Genesis44chapter 44

A seam of the reading cycle falls inside this chapter. The portion Miketz ends at Genesis 44:17 and the portion Vayigash begins at 44:18, so a congregation hears the discovery of the cup on one Sabbath and Judah's speech on the next, and the chapter's two halves are never read together (src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, the entries for portions ten and eleven). The break falls at the sentence where Judah steps forward, which is where the classical commentary also changes register: Rashi's comment on that verse is about how a man gets a hearing from a ruler rather than about the cup at all.

Rashi reads the brothers' protest as a piece of formal reasoning. Their argument from the returned money to the stolen cup is "one of the ten inferences from minor to major mentioned in the Bible", and he sends the reader to the list in Genesis Rabbah 92:7 (Rashi on Genesis 44:8:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain). The search beginning at the eldest he explains as concealment, "so that they should not perceive that he knew where it was", on Genesis Rabbah 92:8, and the loading of the asses as a note on the men themselves, "They were stalwart men and did not require the assistance of each other in loading" (Rashi on Genesis 44:12:1 and 44:13:1). Judah's opening words he reads as a request that they be heard rather than merely spoken, "May my words penetrate into your ears", on Genesis Rabbah 93:6 (Rashi on Genesis 44:18:1), and he reads Judah's whole speech as an accusation that the questioning had been a pretext from the first (Rashi on Genesis 44:19:1). The fear that Benjamin would die on the road he grounds in the family's own history, "because indeed his mother died during a journey" (Rashi on Genesis 44:22:1). Radak says at the outset what the chapter is: "Joseph arranged this whole charade in order to discomfort the brothers and to make them feel afraid" without doing them real harm (Radak on Genesis 44:1:1, translated by Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY), and he glosses two constructions in the Hebrew as ordinary usage with parallels elsewhere in Scripture (Radak on Genesis 44:3:1 and 44:4:1). Sforno follows Judah's retelling step by step and reads it as an account of duress: the brothers had told the man the truth, their father had still refused, and "due to the severity of the famine we forced our father to send the lad" (Sforno on Genesis 44:23:1, 44:24:1 and 44:25:1, Munk translation, CC-BY). Ramban's English is in the corpus on Jacob's words about his wife's two sons, and he opens by asking why the argument works at all (Ramban on Genesis 44:27:1, the Commentary on the Torah by Ramban, translated and annotated by Charles B. Chavel, Shilo Publishing House, New York, 1971 to 1976, CC-BY). Ibn Ezra comments here at 44:5:1 and 44:21:1 and Malbim at 44:26:1, and the corpus holds no English of either under a licence permitting quotation, so they stand as citations.

The corpus records forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, thirty-nine of them Midrash and one Talmud. Midrash Lekach Tov is the densest work here, cited at Genesis 44:2:1, 44:2:2, 44:6:1, 44:21:1, 44:22:1, 44:23:1, 44:25:1, 44:26:1, 44:28:1 and 44:34:1 and at Genesis 41:1:1 and Exodus 9:29:1. Bereshit Rabbati is cited at Parashat Miketz 27, 52, 53 and 54 and at Parashat Vayigash 1, Midrash Sekhel Tov at Bereshit 44:5:1, 44:5:2, 44:6:1 and 44:7:1, Bereshit Rabbah at 84:17, 84:20, 92:6, 92:8, 92:9 and 100:3, and Aggadat Bereshit at 22:2, 56:1, 61:3, 76:1 and 76:3. The Ein Yaakov collection is cited five times, at Taanit 1:43, Pesakhim 1:12, Ketubot 3:1 and Sotah 1:50 in the Glick edition and at Ketubbot 3:1. Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 14:20 is cited once, at Judah's offer to stay in the boy's place. The single Talmud locator is Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 44:2, at the inference from minor to major. Rashi hands on further sayings with their locators, among them Genesis Rabbah 92:7, 92:8, 93:6 and 93:8.