The Son of Yosef

A question asked in a sukkah

This week we were asked: What should we expect when Mashiach comes? Will he be born of a virgin, come in the clouds, be married? If Yeshua was Mashiach ben Yosef and we missed him, how would we know the next time?

These are two classes’ worth of questions. Today we take the first Messiah, the one tradition calls Mashiach ben Yosef, the son of Yosef. Tomorrow we take Mashiach ben David, the king.

We are in the right place to ask. The only passage in the Babylonian Talmud that names Mashiach ben Yosef is in Masechet Sukkah (52a). It comes in the middle of the Gemara’s discussion of the Simchat Beit HaSho’evah, the great water-drawing celebration of this very week. The sages were talking about the happiest night of the year when they stopped to speak of a Messiah who is killed and mourned. Joy and mourning sit together on that page. They sit together in this festival, too, and they sit together in the story of Yosef.

Where the idea comes from

The words “Mashiach ben Yosef” never appear in the Tanakh. The pattern does, beginning with Yosef himself. He is loved by his father, hated by his brothers, stripped, thrown into a pit and sold to the nations. He goes down to the lowest place and rises to the right hand of the throne. There he feeds the whole world, and in the end he saves the very brothers who sold him: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20).

The Torah then carries the pattern forward to Yosef’s son. When Yaakov blesses Ephraim and Menashe, he crosses his hands and puts his right hand on the younger, Ephraim (Genesis 48:14–19). That blessing was never fully realized in Israel’s history, and so the sages read it as pointing to the end. The prophets keep using the name. “I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9). “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child?” (Jeremiah 31:20).

Three more verses give ben Yosef his work:

• The ox. Moshe blesses Yosef: “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim” (Deuteronomy 33:17). The Midrash reads Yaakov’s message to Esav, “I have oxen and asses” (Genesis 32:6), as two redeemers. The ox is the one anointed for war, from Yosef. The ass is the King Messiah, riding on a donkey (Bereishit Rabbah 75:6).

• The flame. “The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble” (Obadiah 1:18). The Talmud concludes that Esav falls only by the hand of Yosef’s descendants (Bava Batra 123b).

• The Targum. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 40:11 speaks of “Messiah son of Ephraim,” by whose hand Israel will prevail over Gog. The Targum on Song of Songs 4:5 speaks of “your two redeemers, Messiah son of David and Messiah son of Ephraim,” and likens them to Moshe and Aharon.

So before we reach the Talmud we already have a figure. He is Yosef’s son, suffers at his brothers’ hands, is hidden among the nations and fights Esav. He also stands beside another redeemer from David.

The page in Sukkah

The Mishnah says that at the water-drawing celebration the Temple court was rebuilt with balconies, so that men and women would be kept apart (Sukkah 51b). The Gemara asks for a source and finds one in Zechariah. On the day of mourning at the end of days, “the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart” (Zechariah 12:12). If men and women stand apart even while mourning, how much more at a celebration (Sukkah 52a).

Then the Gemara asks: whom are they mourning? The verse just before says: “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

There are two answers. Rabbi Dosa says it is for Mashiach ben Yosef, who is killed. The Rabbis say it is for the evil inclination, which is killed. The Gemara weighs both, then moves on without deciding.

Two answers, one event

We do not have to choose. If the pierced one is a righteous man whose death breaks the power of sin, then both answers describe the same day. Israel looks on the one they pierced, and in that same moment the evil inclination is slain. The next verse points the same way: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zechariah 13:1). The mourning for the Messiah and the death of sin come together.

Ask of me

The Gemara then brings a baraita (Sukkah 52a). Hashem says to Mashiach ben David, who is about to be revealed: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance” (Psalm 2:8). But Mashiach ben David has seen Mashiach ben Yosef killed. So he asks for only one thing, life. Hashem answers that his father David already prophesied it: “He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever” (Psalm 21:4).

Notice what the baraita leaves out. The verse in Psalm 2 begins, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (2:7). Midrash Tehillim on this psalm applies it to the King Messiah. The Messiah is “Son” in the Jewish sense: chosen, anointed, begotten to kingship on the day of his coronation. He is not Hashem, and he asks Hashem for life.

Ephraim, My righteous Messiah

The fullest picture of a suffering Messiah in rabbinic literature is not in the Talmud. It is in Pesikta Rabbati (chapters 36–37), with a parallel in Yalkut Shimoni on Isaiah (remez 499).

Before the world was made, the midrash says, Hashem hid a light beneath His throne for the Messiah. The Satan sees it and falls on his face, and asks whose light it is. Hashem shows the Messiah the sins of the generations that he will carry, a “yoke of iron” that will bow him down. The Messiah accepts with joy. He asks only one thing: that not only the living be saved, but the dead since Adam, and even the souls not yet created. Hashem agrees.

In the time of redemption, the midrash goes on, the patriarchs rise and speak to him. “Ephraim, our righteous Messiah, though we are your fathers, you are greater than we, for you bore the sins of our children.” Here the name is explicit. The suffering Messiah is Ephraim, the son of Yosef.

Later sources build on this:

• The two birds. To purify a leper, the Torah takes two living, clean birds. One is slain, and the other is dipped in its blood and set free (Leviticus 14:4–7). The Or HaChaim reads the two birds as the two Messiahs. The first Messiah, from Ephraim, will die as he is revealed, “as an atonement for the sins of the people.” The second lives and goes free. This fits the Talmud’s name for the Messiah, “the leper of the house of Rabbi,” drawn from Isaiah 53:4: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Sanhedrin 98b).

• His blood. The Shelah (Shnei Luchot HaBrit, on Vayeshev) says ben Yosef does not come to found his own kingdom but to restore David’s. He gives his life, and his blood atones for Israel.

• The righteous atone. The principle behind all this is old. The death of Miriam is placed beside the red heifer to teach that the death of the righteous atones (Moed Katan 28a). When Hashem wishes to heal the world, says the Zohar, He strikes one righteous man, as a physician lets blood from the arm to heal the whole body. The Zohar quotes the servant song: “with his stripes we are healed” (Zohar III:218a; Isaiah 53:5).

The Targum opens that same passage with “Behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper” (Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 52:13). The Ramban, reading it as the Messiah, adds a detail we will need tomorrow. The Messiah is mocked because he comes “meek and riding upon an ass,” as Moshe first entered Egypt.

Must he die?

The sources say yes, no, and “it depends,” and each answer holds part of the truth.

It depends on us. The Arizal gave a kavanah for the blessing over Jerusalem in the Amidah. At the words “the throne of David,” we pray that Mashiach ben Yosef will live and not be killed. The book Kol HaTor, from the school of the Vilna Gaon, says the harsh decree can be softened: instead of death he may pass through many trials. Rabbi Chaim Vital records that in every generation one soul bears the role of ben Yosef. If the righteous stand with him and protect him, he does not die; if they do not, he must (Sefer HaChezyonot).

He dies, and death is not the end. The same sources that speak of his death speak of his life after it. The baraita in Sukkah has Mashiach ben David ask for life, and receive it. The Zohar reads Psalm 118 as the song of ben Yosef: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of Hashem. Hashem hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death” (118:17–18). The same psalm says: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner” (118:22).

An early midrash (Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 18) says that the widow’s son whom Eliyahu raised from the dead at Tzarfat (1 Kings 17) was Mashiach ben Yosef. Ben Yosef, in other words, is a Messiah who dies and is raised.

He is hidden, then revealed. The Zohar (Shemot 7b–8b) describes the Messiah taken up in a pillar of fire to the Garden of Eden. He waits in a place it calls “the bird’s nest,” where he sees Rachel weeping for her children. The patriarchs crown him, and he returns to defeat the nations “with the breath of his lips” (Isaiah 11:4). Palvanov reads these sources together and concludes that the Messiah appears to die, “but it’s not death at all.” He ascends as Chanoch and Eliyahu did, and returns.

Read together, the three answers fit. The decree of death is real, and it can be softened by prayer and by the faithfulness of the righteous. Where it is carried out, it is the doorway to resurrection, ascent and return, not the end of his mission. Rachel, Yosef’s mother, weeps for her children; the Messiah from her son weeps with her; and then he is sent back.

One Messiah or two?

Here the tradition really does speak in two voices.

Two men. Rav Saadia Gaon (Emunot veDeot 8), Sefer Zerubbabel and the Arizal describe two separate people. Ben Yosef comes first, gathers Israel, fights, and is killed in Jerusalem by the last enemy, called Armilus. Then ben David comes, raises him, and reigns. The Targum on Song of Songs pictures them as a pair, like Moshe and Aharon.

One man, two stages. Other sources read ben Yosef and ben David as two stages of one Messiah:

• Megaleh Amukot: the letter aleph is a yod above, a yod below and a vav joining them. The upper yod is ben David, the lower is ben Yosef, and the vav makes them one letter.

• Ezekiel 37: Hashem takes “the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim” and the stick of Yehudah, and makes them “one stick in mine hand”. Then “one king shall be king to them all” (Ezekiel 37:19, 22).

• Palvanov: ben Yosef is “just a moniker for the pre-Kingdom phase, before he is anointed.” After all, Yosef himself was a viceroy, not a king.

• Rabbi Ariel Cohen Alloro: ben Yosef is the soul and ben David the body, and “it’s one Mashiach.”

A Messiah who loses his kingdom and gets it back. The Midrash on Ruth (Ruth Rabbah 5:6) reads Boaz’s words to Ruth as a map of the Messiah’s career. “Come hither” means come to the kingdom. “Dip thy morsel in the vinegar” means his sufferings, as it says, “he was wounded for our transgressions.” “She sat beside the reapers” means his kingdom will be taken from him for a time. “He reached her parched corn” means it will be restored to him. One man suffers, loses his throne for a time, and returns to it.

Harmonizing. “Ben Yosef” and “ben David” are first of all two roles. The first suffers, is hidden among the nations and dies. The second reigns, rebuilds and judges. Whether one person fills both roles or two do is the open question. Our Statement of Faith takes the second answer: one Messiah, Yeshua, who fulfilled the ben Yosef role in his first coming and will be revealed as ben David at his return. The two-person sources still teach us something true. The Messiah who comes back in glory is not the same in role as the one who was pierced, even if he is the same man.

He knew them, but they knew not him

The most painful verse in the Yosef story is a short one: “And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him” (Genesis 42:8). He stood in front of them, spoke to them and fed them, and they did not recognize him. He looked like an Egyptian. He spoke through an interpreter. He had an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife.

Kol HaTor makes this the rule for Mashiach ben Yosef in every generation (chapter 2, aspect 39). He recognizes his brothers, and they do not recognize him. The Satan works to hide his signs, and if Israel recognized him, the redemption would already be complete.

The prophets say the same about Ephraim: “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people” (Hosea 7:8). The Kabbalists take this further. The Messiah’s soul goes down into exile, among the husks, the klippot, to gather the holy sparks trapped there. He may be so well hidden that the forces of evil think they have won. Rabbi Cohen Alloro says it in his own way: ben Yosef “goes to the other side,” to the nations, to repair Esav and the West, while ben David stays within Israel.

The Talmud gives the picture of where he waits. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asks Eliyahu where the Messiah is. “At the gate of Rome,” he answers, “sitting among the poor who suffer from illness,” unbinding and rebinding his wounds one at a time so he will be ready the moment he is called (Sanhedrin 98a). The Messiah sits in the capital of Esav, among the lepers, wounded, and nobody passing by knows who he is.

This is also why the true tzaddik is so often rejected, and first of all by the learned. The builders, says the Toldot Yaakov Yosef, are the scholars, and they are the ones who refuse the stone. Rebbe Nachman’s student Reb Noson taught that Mashiach will have a harder time convincing the chassidim than the unbelievers. Yosef’s brothers were no strangers to holiness. They were the sons of Yaakov, the tribes of Israel, and still they could not see him.

Yeshua, son of Yosef

When Philip first brought Natanel to Yeshua, he said: “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Yeshua of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). Benei Avraham understands this literally and more than literally. Yeshua’s first coming follows the pattern we have traced today:

• He came from the Galilee, where the Zohar says the Messiah called son of Yosef will be revealed.

• He was rejected by his brothers and by the builders, and handed over to the nations.

• He was pierced, and mourned as an only son.

• He was carried to the ends of the earth in the hands of the nations, and hidden among them for two thousand years, often under a name and a face his own people could not recognize.

This Messiah, we believe, will be revealed as ben David when he returns.

The Zohar’s Messiah is taken up and comes back. Ruth Rabbah’s Messiah loses his kingdom and has it restored. Zechariah’s Messiah is recognized only after he has been pierced, when Israel “shall look upon” him. A second coming is built into the ben Yosef tradition. The warrior and the bridegroom belong to the second stage, and we will take them up tomorrow.

The Brit Hadashah tells the Yosef story in exactly these terms. Stephen, in his speech before the Sanhedrin, says: “And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren” (Acts 7:13). The first time the brothers came down, they bowed to him without knowing him. The second time he said, “I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves… for God did send me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:4–5).

While he is hidden, he is not idle. Between the two comings he serves as a priest. Zechariah puts a crown on the head of Yehoshua the High Priest and calls him “the Branch,” “a priest upon his throne” (Zechariah 6:11–13). The letter to the Hebrews says: “he ever liveth to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25). Ben Yosef suffered; ben Aharon intercedes; ben David will reign. They are three roles, and we believe one Messiah fills them.

Your questions

“If Yeshua was ben Yosef, we missed him. Did we fail to prepare?” The Yosef story says the missing was part of the plan. “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). Yosef had to go down to Egypt for the whole world to be fed, and the Messiah had to be hidden among the nations for the nations to come to know the God of Israel. The Rambam saw this. He wrote that the teachings of Yeshua and of the one who came after him served “only to prepare the way for the King Messiah” and to fill the world with talk of Torah and the commandments (Hilchot Melachim 11:4, uncensored editions). Yeshua himself wept that Jerusalem “knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:44). He did not end the story there. Paul writes that the blindness is “in part,” and only “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25). The brothers did not recognize Yosef the first time. They did the second.

“Could the next Messiah be a gilgul of Yeshua?” Rabbi Chaim Vital speaks of a ben Yosef soul in every generation. The Kabbalists teach that every Jew carries a spark of the Messiah’s soul. Our Statement of Faith affirms that the spirit of Messiah existed before creation (Pesachim 54a; Bereishit Rabbah 2:4). So the spirit of ben Yosef can rest on many: on Yochanan who came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17), on every tzaddik who suffers for his generation, and on us. But the person who returns is not a new soul in a new body. “This same Yeshua… shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). “Messiah was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time” (Hebrews 9:28). Resurrection is not gilgul. The one who comes back is the one who was pierced, and Zechariah says Israel will know him by exactly that.

From mourning to water

We began with a page of Talmud that stops in the middle of a water celebration to mourn a Messiah. Look at where Zechariah goes next. First the pierced one and the mourning (12:10). Then, “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (13:1). The mourning opens the fountain.

That is why the water-drawing belongs to this week. On the last great day of this same festival, Yeshua stood up at that ceremony and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). The sages remembered a Messiah who was slain and mourned. Yeshua stood in the Temple court at Sukkot and offered water.

Yosef wept when his brothers finally knew him. “I am Joseph your brother.” May we be the generation that hears those words, and that recognizes him the second time. Tomorrow we will ask what happens when the son of Yosef is revealed as the son of David. Chag sameach.