Study Desk

So ‘Esav lived in the hill-country of Se‘ir. (‘Esav is Edom.)

He said to him, "Go now, see whether things are going well with your brothers and with the sheep, and bring word back to me." So he sent him away from the Hevron Valley, and he went to Sh'khem,

So come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these water cisterns here. Then we'll say some wild animal devoured him. We'll see then what becomes of his dreams!"

(iii) So it was that when Yosef arrived to be with his brothers, they stripped off his robe, the long-sleeved robe he was wearing,

So when the Midyanim, merchants, passed by, they drew and lifted Yosef up out of the cistern and sold him for half a pound of silver shekels to the Yishma‘elim, who took Yosef on to Egypt.

But ‘Er, Y'hudah's firstborn, was evil from Adonai 's perspective, so Adonai killed him.

However, Onan knew that the child would not count as his; so whenever he had intercourse with his brother's wife, he spilled the semen on the ground, so as not to give his brother offspring.

What he did was evil from Adonai 's perspective, so he killed him too.

Then Y'hudah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, "Stay a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up"; for he thought, "I don't want him to die too, like his brothers." So Tamar went and lived at home with her father.

So she took off her widow's clothes, completely covered her face with her veil, and sat at the entrance to ‘Einayim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah had grown up, but she still was not being given to him as his wife.

So he went over to her where she was sitting and said, not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, "Come, let me sleep with you." She answered, "What will you pay to sleep with me?"

He answered, "What should I give you as a guarantee?" She said, "Your seal, with its cord, and the staff you're carrying in your hand." So he gave them to her, then went and slept with her; and she conceived by him.

So he returned to Y'hudah and said, "I couldn't find her; also the people there said, ‘There hasn't been any prostitute here.'"

Y'hudah said, "All right, let her keep the things, so that we won't be publicly shamed. I sent the kid, but you didn't find her."

But then he withdrew his hand, and his brother came out; so she said, "How did you manage to break out first?" Therefore he was named Peretz [breaking out].

So he left all his possessions in Yosef's care; and because he had him, he paid no attention to his affairs, except for the food he ate. Now Yosef was well-built and handsome as well.

The prison warden made Yosef supervisor of all the prisoners in the prison; so that whatever they did there, he was in charge of it.

So he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison, in the same place where Yosef was kept.

He asked Pharaoh's officers there with him in the prison of his master's house, "Why are you looking so sad today?"

Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, so I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and gave the cup to Pharaoh."