Why Bondage?
An exploration of why the Children of Israel were destined to be slaves to Pharaoh
By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch; Provided by the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Conservative rabbinical seminary and university of Jewish studies.
The book of Genesis ends as it starts, with its lead characters in a state of exile.
The existential human condition is to be out of place, far from home. Jacob's clan no longer resides in the land promised to his father and grandfather. Yet the narrator makes it unmistakably clear that their final destination was not Egypt, but Canaan, the land that would eventually bear Jacob's other name, Israel, the one who "strove with beings divine and human and prevailed" (Genesis 32:29).
Prior to relocating to Egypt, to be reunited with his long-lost son Joseph, Jacob is reassured by God that "I Myself will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will also bring you back" (Genesis 46:4). As the end of his life approaches, Jacob beseeches Joseph to inter him in the family burial place in Hebron (47:29-30), and in a subsequent conversation makes pointed reference to Canaan as his nation's "everlasting possession" (48:4). Joseph, indeed, accorded his father a protracted state funeral on the way to burying him in "the field of Makhpelah" (50:13). As for Joseph, he did not ask the same of his brothers, only that when God restores them to Canaan, they should take his embalmed bones with them for burial.
Reaffirming Canaan
In short, the Torah goes out of its way at this juncture to reaffirm Canaan as the sacred destiny of Jacob's progeny. Despite the detour into Egypt, the storyline never loses sight of its end. As Joseph avers to his brothers, they are in Egypt by design, not accident. What appears to happen at random up close, from a distance gains purpose and meaning. God employed Joseph to rescue his family, if not Egypt itself, from a terrible famine. Henceforth, the fate of both will be intertwined, though Israel's sojourn is never destined to become permanent.
The question I wish to ask is what was the need for the sojourn in the first place? If the narrative leaves nothing to chance, what did it intend to accomplish by subjecting the nation to emerge from Abraham's loins to centuries of suffering? God guides Abraham to Canaan only to tell him when he gets there that the land is not yet his, that his descendants will have to endure affliction and bondage in a land not their own for some 400 years (Genesis 15:13). The wrinkle suggests a change of heart. The story is so familiar to us that we have stopped feeling the inelegance of the plot. Or perhaps, God's will is not to be questioned.
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