Yosef, the Redeemer Who Inherited on a Technicality

Gematria assigns every Hebrew letter a number and adds them. Run it on Yosef and on Zion and the same figure comes out of both.

יוֹסֵף — י 10 · ו 6 · ס 60 · ף 80 — 156

צִיּוֹן — צ 90 · י 10 · ו 6 · ן 50 — 156

A man and a city landing on one number is worth an argument rather than an exclamation, and the argument runs through a rule Yosef appears to break.

The redeemer is the younger one

The pattern is set early and held to. Yishmael is born first and Yitzchak carries the line. Esav comes out first and Yaakov takes it. Yishai parades seven sons past Shmuel before the one who matters is sent for from the field.

עוֹד שָׁאַר הַקָּטָן

The youngest still remains. Shmuel I 16:11

By that rule the son who should carry the end of the story is Binyamin, last of the twelve and the only one born in the Land. The blessings of Bereishit 49 are explicitly aimed at the end of days.

וְאַגִּידָה לָכֶם אֵת אֲשֶׁר־יִקְרָא אֶתְכֶם בְּאַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים

And I will tell you what will befall you at the end of days. Bereishit 49:1

The weight of that chapter does not fall on Binyamin.

How Yosef takes it anyway

One verse earlier Yaakov does something to the count itself.

וְעַתָּה שְׁנֵי־בָנֶיךָ הַנּוֹלָדִים לְךָ … אֶפְרַיִם וּמְנַשֶּׁה כִּרְאוּבֵן וְשִׁמְעוֹן יִהְיוּ־לִי

And now your two sons born to you, Efrayim and Menashe, shall be mine like Reuven and Shimon. Bereishit 48:5

Reuven and Shimon are named on purpose. They are positions one and two, and Yaakov hands those positions to Yosef’s children. Yosef does not displace Binyamin by being younger. He does it by acquiring sons who enter the count after everyone else, which makes his line the last-born twice: born latest, and promoted last.

The rule holds, satisfied through a technicality, by the brother whose whole life is conducted through technicalities, readings and interpretations.

The one whose body has to be carried

Yosef is also the only brother who makes the nation swear about his remains.

וְהַעֲלִתֶם אֶת־עַצְמֹתַי מִזֶּה

And you shall bring my bones up from here. Bereishit 50:25

The oath is honoured in the middle of the escape, when nobody has time for freight.

וַיִּקַּח מֹשֶׁה אֶת־עַצְמוֹת יוֹסֵף עִמּוֹ

And Moshe took the bones of Yosef with him. Shemot 13:19

Atzmot, bones, and atzmaut, independence, come off one root, עצם, which also gives atzmi, my own self. A nation walking out of slavery is carrying a box of the word its own independence is built from. The exodus is weighted, deliberately, by him.

What 156 is doing

A city the Gemara says the world was made out of, and a man who had to be carried out of Egypt in a box, resolve to the same number. Zion is the fixed point and Yosef is the portable one, and the arithmetic declines to distinguish them.

156 is also six times twenty-six, and twenty-six is the gematria of the Name, יהוה, ten and five and six and five. Six is the count of a working week, the days something is made in. A number that reads as the Name taken six times is the Name at work rather than the Name at rest, which is the only register Yosef is ever in. He interprets, he administers, he stores grain, he feeds brothers who sold him.

Why the dreams come first

A man who inherits by technicality has to be the kind who reads one. Yosef is handed dreams before he is handed anything else, and he is believed by foreigners long before his own family concedes. The order is not incidental. Reading correctly is the qualification for the role he is not entitled to, and it is the reason the end of the story runs through him and not through the brother the rule pointed at.

That argument is the spine of Volume One, where Yosef is the figure the whole book is organised around. It is free to read, in English and in Hebrew.

The oil named for the Name itself is 26 oilz, twenty-six oils for the twenty-six of יהוה.

Keep reading

• Tzion  the stronghold David renamed, and the place the world was made from
• Tehom  the deep that calls to another deep, and the channel that carries it
• Nun  fifty, and the letter that bends, stands, hangs and vanishes

The map shows how all of it connects.