During Purim this year it dawned on me that there are several parallels between the story in the Scroll of Esther and the story of Joseph. It’s hard to say how long this observation has been marinating in my brain, but suddenly this year it leaped forth, nearly fully formed, into consciousness. (No, I was totally sober….so don’t even go there thinking “ahd lo yadah”.) Let me just mention eight, perhaps nine, aspects that now seem obvious to me. Some are fairly strong parallels, a few others a bit less so; some have been noted over many years, but others appear to be original. Let me then end with a modern Midrash, if I may, just for fun.
First, the protagonists in both narratives are away from home, and they are away from home involuntarily. Joseph is stolen away from Eretz Israel, sold by his jealous brothers to a caravan of traders headed down into Egypt. Mordechai is descended from the captives of Nebuchadnezzar, as we are informed in chapter 2. Mordechai is identified as being from the tribe of Benjamin--"the son of Yair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives that had been carried away with King Yechanya" by Nebuchadnezzar. That means he was four generations removed from the beginning of the first exile.[1]
In both cases, too, second, the protagonists are "sold" into slavery. This term is used regarding Joseph in Genesis, chapter 38; in Megillat Esther the reference is to chapter 7, verse 4: "for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed." It is the same root in Hebrew. I cannot think of any other passage in the Hebrew Bible in which a major figure is “sold.”
Third, both Jacob's family, led by Joseph, and the Jews of Persia, led by Mordechai, have a chance at the end of their respective stories to leave exile and go back to Eretz Israel, but they don't. In the case of Joseph, we have to assume that the famine probably ended while Joseph and at least most of his brothers were still alive. After all, we know from the text that it was supposed to be a seven-year famine, five years of which were left at the time of the story. At the end of Esther's story, the Jews are triumphant, and could have chosen to leave if they had wanted to.
In the latter case especially, if Mordechai is, as already noted, the fourth generation removed from the Babylonian exile, and if we figure 18-20 years per generation, which seems about right in those days, that means about 72-80 years; if we figure 25 years per generation, then 100 years after. Since the Temple was finished being rebuilt under Persian auspices 70 years after the exile, it means that Mordechai lived roughly conterminously with Erza—probably just a generation or so later. So not only could the Jews of Shushan and surrounds have returned to Eretz Israel and to what was then a spanking new Second Temple, they would have been safe within the same imperial security sphere, and welcomed by their countrymen, in so doing.
But they didn't; there is not so much as even a proto-Zionist hint in Megillat Esther. This may have something to do with how Purim became ensconced as a holiday in the Rabbinic calendar as that calendar was codified in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.
Unless someone discovers a rare document, we are left to speculate about this, of course. But it could be that in the formative period of rabbinic Judaism Purim acquired equal status with Hannukah, the events of which did happen in Eretz Israel, because of a shrewd Rabbinical political decision to accommodate the large, prosperous and high-status Disapora community that had chosen still not to return from the Babylonian Exile. Not only in Mordechai’s time, but for centuries thereafter, large numbers of Jews lived in what is today Iran, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin, and there were, of course, very important centers of scholarship in these lands outside of Eretz Israel. In other words, by including Purim as having equal status with Hannukah, the Rabbis saw to it that each major chunk of the Jewish people, those in the land, and those outside of it, got equal treatment by way of instituting a post-Biblical holiday.
In any event, in both cases—Egypt and Shushan—many of our forefathers decided to stay in more cosmopolitan, prosperous and urban environments than go to Eretz Yisrael. There's nothing old about that, is there?
Fourth, at a certain relatively early point in the narrative both protagonists obtain portentous confidential information. Joseph has inside knowledge about Pharaoh’s head butler and baker; Mordechai uncovers a plot hatched by (at least) two of the King's servants. The parallel is not exact, because in the story of Joseph only one of the men is found guilty and hanged, while the other is exonerated. In the Purim story, both are found guilty and are hanged. In the case of Joseph, his knowledge of the plot comes to him through a dream. In the case of Mordechai, we are not told (chapter 2, verses 21-23) how he comes upon the hidden knowledge, but it could have been through a dream. Again, as far as I can remember, this narrative device, or motif, is unique to the stories of Joseph and Esther.
Fifth, both protagonists hide their identity—Joseph’s from his brothers, Esther’s from the other women and the King—and then both reveal it at a strategic moment. They do so for the same reason: to save their people from destruction. Both Joseph and Mordechai are explicit about this. Joseph tries to comfort his brothers by saying to them that what they did was part of God's plan, for now Joseph was in a position to save the family from death in the famine. And of course Mordechai explicitly tells a hesitant Esther that she has to go to the King, because for all she knows she has come to her place for just this purpose.
Sixth, both stories make use of a domesticated transport animal as a prop for humiliation and rage. Joseph uses Benjamin's donkey to hide his goblet, so that he can get leverage on his brothers and prevent them leaving his presence before revealing his identity to them. Judah and his brothers (except Benjamin, I imagine, for a reason noted below) are humiliated by this turn of events and made deeply afraid.
A horse, of course, is involved in Haman's humiliation. As the text tells us, when the King can’t sleep one night and asks to be read the chronicles of his kingdom, he learns of Mordechai’s service in revealing the plot of the two chamberlains. He asks what has been done to reward Mordechai, and he is told that nothing has been done. Just as the exonerated butler forget Joseph as he left prison, so no one remembered to tell the King about Mordechai’s service to the court—yet another minor parallel.
So at this point the King asks who is in the court, and it turns out that the evil Haman is come early for a banquet, of which more in a moment. So the king asks Haman what should be done for the man the King wishes to honor, and Haman, thinking the King means him, waxes eloquent and lavish. As soon as Haman finishes speaking, the king tells him to do exactly as he said for Mordechai the Jew, Haman’s nemesis. This involves Haman dressing Mordechai in the King’s robes, and parading him through the streets on the King’s horse. When Haman’s wife Zeresh hears about this, her reaction is very similar to that of Benjamin’s brothers at the discovery of the goblet, as in “Oh, big, big trouble” and “Really done for now, man.”
Seventh, skipping ahead chronologically, both narratives have one common concluding motif, namely that the size of the government grows. Joseph increases the size of the state in the end for Pharaoh, first purchasing cattle for grain and then land for grain in the course of the famine; Ahashverosh levies a tax on the land (chapter 10, verse 1).
The eighth parallel is the most intriguing, and hardest to understand, for me. It is also one that no other commentators seem to have noted. Both narratives feature a repeated, or doubled, meeting or reception.
In the story of Joseph, in chapter 42 of Genesis, Joseph’s brothers come to buy food, but Benjamin, the youngest child and Joseph’s only full brother, does not come with them. He stays behind with his father Jacob. Some strange things happen in chapter 42, including the fact that every man’s money has been surreptitiously returned to him in the sack of purchased corn. The family in time eats up the food and the brothers plead with their father Jacob for permission to return to buy more, but the elder brothers say that this time they must bring Benjamin with them, because the man in Egypt demanded it of them to prove that they were telling the truth and were not spies. Jacob relents and down to Egypt they go. As the brothers try to leave the second time, this is when Joseph has his goblet planted in Benjamin’s donkey’s sack.
In the story of Joseph this doubling of receptions makes sense in terms of how the story’s dramatic plot line develops. A fair bit of time intervenes between audiences; the brothers provide Jacob an after-action report of their dealings in Egypt, Jacob reacts to it, and all this matters to the storyline. This is not quite so clear in the Scroll of Esther.
In chapter 5 of the Megillah, Esther shows up before the King, and the King asks her when she wants. She wants the King and Haman to join her in a banquet, and so they do. And at the banquet the King asks Esther what she wants again, and again Esther answers that she wants the king and Haman to come to another banquet, this time one she will prepare for them tomorrow over at her place. There is no obvious reason that what Esther told the King in Haman's presence during the second banquet she could not have told him during the first banquet, but she didn’t. Of course, in between the first banquet and the second the King has his bout of insomnia, reads about Mordechai’s good deed, and so forth as related just above. But this seems contrived compared to the way the story of Joseph develops so richly, and it is not entirely clear either that Haman’s humiliation is necessary to sealing his eventual fate.
That fate unfolds in chapter 7. The King and Haman arrive at Esther’s banquet, the second one in two days, and once again the King asks Esther what she wants, because the king knows that just eating and drinking well is not sufficient as a request to a King such as he. This is when Esther asks for her life and the lives of her people, when the King expresses astonishment and anger that anyone would threaten his Queen, and when it is revealed that Haman is the evildoer and the people in question are the Jews. The King’s recent discovery of Mordechai’s service to the King doesn’t hurt insofar as how events subsequently transpire, but, again, it’s not entirely clear that this is necessary for Haman and his sons to have ended up on the gallows.
I have tried to think of other Biblical narratives that feature this twin reception/meeting theme, in other words where there is a meeting of characters, and then a repeat meeting with virtually the same characters. Aside from Moses’ repeated audience with Pharaoh before the Exodus—which falls into a different narrative category—I cannot recall another example in the entire Hebrew Bible. (I am still pondering what, if anything, we can learn from this.)
There is even a ninth parallel, perhaps, but not one unique to the stories of Joseph and Esther. Things end well in both stories, sort of. They end well in the sense that the Jewish people are saved alive, and their political power in their particular circumstances is, if anything, strengthened. But these are no “happily ever after” tales. Joseph and his brothers are never truly reconciled, and they all remain in an exile bound for harsh enslavement. As for Mordechai, he is riding high—but what about Esther?
The only honest way to describe what she has done with her life is to prostitute herself at the highest possible level available to her, and for what turns out to be a very noble cause. But prostitution is prostitution, and never does the text indicate that orphan Hadassah is in love with her King, or that she one day becomes a mother by him, or by any other man. Looking at the story from Esther’s point of view, it’s rather sad in a way. Blood lust is loud, and we hear it at high volume in chapter 9 of the Megillah. A mature appreciation of the book needs, I think, to balance that noise with disappointments of the heart that are never stated, only implied. It is possible to understand Esther’s famous remark, “If I perish, I perish” as an expression tantamount to saying that, in her own estimation, her life wasn’t worth very much anyway. That is, I also think, a much fuller reason for fasting on Ta’anit Esther than simply showing solidarity with her own fasting.
I have looked into the commentaries for some insight as to what these parallels between the stories of Joseph and Esther might mean. I have found some, notably in the Midrash, and I have found a few modern comments noting parallels.[3] But none encompasses all the parallels I have noted here, and none is entirely satisfactory on the level of teasing out a larger meaning.
If there is a key, overarching message that binds these two stories, it is, it seems to me, one that characterizes the mindset of the Bible as a whole—and it was a very different mindset from the one common at the time. It is that events, and more importantly the sequence of events, have meaning and purpose, and a definite role in shaping the future. History and life are not random, and events are not cyclical but progressive—a trajectory well described by a helix. There are many, many illustrations of this theme in the Hebrew Bible, but nowhere are they more explicit than in the stories of Joseph and Esther.
As to what other larger meanings there may be, I have but two fragmentary notions. The first concerns Benjamin.
Benjamin links the two stories. Benjamin is a key figure in the story of Joseph, being Joseph's only full brother and the pivot of his stratagem with his other brothers. And, clearly, Mordechai is from the tribe of Benjamin. In the Midrash Rabbi Yohanan sideswipes the point by saying, and bringing textual evidence to bear, that “the trials of Rachel’s children are equivalent and their greatness is equivalent.” Beyond that, an obvious notion is that Benjamin symbolizes the fact that God looks out for and works in history on behalf of the Jewish people whether they are inside Eretz Israel or not. That doesn’t sound very novel, but in the ancient world, which accepted matter-of-factly the connective trilogy of people-land-god, it is an out-of-the-ordinary assertion in the context of its time.
The second concerns the goblet Joseph put in Benjamin's saddlebag, and here is where my “just for fun” modern Midrash comes in.
Cast your memory back to chapter 31 of Genesis. In this chapter the Torah tells us that Rachel stole her father's teraphim, a word usually translated as "gods" or "idols." No reason is given for Rachel's act, but to even begin to understand it, one has to know the importance of unalienable ancestral land and the spirits of the dead in virtually all ancient cultures; knowing that, in turn, tells you how revolutionary Abraham's leaving Ur Kasdim was at the time, a point that moderns generally miss, and it echoes with the point just made that Israel’s God had power universally, not just in a certain land.
Anyway, Rachel's father Laban accuses a fleeing Jacob of having stolen his stuff—meaning his daughters and grandchildren, but he also mentions the teraphim, which he also calls “elohim”, his gods. Jacob, unaware of what Rachel had done, denies the charge in full, and invites Laban and his posse to search the premises. They search but find nothing, because Rachel had hidden them in the saddle pillow of her camel, and refuses to budge because, she says, "the way of women" is upon her. The Torah through Jacob's words, in verse 37, refers to the items now not as "elohim", gods, or teraphim, idols, but as vessels—kaylim.
So we have three words to describe the same thing, and one of them is vessel. The reason is that, if you look into ancient Near Eastern archaeology, you find that vessels used to hold strong drink ("spirits", not at all coincidentally) were part and parcel of idolatrous religious rituals. Speaking just for fun in a Midrashic tense, as it were, I think that these teraphim of Laban were passed on after Rachel's death in childbirth to her children, specifically to her elder child Joseph. I speculate that Joseph took the most important one everywhere he went (it may have been a vehicle for spirits that stimulated his vivid dreams, and his tactlessness in describing them to his jealous brothers), and that Joseph had it with him when he was carried down to Egypt.
I think it is the selfsame vessel, now called a g’viah that we know to have been silver, that Joseph hid away in Benjamin's saddlebag, and I think that when Benjamin saw it uncovered (we are told, by tradition, by Joseph’s elder son and thus Benjamin’s nephew Menashe), he recognized exactly what it was and knew then for a certainty that his brother Joseph was indeed the vizier of Egypt from whom the brothers had just departed.
This may bear on how Joseph singles out Benjamin in the reunion scene in chapter 45, for, if my modern Midrash is right, not only did Benjamin know what was going on, Joseph knew that he would know. Look at verse 12: "And your eyes see", says Joseph to his brothers, "and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaks to you." (Now he has switched to Hebrew, say the commentators, that is the meaning here of the words “my mouth.”) But maybe the verse as a whole means not that Benjamin sees that it is Joseph speaking, but that the brothers can see by the look in Benjamin's eyes the truth of what Joseph is saying, because Benjamin already knows it.
Whatever happened to that goblet? Some Christians with imagination, I am sure, would have a theory about that. But maybe Joseph gave it to his brother Benjamin, and it was then passed down from generation to generation within the tribe of Benjamin, from Kish to Shimei to Yair until it became Mordechai’s and then, yes, Queen Esther’s own. (Mordechai, remember, took Esther “for his own daughter” after her parents died, and there is no mention of Mordechai’s having a wife or a child of his own to inherit property.) I like to think that when Haman saw that goblet at what turned out to be his final banquet, that vessel once belonging to Laban and stolen by Rachel, he somehow already knew that an Agagite could never defeat an Israelite in a battle about right and wrong.
There is another parallel in the larger stories of Pharaoh's and Haman's defeat, of course. As Egypt was despoiled at the Exodus, so were the anti-Semites of Shushan at the time of the first Purim (despite the Jews not seizing the loot, so we are twice told in the Megillah). And so it goes, God willing: As every one of our Prophets has taken pains to teach us, as long as Jews know the difference between right and wrong, and act accordingly, God will ultimately protect a faithful people from its enemies. As we say, “The Glory of Israel does not lie.” Samuel 1, 15:29) And if not, well, we know how that movie ends, too.
[1] I reject the interpretation that Mordechai himself was carried away in the exile, both for logical and grammatical reasons; the pronoun refers to Kish, his great-grandfather. I also reject a traditional interpretation that these men were not Mordechai's immediate male ancestors, but famous ancestors from remote times, because it violates the plain meaning of the text, which one is supposed to avoid doing unless the plain meaning of the text is problematic—i.e., not all that plain. That is certainly not the case here.
[3] Some of these mention some raise close linguistic parallels I have not discussed. See, for example, Rabino Joshua Kullock, “Esther and Joseph: Veiling and Unveiling”, for madrichim.org, 2010; Gavriel Haim Cohen, “Queen Esther in the Footsteps of Joseph the Wise”, in Studies in the Five Megillot: Megillat Esther (Israel Ministry of Education and Culture, 1991); Vered Hollander-Goldfarb, “Purim: Esther and Joseph—Two Models of Exilic Jews”, accessed at www.conservativeyeshiva.org/purim-esther-and-joseph, March 15, 2012. There is also neat little compendium of 13 parallels, found at http: apps.business.ualberta.ca/reshef/purim/joseph.html—no date. I have no idea who is responsible for creating it. Cohen is best at citing precise statements from Midrash Rabbah.
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