According to Abarbanel, the seeming wordiness of 37:12-14 underscores Jacob’s desire not to favor Joseph, and Joseph’s desire to obey his father. Jacob thinks it unfair that Joseph should sit comfortably at home while his brothers are shepherding at Shechem, and therefore suggests (but does not order) that Joseph join them. Joseph consents immediately, because he is humbly zealous to serve his father. According to Rashi, he consents though he knows his brothers hate him (and, presumably, may therefore try to harm him). According to Meam Loez, because Jacob knows that the brothers hate Joseph and are jealous of him, that to reach them he must cross dangerous open country, that Shechem itself is dangerous, and that a servant could easily make the trip, his recklessness in sending Joseph must demonstrate that God is using him to institute his descent, together with his progeny, into Egypt. Malbim agrees. According to Rashbam, Shechem is dangerous because its inhabitants must remember that in 34:25-27 two of the brothers plundered the city in retaliation for the rape of their sister Dina. According to Radak, Jacob does not think the journey will endanger Joseph; and Joseph is not afraid his brothers will try to harm him, because he is convinced that their hatred of him will be governed by their fear of their father. According to Daat Mikrah, Joseph humbly and eagerly obeys his father, though he knows his brothers hate him (and presumably, therefore, may try to harm him). According to Or Hachayim, Jacob believes that Joseph will be protected from the hatred of his brothers because he is honoring his father by obeying his order to visit them. According to Ralbag, Jacob sends Joseph to Shechem though he understands its inhabitants are furious that the two brothers plundered their city, and may therefore harm him. (Why Jacob would expose him to such harm Ralbag does not say.) According to Alshich, Jacob knows Joseph may be harmed by the inhabitants of Shechem, or by his brothers, and therefore does not order him to undertake the journey until he decides, on his own, to undertake it. According to Abarbanel, Jacob never suspects the brothers intend to harm Joseph.
According to Rashi, Abarbanel, and Or Hachayim, the man Joseph meets in the field is an angel; according to Rashi and Abarbanel, the angel Gabriel. According to Or Hachayim, Joseph does not realize the man is an angel. According to Alshich and Ramban, referencing Bereshit Rabbah 84:13, which notes that “a man” is repeated three times, Joseph meets three angels, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, each bearing a different message. According to Ibn Ezra, Joseph meets a man passing by.
According to Gur Aryeh, whose position is paraphrased in Siftei Chachomim, though the entire episode in the field seems unnecessary, it indicates that God, acting through an angel, is instituting the process by which Jacob and his progeny will be drawn down to Egypt; otherwise, having failed to locate his brothers in Shechem, Joseph would not have blundered about, but would have returned home. According to Ramban and Rashbam, the words “blundering about in the fields” bespeak many unspecified difficulties that prompt Joseph to return home that he disregards in order to honor his father’s order. According to Alshich, “blundering” indicates that, as the first angel tells Joseph, he has partially misinterpreted the first of his dreams.
According to Abarbanel, the hidden meaning in the man’s question to Joseph—“What are you looking for?”—is that the brothers will try to harm him; a meaning Joseph does not understand. According to Alshich, the man—in fact, the second angel—is asking Joseph whether he wants peace with his brothers, or strife. And his answer—“I’m looking for my brothers”—means that, whatever they want, he wants peace. According to Ralbag, the question, and the subsequent exchanges, seem to have only their apparent meanings. According to Rashi, beneath the plain meanings in the man’s last two assertions—that the brothers have already “left this area,” and that he has “heard them planning to go to Dothan”—are hidden meanings: respectively, that the brothers no longer feel related to Joseph, and that they are planning to kill him. According to Malbim, the closing assertion should have made Joseph suspicious; because Dothan is so far from Shechem, it should have occurred to him that the brothers want to lure him far from home, then to kill him. According to Alshich, the third angel tells Joseph that his brothers have gone to Dothan; that is, that they have distanced themselves completely from him.
As noted, Reuben and Judah are not among the would-be murderers. According to Daat Mikrah, Simon wants to put an arrow through Joseph at a distance. According to Meam Loez, who references Targum Yonatan, the chief conspirators are Simon and Levi. Abarbanel agrees, fixing on them by a process of elimination, and noting that the blood-thirst that prompted them to slaughter all the men in Shechem to avenge the rape of Dina prompts them to kill Joseph in Shechem. According to Ralbag, the brothers conspire equally.
Perhaps because the ease with which Reuben convinces the other brothers not to murder Joseph strains credibility, traditionalists assert that Reuben proposes—as a ploy, because he plans to rescue Joseph—only that Joseph be murdered indirectly, and that the other brothers agree only to that proposal. But they differ about how Reuben advances his proposal. It is not clear what, in Reuben’s opinion, the immediate consequences of the proposal will be.
According to Rashbam, Ralbag, Rabbenu Bachya, Ramban, and Sforno, Reuben tricks the brothers into casting Joseph into a deep well (from which he hopes to rescue him). According to Rashbam, Malbim and Ralbag, he convinces the brothers that Joseph will die by himself if they merely cast him into a well; and in the desert, where the chance that people will pass by and rescue him is slight. According to Ralbag, Rabbenu Bachya, Ramban, and Sforno, he convinces them also not actually to spill blood.
According to Rashi, referencing Shabbat 72a, and commenting on the assertion in 37:25 that the well into which the brothers throw Joseph “was empty; there was no water in it,” the well does contain poisonous snakes and scorpions. Ramban disagrees; in his opinion, the seemingly unnecessary words “there was no water in it” simply underscore that the well is completely dry. The disagreement is material to the discussion of Reuben’s intent, because, if the well does contain poisonous snakes and scorpions, and Reuben knows it, he must realize that his proposal exposes Joseph to mortal danger, and therefore, it seems, his intention cannot be to rescue him from the brothers. Thus, it seems, Reuben must think that the well is empty. But according to Alshich, referencing The Zohar, Reuben sees the snakes and scorpions, and nonetheless advances his proposal, because he is certain that they will be awed intuitively by the saintliness of Joseph, and will not in consequence harm him. (The Zohar does not seem to share Alshich’s certainty, because it assigns to Reuben only the hope that the snakes and scorpions will not harm Joseph.) According to Ramban, even if the Talmud that Rashi references is correct, it must be that Reuben does not see the snakes and scorpions, because they live in cracks in the well, or because the well is very deep; because if he did see them, he would understand the mortal danger they pose to Joseph, and withdraw his proposal.
According to Rashi, Reuben rescues Joseph because he thinks that, because he is the eldest of the brothers, Jacob will blame only him for Joseph’s death. According to Meam Loez, either of two motives may prompt Reuben: he thinks that, if the other brothers do kill Joseph and later regret having done so, they will rebuke him for not having stopped them; or he is grateful that, though in 35:21 he apparently violated his stepmother Bilhah, Joseph still regards him as a brother, because in his second dream eleven brothers (including Reuben) bow down to him. According to Abarbanel and Daat Mikrah, Reuben saves Joseph as penance for the sin he committed against Bilhah.
Because when the Ishmaelites appear all of the brothers, including Judah, still seem resolved to kill Joseph—though not directly, by shedding his blood—it is not clear why Judah suddenly suggests he be sold instead, and why the other brothers agree. Neither matter seems to have prompted commentary. And a few commentaries that seem to hint at an impulse of conscience in Judah, and perhaps in the other brothers, are especially puzzling, because Judah’s assertion in 37:26 that they will gain nothing if “we kill our brother and cover his blood” in essence reiterates Reuben’s proposal—that the other brothers seem not to regard as a ploy, and that does not seem related in their minds to conscience—that they kill Joseph, though without actually bloodying their hands. Thus, for example, the assertion of Alshich that Judah decides Joseph should not die when he realizes he must be saintly, because the snakes and the scorpions in the well, he notices, do not injure him, and the assertions of Sforno and Meam Loez that Judah realizes conscience will torment