Benjamin

Jacob's youngest son, Benjamin, senses the contradictions in his brothers' tales about Joseph's supposed death, and yearns to escape his family's control.

Context

• Reference: Genesis 35:18

• Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob's sons, was apparently not in on his brothers' plot against Joseph (who, like him, was also the son of Rachel).

• When the brothers went down to Egypt to seek help with the famine, they left Benjamin behind.

• The official in Egypt, whom the brothers did not recognize as Joseph, demanded that Benjamin also come to Egypt.

Aftermath

• Benjamin's future did, indeed, lie in the south, in Egypt. He went down there when summoned by Joseph, and stayed in the land of Goshen, along with his brothers,

Notes

We knew that Benjamin grew up and was the father of a powerful tribe, but his function in the story is that of a child. He is consistently passive, being pulled into events and used, in a sense, as a bargaining token rather than having any personality or actions of his own.

This gives Benjamin a unique opportunity to observe his family quietly, and to spot patterns and inconsistencies from the outside. Within the network of expanding secrets and lies based around Joseph's supposed death, he grows to see the way that the stories don't coincide.

And he also gets to sense the life of stories outside of time and outside the apparently real world. The stories of this family (who probably didn't really exist) grew and changed over time, being retold, rewritten, and re-imagined over he centuries as the storytellers used the stories to support various themes, both moral and historical. Benjamin develops a sense of these, and looks for a way out of this web that flows from the various angles of time to encase him.