Vayigash

[6] Judah recounted how their father had told them that his wife had borne him two sons, one had gone out and was torn in pieces, and if they took the youngest and harm befell him, it would bring down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

[22] Pharaoh directed Joseph to tell his brothers to go to Canaan and bring their father and their households back to Egypt.

[61] Von Rad likened the theology of Joseph's statement to his brothers in Genesis 45:5–8, “And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.

Von Rad likened Joseph's magnanimity in Genesis 45:4–5 to that of Proverbs 24:29, which counsels: "Say not: 'I will do so to him as he has done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.

'"[64] And Von Rad likened the theology of Joseph's statement to his brothers in Genesis 45:5–8, "And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.

The parashah has parallels or is discussed in these early nonrabbinic sources:[65] Philo observed that having attained authority and presented with the opportunity to avenge his brothers' ill-treatment of him, Joseph nonetheless bore what happened with self-restraint and governed himself.

Philo taught that wise people see themselves as sojourners in a foreign land—the body perceptible by the senses—and view the virtues appreciable by the intellect as their native land.

Bar Shemaya taught that Judah exclaimed that he would only need to utter one word (dabar) and bring a plague (deber) upon the Egyptians.

Rabbi Ḥanin taught that Judah became angry, and the hairs of his chest pierced through his clothes and forced their way out, and he put iron bars into his mouth and ground them to powder.

[71] Judah ben Ezekiel taught that three things shorten a person's years: To support the proposition that assuming airs of authority shortens one's life, the Gemara cited the teaching of Ḥama bar Ḥanina that Joseph died (as Genesis 50:26 reports, aged 110) before his brothers because he assumed airs of authority (when in Genesis 43:28 and 44:24–32 he repeatedly allowed his brothers to describe his father Jacob as "your servant").

Thus the Midrash taught that the words of Proverbs 29:23, "A man's pride shall bring him low," apply to Joseph, who in this encounter ostentatiously displayed his authority.

[86] But a Midrash taught that the words "the good of the land of Egypt" in Genesis 45:18 referred to split beans (which were highly prized).

Alternatively, a Baraita read the words of Genesis 45:24 to mean that Joseph told his brothers not to take long strides and should enter a city to spend the night before the sun has set.

The Gemara taught that taking long strides harms a person’s eyesight, and that loss is not worth the time saved.

Rav Naḥman bar Isaac, however, derives the proposition from 2 Samuel 12:13: "The Lord also (גַּם‎, gam) has put away your sin, you shall not die.

Thus Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba taught that if one begins a precept and does not complete it, the result will be that he will bury his wife and children.

[101] Similarly, a Midrash taught that Serah (mentioned in Genesis 46:17) conveyed to the Israelites a secret password handed down from Jacob so that they would recognize their deliverer.

Rabbah bar Mari replied that Rabbi Joḥanan said that they were those whose names were repeated in the Farewell of Moses, Deuteronomy 33:2–29 (and thus the mightier of the brothers).

"[112] Rav Judah in the name of Samuel deduced from Genesis 47:14 that Joseph gathered in and brought to Egypt all the gold and silver in the world.

[115] Reading the words of Genesis 47:21, "He [Joseph] removed them city by city," a Midrash taught that similarly, the Israelites were not forced into exile from the Land of Israel until the Assyrian king Sennacherib had mixed up the whole world, as Isaiah 10:13 quotes Sennacherib saying, "I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and have brought down as one mighty the inhabitants.

"[116] Rabbi Abba ben Kahana taught that Joseph inspired the Egyptians with a longing to be circumcised and convert to Judaism.

"[119] The parashah is discussed in these medieval Jewish sources:[120] Nachmanides taught that Joseph did not show favoritism to his own family in distributing food during the famine.

[123] Ephraim Speiser argued that in spite of its surface unity, the Joseph story, on closer scrutiny, yields two parallel strands similar in general outline, yet markedly different in detail.

When the brothers were on their way home from their first mission to Egypt with grain, they opened their bags at a night stop and were shocked to find the payment for their purchases.

[125] Kselman reported that recent scholarship points to authorship of the Joseph narrative in the Solomonic era, citing Solomon's marriage to Pharaoh's daughter (reported in 1 Kings 9:16) as indicative of that era as one of amicable political and commercial relations between Egypt and Israel, thus explaining the positive attitude of the Joseph narrative to Egypt, Pharaoh, and Egyptians.

More generally, Rendsburg concluded that royal scribes living in Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE were responsible for Genesis; their ultimate goal was to justify the monarchy in general, and the kingship of David and Solomon in particular; and Genesis thus appears as a piece of political propaganda.

[128] Donald Redford and other scholars following him suspected that behind the Joseph story stood an altogether invented Egyptian or Canaanite tale that was popular on its own before an editor changed the main characters to Jacob and his sons.

[130] Von Rad and scholars following him noted that the Joseph story bears the particular signatures of ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature.

[131] The wisdom ideology maintained that a Divine plan underlay all of reality, so that everything unfolds in accordance with a preestablished pattern—precisely what Joseph says to his brothers in Genesis 44:5 and 50:20.

[137] Von Rad and Gunther Plaut argued that readers should not judge Joseph by modern opinion, but should place his actions in context.