he is a naar, he is exploited by the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, who make him their servant. According to Alshich, because he is a naar he serves them as a matter of course (not, apparently, because they exploit him). According to Abarbanel, naar is a compliment: though he is only a lad, he is in charge of all of the shepherding, because, as noted, he supervises all of his brothers. According to Rashbam, the words “and he was a lad (naar) with the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah” indicate that he acts immaturely primarily when he consorts with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. According to Daat Mikrah, the same words indicate that Jacob instructs the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah to educate Joseph. According to Sforno, naar indicates that, because he is immature, Joseph sins against his brothers by bringing bad reports about them to their father. According to Malbim, Joseph serves his brothers because he thinks it is appropriate that, as a naar, he do so. According to Ramban, he is called naar because he is less robust physically than his brothers, and because he is the youngest of the brothers involved in shepherding. (Ramban apparently assumes that Benjamin does not participate in the shepherding.)
According to Rashi, Ramban, and Malbim, the opening words of 37:2—“These are the chronicles of Jacob”—begin the narrative that occupies the rest of Genesis; in effect, the chronicles of the lives of Jacob’s children. Rashbam, who agrees, explains why the words cannot be understood as introducing a list of the progeny of Jacob (that is, why 37:2 cannot be parallel in meaning to 36:1, which introduces the chronicles of Esau). According to Ibn Ezra, Radak, and Sforno, the words refer to the events that occur to Jacob. According to Chizkuni, the words “These are the chronicles of Jacob, Joseph” indicate that the story of Joseph, interrupted by the chronicles of Esau, is resuming. Or Hachayim offers as the plain meaning of the words an interpretation Rashi seems to regard as homiletic: the assertion, in Midrash Rabbah 84:3, that because Jacob wishes to live in tranquility, a luxury God typically refuses to grant to saintly men, the anguish of Joseph’s disappearance is inflicted upon him. (Or Hachayim offers two other possibilities as the plain meaning of the words.) According to Abarbanel, because only Joseph emulates Jacob’s virtues, only he can properly be called his progeny, and thus only his life deserves to be chronicled.
According to Malbim, Joseph does not bring to his father any bad report—any slander—of his own regarding any of his brothers; he reports the evil rumors the sons of Leah are spreading about the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, and those the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah are spreading about the sons of Leah. And he does so in the pious hope that his father will admonish them. According to Sforno, the bad report is that the brothers are neglecting their work as shepherds. According to Rashi and Or Hachayim, who reference Bereshit Rabbah 84:7, Joseph brings to his father a bad report about the sons of Leah only: that they eat the limbs of living animals, demean the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, and engage in illicit sexual relationships. According to Rashbam, Joseph tells his father that, unlike Leah’s sons, he treats the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah with respect. According to Ibn Ezra, Joseph complains to his father that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah have made him their servant. According to Ramban, he slanders only the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah; and in a particularly nasty fashion, as the seeming redundancy of dibatam ra (“a bad report”) indicates. According to Radak, Joseph tells his father his brothers hate him. According to Daat Mikrah and Alshich, the words “Joseph brings (va’yavei) his father (el avihem) a bad report about them” compliment Joseph, because the use of “brought” rather than “disseminated” (va’yotza) shows his restraint, as does the fact that he brings the report only to his father. According to Abarbanel and Alshich, Joseph repeats to his father—and only to his father—slander about his brothers that he hears in the marketplace, but that he himself does not believe.
According to Ababanel and Kli Yakar, Jacob loves Joseph more than he loves his other sons because Joseph is superior to them in wisdom, as he shows in the diversity of his responses: by behaving, for example, as a naar, a youth, when consorting with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, but as a ben z’kunim—not “a child of his old age,” but “a wise son who understands the deference due to old age”—when consorting with his old and saintly father. According to Rashi, ben z’kunim may be taken literally; or the words may mean that Joseph is preeminent in wisdom; or z’kunim is a play on two Aramaic words that assert that Joseph’s facial features are identical to Jacob’s. According to Ibn Ezra, the words must be taken literally, and they apply to Benjamin as well as to Joseph. Rashbam agrees that they must be taken literally; but adds that Joseph is the last of Jacob’s eleven children born in Padan-Aram, and that Benjamin is not born until many years after ben z’kunim is asserted. According to Radak, the words cannot be taken literally, because all of Jacob’s sons are born within seven years; they mean that Joseph is preeminent in wisdom. According to Ramban, Joseph cannot be singled out as literally a ben z’kunim, because all of Jacob’s sons are born to him in his old age, and because, as noted, Issachar and Zebulun are about the same age as Joseph; and the words ben z’kunim mean Joseph attends Jacob in his old age. According to Siftei Chachamim, all of Jacob’s sons except Benjamin are born within six years; people become accustomed to calling the youngest of them, Joseph, ben z’kunim; and continue to do so when Benjamin is born, years later. According to Chizkuni, Jacob does not love Benjamin, who is indeed younger than Joseph, as much as he loves Joseph, because Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. According to Malbim, Jacob loves Joseph especially either because ben z’kunim is intended literally, or because Joseph attends him in his old age.
About why, in 37:8, Joseph’s brothers hate him for “his words” as well as for relating his dream, and about why a single dream is referred to as “dreams,” in the plural, opinions differ.
According to Rashi, Ralbag, and Rashbam, “his words” refer to the bad report—the slander of the brothers—that Joseph brings to their father. According to Rabbenu Bachya, Sforno, and Ramban, they refer to Joseph’s seeming arrogance in instructing the brothers, in 37:4, to “Listen to the dream I had.” (Rabbenu Bachya also notes his three-fold repetition in 37:7 of “behold!”—v’hinei—which Kaplan does not translate.) According to Kli Yakar, Joseph does not instruct his brothers arrogantly, but petitions them humbly, to listen to his dream; but they are so incensed by its substance that, despite their resolve not to talk to Joseph at all, they blurt out an indignant response, and hate Joseph the more that “his words” have provoked it. According to Or Hachayim, the brothers object both to Joseph’s assertion that he has had a dream (“his dreams”), and to the fact that he recounts it (“his words”). According to Malbim, their hatred increases because they are convinced that “his dreams” reflect what he has been thinking during his waking hours, and “his words” prove that he wants to be appointed their ruler at once.
According to Or Hachayim, although 37:8 speaks of only one dream, the plural is used because each of the three times Joseph says “behold!”—v’hinei—the brothers assume Joseph is speaking about a different dream; therefore they think that he recounts three dreams. According to Sforno and Alshich, “dreams” denotes the particulars of a single dream. According to Meam Loez, in 37:5 Joseph has a dream that he does not recount, and another dream, in 37:6-8, that he does recount; and thus “dreams” is to be understood literally.
According to Rashi, Jacob rebukes Joseph in 37:10 for seeming to predict that his mother, Rachel, who is dead, will one day bow down to him. Unaware that Joseph is referring to Bilhah, who raised him, Jacob undermines the credibility of the dream in order to nullify the brothers’ jealousy. Ralbag and Or Hachayim agree that that is why he undermines it. Whether Rashi and Ralbag think Jacob regards all of the dream as prophetic is not clear; according to Or Hachayim, Sforno, and Siftei Chachamim, Jacob does. According to Rashbam, Jacob would have rebuked Joseph for the reference to Rachel even if she had still been alive. Ibn Ezra agrees that Joseph is referring to Bilhah. According to Ramban, Jacob’s assumption that the moon in 37:9 in Joseph’s second dream—“The sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me”—refers to any of his wives is mistaken; it refers, in his opinion, to all of his descendants who go down to Egypt, except Joseph’s brothers (“the eleven stars”). According to Rabbenu Bachya, on the one hand, because Rachel could not bow down to Joseph, Jacob discounts the entire dream; on the other hand, he thinks it prophetic
