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Seventeen?
At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers
…
Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt.
What is the meaning of the mirrored existences between father and son, Canaan and Egypt, the beginning of one life and the end of another?
Might it be connected to another beginning and end in the Torah, also marked by the number “seventeen”?
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day. All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open.
…
so that in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
Is the Torah telling us that there is a parallel between the flood, as a period of profound change and reset for the world, and the time when Jacob and his sons were separated?
Why? What can we learn from the connection?
Note that “seventeen” only appears one other time in the text:
These are the entire number of the children of Israel: Six hundred thousand, seventeen hundred and thirty.
Why? And is there any connection between the 600 and 17 found in the commencement of the flood, and the same numbers in the census count?
Why the Thigh?
place your hand under my thigh (yerech) as a pledge of your steadfast loyalty: please do not bury me in Egypt.
This word yerech is a fascinating one. Avraham makes his servant swear by putting his hand “under Avraham’s yerech.” Jacob does the same thing to Joseph. And in the wrestling match with the angel, Jacob’s yerech is changed forever.
Why?
The word Yerech means “loins.” “And all the souls that came out of the yerech of Jacob were seventy souls.” (Ex 1:5) Yerech, then, is the place that emits seed, the font of biological procreative power.
But in a Jew, that place is circumcised! It is the only physical mark by which a Jew is distinguished from a non-Jew. Why? The circumcision is specifically to harness and focus our biological powers in the service of a relationship with G-d. Is a Jew’s yerech a declaration? Might it mean: “I am not an animal; my physicality is constrained to be godly.”?
If this is right, the yerech in itself is not important for what it is – it is instead important for what it can do – make children, in holiness. In other words, is the yerech the core symbol of a Jews’ holiness?!
So when Avraham and Jacob make people swear critical oaths by holding his yerech, is it a symbolic connection to the most primal and basic aspect of a Jew’s connection with G-d – the very same place where a Jewish man intimately connects with his wife!
If this is so, does it explain this verse?
Zevulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea, and [the shore] shall be a shore for ships, and his flank (yerech) shall be upon Sidon.
Just as we can take a part of our body that can easily be reduced to the most profane thing man can imagine (just look at how sailor’s descriptors of intimacy form the linguistic backbone of a gutter society) and make it holy, so, too was Zevulun charged with taking the great port of Sidon, and marking it with a Jewish imprimatur?
Is a yerech for a Jew the key to immortality, the polar opposite to the way that in profane cultures, the yerech is the symbol of short-term hedonism?
Might this explain why the Torah uses the word yerech another time?
All the souls belonging to Jacob that came into Egypt, that came out of his loins (yerech), besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six. (Gen 46:26 and Ex. 1:5)
This word is NOT used in this way for Jacob’s ancestors. Unlike everyone who came before him (Avraham had 8 sons, but only Isaac inherited the legacy; Isaac had Jacob and Esau, and only Jacob continued), wasn’t every single product of Jacob’s loins sanctified, and included in the family going forward?
Perhaps Jacob’s offspring were not merely biological or natural products. They were instead the result of a sanctification that had heretofore not existed in the world, a family that, after enormous trials and tribulations, still stayed together, each person different from the next, but unified under a common standard?
Might this even connect to the use of yerech for the sotah?
Then the priest shall cause the woman to swear with the oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman–the LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh (yerech) to fall away, and thy belly to swell;
Why does her yerech fall away? Might it be because if she has been unfaithful, then she has defiled her yerech – she loses her relationship to her husband, to G-d, and to holiness? Her yerech would no longer be holy, or even hers to keep, and it falls away?
From Nasseh?
Joseph’s son Menashe’s name means “from” nasseh. But what is a nasseh?
Nasseh is only found in four verses in all. Here are two of them:
If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them like a nasseh; exact no interest from them.
and
When you make a loan of any sort to your compatriot, you must not enter the house to seize the pledge. You must remain outside, while the man to whom you loaned (nasseh) brings the pledge out to you.
Nasseh seems to be a contractual obligation of some kind? Might that explain why Jacob is wounded in his nasseh – that it was a price he paid in return for his blessings?
Might Joseph have meant the same word the same way: the Menashe is not named so as to forget his father’s house, but is instead a way of acknowledging Joseph’s debt to G-d for the blessings Joseph received? Is the nasseh, and Menasseh both really about accepting the obligations that come with the blessings we receive?