“THE WORDS OF A TALEBEARER are like wounds,” says the Book of Proverbs.
The brothers were deeply offended by Joseph’s tattling. They resented him not only as their father’s darling, but also as his spy. Joseph’s very presence made them feel uncomfortable. It felt like a judgment, an attack. When they saw him approaching on his nasty little missions, they hardened their hearts and drew back into themselves. Their usual mode of speech to him was sarcasm, though when their father was present they mustered enough self-control to act with civility. Joseph, for his part, was oblivious of his brothers’ resentment. He interpreted their sarcasm as churlishness and ill-temper, and he couldn’t imagine that it had anything to do with him.
At what point does innocence turn into willful blindness, trust into naïveté, appropriate self-esteem into narcissism? But if Joseph hadn’t been so obtuse, he would never have been able to arouse his brothers’ hatred, and thus he would never be sold into Egypt, and thus the whole family would die of starvation in the coming famine. So in the greater scheme of things, his failure of empathy was everyone’s salvation. And his moral flaws—the arrogance and insensitivity that resulted in such apparent mistakes as talebearing and flaunting his father’s preference—were really blessings, woven into a deeper texture of reality. The very notion of mistakes is questionable here; later on, our storyteller shows that he sees it as self-centered short-term thinking. What seems to be a mistake in our lives may actually be a step forward that leads to the Great Way, though we had no way of recognizing that at the time.