#bereishit

Hell is so theologically fucked up for a lot of reasons but among them is that Cain's punishment is an example of what (supernatural) justice can look like outside of infinite carcerality!

For killing his brother Hevel out of jealousy AND THEN LYING ABOUT IT, he isn't tortured. He isn't even singled out for abuse. He is marked in a way that lets people know what he has done AND specifically forbids them from harming him. The punishment is to have a totally fine life in a career that isn't the one he kinslew over, in a community that knows what he's done and isn't punishing him further. He makes a family! In a specific location, like two sentences after saying he'll have to endlessly wander the earth! He has descendents named after him!

bereishit hay’ta cavar  ahava, and she shouldered the name nothingness and chaos curved upon herself, a disordered end-beginning-end without שמים to hold her and אדמה to ground her and אדם וחוה to make her home.

The thing about Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery is that it’s not an isolated incident. It’s part of a much larger pattern of younger brothers gaining supremacy over the older ones, and the older ones retaliating (at times incredibly viciously), which we see over and over throughout the book of Genesis. We see it with literally the first brothers ever to come into existence, Cain and Abel. We see it with Ishmael’s banishment because Sarah wanted the inheritance to be solely Isaac’s (“the son of this slavewoman will not inherit with my son, with Isaac”). We see it with Jacob tricking Esau into selling his birthright and then having to flee the inevitable fallout. We see it with Joseph and his brothers. And then even when Jacob is on his deathbed, we still see him try to bless Joseph’s younger son over the older one. And that’s when Joseph speaks up and says “That is not correct, my father, because this one is the oldest,” and you get a sense of the pattern starting to be broken.

But you don’t really see that pattern break once and for all until the book of Exodus, when Moses is chosen to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, to basically become the supreme leader above all other leaders in Jewish history... and his older brother, Aaron, is nothing but wholeheartedly loyal and unconditionally supportive of him. There isn’t so much as a flicker of jealousy. He never suggests that maybe this should have been his place instead (even though he’d have a pretty fair case for it, since not only is he the older brother, he’s the one who was living with the other Hebrew slaves while Moses was off living in a palace and then far away in Midian). He goes to find Moses in Midian, embraces and kisses him, and then stands by his side throughout everything that happens afterwards. In light of all the stories of brotherly rivalry we see in the Bible beforehand, that’s incredibly striking.

... Which is one of many reasons why, although I absolutely love The Prince of Egypt, I will never forgive that movie for this: 

And Hashem saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

929 chapter link:

http://www.929.org.il/lang/en/page/28

Mechon Mamre link: https://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0128.htm

1 And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him: 'Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. 2 Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. 3 And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a congregation of peoples; 4 and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave unto Abraham.' 5 And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Paddan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother. 6 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying: 'Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan'; 7 and that Jacob hearkened to his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan-aram; 8 and Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; 9 so Esau went unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives that he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife. {S} 10 And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 11 And he lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. 12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 13 And, behold, the LORD stood beside him, and said: 'I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. 14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.' 16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.' 17 And he was afraid, and said: 'How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' 18 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. 19 And he called the name of that place Beth-el, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 20 And Jacob vowed a vow, saying: 'If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God, 22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house; and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.'