extraneous details inject the food leitmotif and its corollary liquid imagery into the moment of the plot's complication. The narrator reports that after imprisoning Joseph in a pit with ‘no water in it’ (‭םימ‬ ‭וב‬ ‭ןיא‬) the brothers sat down ‘to eat bread’ (‭םחל־לכאל‬, 37.25). Together these details signal the extent to which the plot's complication is an expression of its thematic rivalry as response to the father's favoritism. ²⁴

Interpreters who have commented on the brothers’ meal around the pit have seen it by and large as an expression of their nefarious coldness. Brodie describes the meal as eaten ‘coldbloodedly’ and von Rad calls it an expression of the ‘crass abominableness’ of their behavior. ²⁵ While these details certainly do characterize the brothers negatively, such a reading does not go far enough in exploring the significance of the food and liquid details in this episode. Given the presence of food imagery throughout the narrative of Jacob's sons, and its intimate tie already in the narrative to the rivalry between the brothers, it appears that the narrator is giving the reader an important signal of the causes of the family fracture and is foreshadowing the direction the narrative will take. Certainly, the meal is tasteless in its timing, however, it seems to function as more than an indicator of the brothers’ character flaws. ²⁶ It reminds the reader of the wrangling that has characterized this family for generations. ²⁷ The imagery highlights the extent to which the favor of the father functions on a level comparable to the basics of human subsistence. So central is the father's favor to the lives of these brothers, that it is appropriately symbolized by that without which they cannot live, namely food. ²⁸

The brothers’ meal is an expression of power. They have taken control from their favored brother and they sit and eat in front of him as the narrator implicitly links their rejection of the father's favorite with their own fulfilment of their physical needs. Joseph's helplessness within the rivalry in this episode is highlighted by his silence. In contrast to his talkative brothers, Joseph speaks not a word in this encounter. He is an object to be acted upon by others. He is ‘stripped’, ‘taken’ and ‘thrown’ in quick succession (Gen. 37.23–24).

The meal around the pit expresses fracture in the family. In it the favored son is isolated from the others. Joseph sits separately from the group, and Reuben is also apparently absent. ²⁹ The food imagery will continue to signal rivalry as the family breaks apart.

As noted above, the narrator supplies the detail that Joseph is imprisoned in a pit with ‘no water in it’ (‭םימ‬ ‭וב‬ ‭ןיא‬). In Reuben's absence, Judah suggests selling Joseph to a passing caravan of traders. Reuben, who had hoped to return Joseph to his father (Gen. 37.22), returns to discover that the pit has ‘no Joseph’ (‭ףסי־ןיא‬) in it (37.29). Reuben's desire to deliver Joseph to Jacob is likely prompted by his own desire to be reconciled to his father, having already incurred the guilt that will figure so prominently in Israel's deathbed curse of him (35.22 and 49.4). The parallel plots to dispose of Joseph appear as expressions of the wrangling among the brothers for their father's favor. ³⁰ The disgraced eldest seeks to restore the favorite to his father, while the fourth-born, and apparent heir, seeks to eliminate him. ³¹ The fracture of the family is sealed with the meal around the pit, and the end to Reuben's hope of reconciliation with his father is highlighted by the parallels between the lack of water and the lack of the favored son. At the meal around the pit, the major crisis of the plot occurs and in this moment the prime players in the rivalry are revealed. Throughout the narrative Judah, Joseph, and Reuben will play roles in the rivalry while the remainder of the brothers will either go unnamed or play passive roles.

As a result of the siblings’ wrangling with one another over dominance and the favor of their father, the family breaks apart. The reference to the now powerful brothers eating bread signals this drastic shift in the power dynamics among the siblings. Here the food leitmotif expresses the initial crisis of the plot, the division of the family.

3. Food, Fate and Rivalry: The Food Leitmotif in the Digression

During Joseph's period of Egyptian bondage (Gen. 38.1–41.57), the food leitmotif appears in connection with the ‘fate’ of characters. ³² It is tied to the rivalry in the positions of power that Joseph gains and the ways that these are pointed to and facilitated by the appearance of food imagery.

Food imagery signals the extent to which Joseph has gained control over his surroundings in Potiphar's house. The narrator reports that his master ‘did not know anything except the bread which he was eating’ (Gen. 39.6). Again, the food leitmotif appears as an unlikely detail for the narrator to focus upon and it is precisely this unlikeliness that makes it an effective signal of the power dynamics to which the leitmotif points. Commentators who have discussed this detail have not connected it to power dynamics. Brodie sees this notice as a reference to ‘distinctive Egyptian eating habits’. ³³ Certainly, Egyptians are depicted in the narrative as having particular eating customs, for example in Joseph's separation during the meal to preserve the ruse that he is an Egyptian (44.32). Again, the sustained recurrence of food imagery in the narrative of Jacob's sons argues against reading it as a mere nod to cultural context. Instead, once again the food reference highlights the power dynamics of the text as well, since Joseph is explicitly named as second in the household alongside this notice about Potiphar's attention. Westermann, on the other hand, reads Potiphar's attention to nothing but the food he ate as ‘a fixed expression, a pars pro toto to indicate his private affairs’. ³⁴ However, it is clear in context that Potiphar is not paying attention to all matters that are his private affairs and the phrase seems to function in the opposite of the way Westermann suggests—that is, its meaning is limiting rather than inclusive. Instead, the narrator's seemingly unlikely report that Potiphar's only concern was his food, seems best explained by considering it in light of the recurrence of food imagery in the narrative as a whole. This reference to Potiphar's bread must certainly draw the attentive reader's mind back to the meal Joseph's brothers shared around the pit. In that meal, they brandished their power over Joseph. Now, especially in light of its close connection to the announcement of Joseph's position as second in the household, the expression shows just how much power Joseph has gained in his master's house and perhaps signals the hint of danger in the power his master still holds.

Both the power Joseph gains in Potiphar's house and his impending downfall are not unrelated to the rivalry motif and the larger theme of election in the story. The narrative depicts Joseph's meteoric rise to the second highest position in both Potiphar's and Pharaoh's houses as the result of divine favor. ³⁵ The narrator reports that God was with Joseph (Gen. 39.2) in both Potiphar's house and the prison (Gen. 39.23). Joseph, God's elect and Jacob's favorite, rises inexplicably in his master's house and once again rivalry is an implicit issue. By noting the otherwise unnecessary detail that Potiphar maintained attention only on his food, the narrative subtly suggests that Joseph is in danger in Potiphar's house because his rise to power, fueled by his divinely favored status, has put him in a position to appear as a rival to his master. The position of second in importance produces an inherent comparison with the master and it would seem that Potiphar's wife sees the comparison as well, showering attentions belonging to the master of the house on Joseph (Gen. 39.7). ³⁶ As Brodie comments, ‘This situation, where the master is attending only to his food, also helps to set up the following event, where apparently he is not attending to his wife’. ³⁷ The result is a return to the ‘pit’ (‭רובה‬), as the prison is called (40.15; 41.14). ³⁸ For the second time in a short span of chapters, a reference to the eating of bread has signposted the action of a character concerned to preserve his power against the rapid ascent of the favored Joseph. Indeed, the parallels between Reuben who imprisons Joseph in a pit as an apparent aspect of a plan to reconcile with his father following an inappropriate liaison with his father's wife, and Potiphar who takes the same action against Joseph as punishment for the accusation of a similar encounter with his own wife, are telling.

During Joseph's time in prison the food leitmotif appears in Joseph's interpretation of the prisoners’ dream reports. ³⁹ Each dream focuses on a culinary image (wine and bread) and Joseph interprets each in turn as signaling the dreamer's fate. The narrative draws an explicit contrast between these two characters. The cupbearer, associated with the liquid image, is restored to his post, while the baker, associated with food, is rejected for no apparent reason and hanged (Gen. 40.22). The fates of the two characters underscore the apparent arbitrariness of favor in the Joseph story and further develop the growing antithesis between food and drink imagery in the narrative's symbolic world. Again, the imagery is connected with power and position as each character is repeatedly referred to as the ‘chief’ (‭רש‬) of their respective roles (40.2, 9, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23), as is the guard in charge of them (40.3, 4). Ascent within Pharaoh's house is at stake and again mortal danger appears as a reality for the one not favored and symbolically marked with the food imagery.

More decisive for Joseph's fate and the plot as a whole are Pharaoh's dreams, which also depend upon agricultural imagery. The narrator reports that Pharaoh dreams about fat cows and lean cows, healthy grain and sickly grain (Gen. 41.2–8). ⁴⁰ Occurrences of the food leitmotif pack the dialogue in which Pharaoh describes his dream to Joseph. ⁴¹ Pharaoh describes the lean cows as eating (‭הנלכאת‬) the fat ones and the scorched grain as swallowing up (‭הנעלבת‬) the healthy. In his interpretation, Joseph warns that the famine will consume (‭הלכ‬) the land. Joseph's successful interpretation of the dream as predictive of a coming famine puts him in the powerful position of being able to suggest policy to Pharaoh and propels him into his position of power over the nation's food supply. ⁴² In this role Joseph's status as the one God favors fulfils the promise to Abraham that all nations would be blessed (Gen. 12.3). ⁴³ As McKeown comments, ‘Nowhere else in Genesis is this promise fulfilled on such a grand scale as that seen in this portrayal of Joseph providing essential food for Egypt and the surrounding nations’. ⁴⁴ Joseph's status as God's elect, like that of his ancestor Abraham, is a calling to offer blessing. In Joseph's rise, the role that favor grants him is expressed and enacted through the very image that has symbolized it in the narrative—food.

While Joseph is in Egyptian captivity the food leitmotif diverges from its initial function of pointing towards the rivalry between Jacob's sons. However, it continues to point to power relations and to highlight Joseph's special status. During Joseph's period of relative powerlessness in captivity, food imagery always stems from the Egyptians’ activities and dreams. The characters learn their fates based on their dreams about food and agriculture, such as those of the cupbearer and baker as well as Egypt's agricultural future. Unlike Joseph's Israelite brothers, when the Egyptians are presented with food imagery and claims about their future they acquiesce to the view of their future as presented. There is an apparent arbitrariness about these fates that is not out of harmony with the arbitrariness of favoritism in the earlier episodes. The difference is not that there is an unfair distribution, but that the Egyptians do not contest the disparity in the way that Jacob's family does. Joseph, the sole Israelite character, never introduces food imagery—he merely comments upon it.

In these scenes the food imagery develops. If the reader were tempted to see it as merely signaling family rivalry, that view must be adapted. It signals power and favor, certainly. And these are negotiated differently among the family and among the Egyptians. But consistently, power and favoritism appear paired with food images, and the divine favor is repeatedly pointed in Joseph's direction. In addition, the pairing of food and drink imagery has developed. From the potential signal that restoration (‭ובישל‬, Gen. 37.22) is connected to liquid imagery suggested by the foiling of Reuben's plan revolving around a pit with no water in it, the narrative has much more explicitly connected the cupbearer's drink imagery dream to his own restoration (‭ךבישהו‬, 40.13), and directly contrasted that image's symbolic freight with the baker's rejection.

4. Food as the Object of Family Conflict: The Food Leitmotif in the Resumed Complication

As the broken family re-appears (Gen. 42.1–44.15), the leitmotif again signals the theme of sibling rivalry. This section of the narrative divides neatly into three journeys by the brothers into Egypt. Joseph and Jacob apparently drive the unit from their respective ends of the journey. They send the brothers back and forth like pawns in a game to see at what point Jacob will risk his new favorite son, Benjamin. ⁴⁵ Reuben and Judah's rivalry re-emerges in this section as each makes an offer of security for the new favorite son. ⁴⁶ Judah's offer is accepted while Reuben's is refused, propelling Judah into the role of leader of the eleven.

In this portion of the plot the food leitmotif takes center stage. ⁴⁷ Food becomes the object of conflict, embodying its role as signal of the brothers’ rivalry. The remaining sons of Jacob have come to Egypt to buy food (‭לכא־רבשל‬, Gen. 42.10). Joseph contentiously accuses them of spying and plays various tricks on them in their attempts to wrangle and even beg food from him. Joseph's new power in the relationship is signposted by his control over the available food supply. The roles from the scene around the pit are reversed and the stage is set for Joseph's youthful dreams to be fulfilled.

In this portion of the narrative the brothers are brought into Joseph's home in a scene that neatly mirrors the meal eaten around the pit. ⁴⁸ The brothers have expressed their concern that they are about to be sold into slavery (Gen. 43.18), the very fate to which they condemned Joseph in their meal around the pit (37.28). At the meal around the pit the brothers sold Joseph to a caravan of traders bearing gum, balm and resin to Egypt. Here the brothers bear gum, balm, and resin along with nuts and honey as gifts for the powerful food administrator of Egypt (43.11). There is a close syntactic parallel between the descriptions of the two meals as well. In the meal around the pit the brothers sat down to eat bread (‭םחל־לכאל‬, 37.25). Here they learn that in Joseph's house they will eat bread (‭םחל‬ ‭ולכאי‬, 43.25). As in the meal around the pit, at this feast Joseph sits alone (43.32). The narrator explains that this was part of the ruse of concealing his identity because Egyptians and Hebrews would not eat together. However, there also seems to be an allusion to Joseph's earlier singular status in the pit.

The close correlation between the two meals, the first of which had been the setting for the plot's initial crisis, leads the reader to expect the second meal to result in the resolution of that crisis. ⁴⁹ The banquet is the sole situation during the brothers’ journeys to Egypt in which food is not contested by the brothers. In this reversal of the earlier meal, the food for the brothers flows freely from Joseph's table (Gen. 43.34). Joseph's generosity sends the message of his exalted status and of the means of attaining that status. He has risen to power in Egypt through divine favor, as clearly indicated during the preceding prison stories. This divine favor matches the favor of their father. Favoritism is still the cause of the imbalance of power in the family, even if the other brothers are not aware of it in this scene. Joseph's actions, however, show that he is aware of the favoritism within the family. He seats them hierarchically and gives a much larger portion to Benjamin. ⁵⁰ Rather than this favoritism resulting in wrangling among the brothers, as one would expect given their relationship sketched thus far, the brothers apparently rejoice in Benjamin's good fortune since they ‘drank and got drunk with him’ (43.34). In sharp contrast to the initial meal around the pit with ‘no water in it’ (‭םימ‬ ‭וב‬ ‭ןיא‬), here the liquid imagery is depicted in terms of abundance. There is enough wine for drunkenness. Given the narrative's links between liquid and restoration, as shown in the verbal parallels between Reuben's plan for restoration and the cupbearer's actual restoration, it would seem that there is an important difference between the two parallel meals. While favoritism remains a feature of this family's life, the possibility of restoration seems symbolized by the second meal's lavish liquid imagery and by its explicit connection to the brothers’ acceptance of the apparently arbitrary favor shown to Benjamin.

At this moment it appears that Joseph celebrates his triumph over his brothers. He could easily bring the plot to a resolution by proclaiming himself the victor in the sibling rivalry, since he has overturned their feast around the pit with his much more extravagant feast in their time of desperation. ⁵¹ He is clearly the divinely favored one as the narrative has shown with his repeated rising from the pit through divine intervention (Gen. 39.2, 21, 23). However, within this setting, as charged as it is with the echoes of the initial crisis of the plot and the brothers’ concern over being sold into slavery, a resolution of the plot would almost of necessity take on an air of retribution. The narrative would at the very least be forced to choose between Joseph enacting direct retribution for the meal around the pit or offering merciful rejection of that retribution. Joseph's choice neither to enslave his brothers nor to resolve the plot crisis amicably leads to a false sense of release in the plot's tension. Joseph immediately returns to falsely accusing the brothers and uses their food bags and banquet implements to reintroduce tension. This ploy allows the plot to continue and the reader's frustrated expectation of a resolution to the crisis fueled by the parallel meals heightens the tension still further as the plot moves towards its final climax and resolution. ⁵²

5. Rivalry Rejected: The Disappearance of the Food Leitmotif at the Climax

When the climax finally occurs the food leitmotif becomes less frequent. After letting his brothers go from the feast without resolving the conflict, Joseph engineers their return by planting his silver goblet, an empty banquet implement, in Benjamin's sack. Brodie connects this planted cup to the ‘convivial drinking’ of the feast in Joseph's house. ⁵³ It is precisely the conviviality of the liquid imagery at the feast in Joseph's house that signals the possibility of reconciliation at this point in the narrative. The dramatic difference between the liquid imagery of the cup and the food imagery as they have developed at this point in the narrative makes sense of the delay in the narrative's resolution. The cup is a prominent image in the climax scene, while food imagery which has been recurrent throughout the narrative is nearly absent. The brothers must move away from the table and correspondingly from the food imagery that has symbolized power and rivalry in the narrative thus far. The narrative's introduction of the cup foreshadows the means of the family's reunification.

Interestingly, this goblet is referred to as a divination cup and although Joseph certainly is attempting to divine something about his brothers, it might also be noted that the connection between Egyptian responses to food imagery and fate developed in the digression remains relevant at this point in the narrative. Joseph has continued to play up the brothers’ expectations that he is Egyptian (e.g. 42.23; 43.32). Indeed, the very fact that the narrative treats this ruse as believable and believed is an indication that scholars who see the narrative of Jacob's sons working out issues of identity, assimilation and resistance to non-Israelite cultures through the Joseph character are undoubtedly correct. ⁵⁴ As Kim argues, Joseph's ‘hybrid identity’ in this narrative shows that he ‘fully belongs to neither Egyptian nor Israelite communities’. ⁵⁵ His use of a divination cup is but one element in the Egyptian characterization of Joseph. ⁵⁶ Throughout the narrative, Joseph will continue to treat the future as determined (45.5–8; 50.19–20), a feature that Egyptian characters exhibited in their responses to food imagery in the digression. However, he will do so by referring to the future as determined by God. Thus Joseph's interactions with fate and destiny themes unites the characterization of the Egyptians in the narrative as acquiescing to future prediction with the Israelite characterization of reference to God. It is thus an expression of the Israelite and Egyptian elements of Joseph's characterization. Moreover, the narrative's final words about this character point toward Hebrew and Egyptian identities. In the end, he asks to be buried in Canaan and the narrator indicates that his body was embalmed (50.24–26). Thus, the narrative joins Joseph's ancestral Israelite commitment to return to the land of promise for burial (cf. Abraham and Sarah in 25.9–10; and especially Israel in 47.29–31) with Egyptian burial practices. ⁵⁷

These combined Hebrew and Egyptian elements of Joseph's characterization are not incidental. Rather, their relevance for the reconciliation itself appears in the centrality of the Egyptian divination cup to the reconciliation scene. The restoration of Joseph to his father and of the family to wholeness must now do more than what Reuben's plan involving a waterless pit intended. The family fracture must now incorporate as an insider one who will continue to carry aspects of his outsider identity with him.

When the brothers return, the story comes to a climax as Judah pleads for Benjamin's release. In his climactic speech, Judah mentions food only once in a quotation of his father's directions to go into Egypt to get a little food (Gen. 44.25). ⁵⁸ In this setting the food image, the leitmotif of the brothers’ rivalry and imbalanced power, fades into the background as the liquid imagery of the cup replaces it.

As we have seen, the imagery of drinks and drinking implements bears a significantly different symbolic freight in the narrative than that of food. Early in the narrative Reuben's plan to restore (‭ובישהל‬, Gen. 37.22) Joseph to his father had revolved around placing him in a pit with no water in it (‭םימ‬ ‭וב‬ ‭ןיא‬, 37.24). The language of restoration occurs in tandem with liquid imagery again in the prison stories. There, as noted previously, the cupbearer is contrasted with the baker. The cupbearer is restored (‭בישה‬, 40.13, 21) to his position while the baker is executed. Perhaps most striking is the presence of drink imagery in the moment of brotherly harmony around Joseph's table. Rather than contesting the greater amount of food granted to Benjamin the brothers ‘drank and got drunk with him’ (43.34). As a result, the liquid and cup imagery appear to symbolize restoration, the more so since the food leitmotif is far less prominent. In the cases of Reuben's plot and the cupbearer's dream, restoration clearly conveys the overturning of imprisonment and a return to exalted status. In each case the one to be ‘restored’ would return to their life as it was prior to their current state. The lavishness of the liquid imagery in Benjamin's case seems to symbolize restoration going beyond simple return. The brothers have not, up to this point in the narrative, shown themselves to be a harmonious group. The restoration conveyed in this scene offers the hope of a family that might be reconfigured into a state that improves upon a return to the conditions of Genesis 37 when the rivalrous brothers lived together. Restoration must find a way to accommodate Joseph as he is characterized at this point in the narrative. He is ultimately restored to his father, though the sale into Egypt has transformed him.

The resolution of the plot comes about through the interaction of Judah and Joseph. Judah, the instigator of Joseph's sale, now pleads for the new favorite son, offering himself in Benjamin's place. In this moment, Joseph again can choose a retributive response or to allow the plot's tension to continue, but Judah's speech opens a new door. Judah has, in a speech nearly devoid of the food leitmotif, rejected the rivalry that has characterized the brothers’ interactions, choosing to place himself in the service of his father, this brother, and his family. ⁵⁹ Joseph now is able to effect reconciliation, resolving the primary plot conflict, that of the division of the family. ⁶⁰

6. Transformed by Reconciliation: The Food Leitmotif in the Falling Action and Conclusion

Following the resolution, the food leitmotif reappears but is transformed by the reconciliation that has occurred. Food, which previously symbolized the brothers’ rivalry and the contested power dynamics among them, is now freely offered. Joseph explains the past in terms of God's intentions. God has blessed and exalted him to a position of power, through which the brothers now benefit (Gen. 45.5–8). The favor that God has shown to Joseph now extends to them after the reconciliation. The narrative contains no reference to Jacob or his sons buying food from Joseph. A now benevolent Joseph gives it to them as provision for their journey (45.21). ⁶¹ The gift of food is within his power and his position in Egypt. Ironically, immediately after reporting the details of this provision (45.23), the narrator says that Joseph told his brothers not to ‘be agitated on the way’ (45.24). Whether this phrase indicates that he wishes to ease their minds about their material needs and potential retribution from him, or whether he envisions the possibility of the brothers quarrelling, is unclear, though both are probably implied. ⁶² In either case, this new use of the food leitmotif signals the benefits of Joseph's power and elect status extending to the family, though the threat of rivalry is not entirely absent. While the narrative draws a clear distinction between Joseph's treatment of his brothers and the Egyptians in food distribution following the reconciliation scene, this warning against strife on the return journey to Canaan is not the only note of ambiguity about the family's reconciliation. ⁶³ The brothers seek reassurance from Joseph again after their father's death (50.15–18). As in the initial reconciliation scene, Joseph connects the now-reconciled wrongs with the intentions of God. ⁶⁴ The expression of Joseph's Egyptian and Israelite identity, interpreting the past as fixed by the God of Israel, becomes a narrative device reminding the characters of the reconciliation. The reconciliation achieved by the brothers in this narrative is a tenuous one and it is not without difficulties. It requires the incorporation of the brother who now exists as both Egyptian and Israelite within the text and it requires the brothers’ acceptance of the arbitrary favor of God and of their father. While it is a difficult reconciliation, the narrative does treat it as reconciliation nonetheless. ⁶⁵ Mandolfo rightly highlights the potential for a re-irruption of ‘sibling violence’, not least in Jacob's intentional thwarting of primogeniture in his deathbed blessing of Joseph's sons. ⁶⁶ The potential for violence does indeed exist in the narrative's world and the brothers recognize it (50.15). However, at this moment in the story it is potential and not actual. The feast in Joseph's house with its ‘convivial drinking’ and acceptance of the arbitrary favor shown to Benjamin, as well as the narrative's signals through the importance of the cup to the restoration scene, leave open the possibility that the tenuous reconciliation will flourish. ⁶⁷ If Kim is correct about this narrative's importance to post-exilic and diaspora communities, this depiction of reconciliation with its fragility and implicated issues of divine favor, power, status and the relative incorporation of Israelites who have been shaped by contact with other nations into the community, has obvious relevance. ⁶⁸

The falling action (Gen. 45.16–47.31) focuses primarily on Joseph's interactions with the Egyptians. It is with the Egyptians that Joseph now contests his grants of food. The connection between the food leitmotif and imbalances of power continues as Joseph forces the Egyptians to buy the food from him and buys their lands, livestock, and even their persons in exchange for the food (47.20–21). Joseph's transition from contesting the value of food with his family to contesting it with the Egyptians signals his proper reintegration into his own family. Kim considers the tension between Joseph's behavior in 47.1–12 (his provision for his family) and in 47.13–26 (his enslavement of the Egyptians) as a juxtaposition of positive and negative characterization streams in the narrative as a whole. ⁶⁹ While his sense of the dangers and possibilities of incorporation into empire are undoubtedly correct, it seems that Joseph's re-incorporation into his own family is an important dynamic of this juxtaposition at this point in the narrative. The narrator clearly signals that reconciliation has modified Joseph's loyalties. While he retains Egyptian power and features, he consistently allows that power to benefit his family from this point in the narrative onwards. No longer are the Hebrews strictly outsiders to Joseph and the Egyptians strictly insiders. The reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers includes his re-incorporation into his family. He has been reunited with his own family and treats them appropriately as family by providing for their needs, while he turns his harsh and contentious side to those outside his family. Yet, the existence of this harsh and contentious side remains an aspect of the difficulty surrounding reconciliation.

In the narrative's conclusion (Gen. 48.1–50.26) the occurrences of the food leitmotif all appear within Jacob's blessing of his sons. Joseph and Judah, the two primary players in the reconciliation of the family, both receive blessings laden with instances of the food leitmotif and drink imagery. ⁷⁰ Joseph is twice called a fruitful son (‭תרפ‬ ‭ןב‬) (49.22). Judah's blessing is more expansive, drawing upon the liquid images of wine (‭ןיי‬) and milk (‭בלח‬) (49.11–12) as well as references to grapes. This use of the liquid imagery is appropriate for the character who provoked the reconciliation. Both Judah's and Joseph's blessings depict abundance by means of these images. They also continue the food leitmotifs connection with power and favor, with Judah's blessing articulating the kingly role that will characterize this clan as well as his rulership over his brothers. In Joseph's blessing, which also carries food imagery, the power dynamics of the current generation are described and Jacob's delight in this special son are given expression. The use of the food leitmotif in the narrative thus moves from the curse of family rivalry to a conclusion of blessing for the ones who brought that rivalry to an end and points to their special roles in the power dynamics and favor within the family and its descendants. The family has moved from rivalry to blessing, ironically bestowed by the father who achieved his own blessing in the context of rivalry. Reuben, who played a role in the rivalry but not in the reconciliation, is cursed rather than blessed by his father.

7. Conclusion: From Bane to Blessing

The narrative thus concludes with Judah and Joseph's reconciliation overcoming the multigenerational curse of sibling rivalry. ⁷¹ Rivalry and food seem tied throughout the patriarchal narratives. Isaac's mother had eliminated her son's rival in the context of a feast (Gen. 21.8–10). The patriarch now pronouncing the blessing gained his dominion over his brother by means of a bowl of stew (25.29–34) and a meal served to his father in disguise (27.5–29). Jacob's sons echo their father's generation's conflict and are wrapped up in wrangling over the basics of human sustenance symbolized by food at the beginning of the narrative. But by its end, they emerge from the narrative transformed by reconciliation. No longer does food represent intra-familial hostility as it did for previous generations and in the initial stages of the story's plot. Neither does food stand in for a determined fate as it does for the neighboring Egyptians in this plot. Rather, joined with the imagery of restoration represented by liquid and the cup, by the narrative's end the food leitmotif is transformed from bane to blessing and becomes a prominent image in Jacob's blessings upon his sons.

However, within the larger story of Israel this resolution of the familial conflict foreshadows renewed international conflict as Joseph's enslavement of the Egyptians and reunion of his family in Egypt set the conditions for the rising up of a king ‘who did not know Joseph’ (Exod. 1.8). The struggle for power will resume, though in slightly different terms, and will involve escape to a land ‘running with milk and honey’ (Exod. 3.8).

As I have argued, food constitutes a significant leitmotif in the narrative of Jacob's sons. It illustrates the imbalanced power dynamics among the plot's characters and their reactions to the favor bestowed upon Joseph by both Jacob and God. As the plot unfolds, the imagery of the cup develops and in the meal around Joseph's table the rivalry that broke the family apart is overcome by a very different response to apparently unmerited favor shown to the new favorite son, Benjamin. The brothers’ positive response to the favoritism shown to another of their number is connected to liquid imagery which elsewhere in the narrative symbolizes restoration. The plot's resolution takes place away from the table as the brothers embrace the sharing and blessing of the favorite's elect status in a climax provoked by the cup and connected with the liquid imagery. The narrator's refusal to resolve the plot's crisis in the context of the second meal begins the shift that will entail the rejection of the categories of rivalry and deprivation which have characterized this family for generations.

Attention to the food leitmotif illuminates a number of elements of the narrative. This reading of the pair of meals within the broader context of food as a leitmotif explains the otherwise extraneous detail that the brothers sat down to eat bread after throwing Joseph into the pit (Gen. 37.25). This analysis also explains the otherwise apparently anti-climactic post-meal resolution of the plot. The narrative rejects the categories of rivalry entailed in the meal and resolves them in terms of the categories of reconciliation. In addition, attention to the food leitmotif has illustrated the centrality of different characters’ responses to favoritism, both human and divine, to the movement of the plot. This theme is of great importance throughout Genesis where the mystery of God's favor is explored in sibling rivalry stories (e.g. Gen. 4.1–16; chs. 25–27) as well as in the covenant with Abraham (chs. 15 and 17). In this concluding reflection on the theme within Genesis, the necessity of accepting, rather than contesting, God's unexplained choice of whom to favor is underscored as the plot only resolves and the family only reconciles when the brothers learn to rejoice with the favored youngest son. ⁷² Additionally, this analysis illustrates the appropriateness of the narrative of Jacob's sons as a conclusion to Genesis, drawing to a close, as it does, the familial rivalry of the patriarchal period and pointing forward to the international conflicts which will characterize the early portions of Exodus. The divine favor will move more fully onto the international stage as the family of Israel will find that their special status as God's chosen people will bring them into conflict with other peoples and nations in the Exodus and Conquest narratives. As reinforced by the themes of the Joseph story, the broader narrative shows benefits and blessings coming to those who accept Israel's special status (e.g. Rahab) and dire consequences for those who contest it (e.g. Pharaoh). ⁷³