1. (46:28-30) Joseph and Jacob have a tearful reunion.
2. (46:30-47:10) Joseph appeals to Pharaoh to allow his family to settle in the region of Goshen. Pharaoh agrees. Jacob is presented to Pharaoh.
3. (47:11-27) Joseph’s policies of distribution and rationing of food during the famine result in an increase in the wealth and power of the central government.
Keeping a Positive Attitude
And Joseph brought Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “the days of the years of my sojournings are a hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained the days of the years of my fathers in their days of sojourning.” And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from Pharaoh’s presence. (Genesis 47:7-9, Robert Alter’s translation)
Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life. Jacob’s somber summary of his own life echoes with a kind of complex solemnity against all that we have seen him undergo. He has, after all, achieved everything he aspired to achieve: the birthright, the blessing, marriage with his beloved Rachel, progeny, and wealth. But one measure of the profound moral realism of the story is that although he gets everything he wanted, it is not in the way he would have wanted, and the consequence is far more pain than contentment. From his “clashing” (25:22) with his twin in the womb, everything has been a struggle. He displaces Esau, but only at the price of fear and lingering guilt and long exile. He gets Rachel, but only by having Leah imposed on him, with all the domestic strife that entails, and he loses Rachel early in childbirth. He is given a new name by his divine adversary, but comes away with a permanent wound. He gets the full solar-year number of twelve sons, but there is enmity among them (for which he bears some responsibility), and he spends twenty-two years continually grieving over his favorite son, who he believes is dead. This is, in sum, a story with a happy ending that withholds any simple feeling of happiness at the end. (Robert Alter)
When Jacob said few and evil, God said to him, “I rescued you from Esau and Laban, and I returned both Dina and Joseph to you, and you complain about your life that its days were few and evil! By your life, I will count the words from VayomerPharoah [And Pharoah said] until bimeim’gureihem[in their days of sojourning] and subtract from your years so that you will not live as long as your father Isaac, which equals thirty-three years, for Isaac lived 180 years and Jacob only lived 147. (Midrash cited in Torah Sh’leimah)
Rabbi Chayim Shmuelevitz would frequently cite this Midrash and explained that we should gain such a great appreciation for life itself that even if we have many difficulties in life, we will still live a life of joy. Experiencing this daily joy of living, we would be unable to say that our life was bad. The ultimate level to strive for is that you should feel tremendous joy in living, and then trivial matters will not cause you to complain.
This concept, said Rav Chayim, is what the Midrash to Eichah meant when it stated that life itself is sufficient that we should have no complaints in this world. An illustration of this is someone who was drinking from a glass that fell and broke. The person might be irritated about the inconveniences involved. But imagine the scene if at the exact moment the glass fell and broke, someone would run in and tell this person that he had just won a huge sum of money in the national sweepstakes. He would be so overwhelmed with his good fortune that he would be oblivious to the loss of a glass and the bother of having to sweep it up. Similarly, someone who feels the joy inherent in life itself will have no complaints when things do not work out the way he would wish. He feels so high that nothing will be able to take away his positive feelings. (Zelig Pliskin, Growth Through Torah)
