Your Eyes See: Mitzvos without Ulterior Motives

1“And behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Binyamin, that it is my mouth that speaks to you.”¹ Why does the verse speak of seeing in connection with speech? Speech is something heard, so the verse should have used the language of hearing. A second question: Rashi writes, “‘And behold, your eyes see’ my glory, and that I am your brother, for I am circumcised like you.” [That is, as Rashi wrote earlier, Yosef showed them that he was circumcised.²] This is truly astonishing. Yosef HaTzaddik was perfect in the trait of Yesod, the holiness of the covenant. How can we say of him something so contrary to that very trait? We must also ask how his being circumcised proves that he is their brother, since the descendants of Yishmael also practice circumcision. And one more point in this verse needs a closer look: why does it mention “the eyes of my brother Binyamin” on their own, apart from “your eyes,” the eyes of the other tribes?

2aWe can explain all this as follows. We know the teaching of Chazal: “When Dovid entered the bathhouse and saw himself naked, he said, ‘Woe is me, that I stand naked without a mitzvah!’ But once he remembered the circumcision in his flesh, his mind was set at ease.”³ The holy sefarim explain these words; the Toldos Yaakov Yosef does so, and the sefer Rav Yeivi quotes the explanation in the name of the Baal Shem Tov.⁴ Dovid HaMelech, they say, was making an honest accounting of how he did his mitzvos. That is the meaning of “he entered the bathhouse”: he went to wash himself clean of ulterior motives in his mitzvos. “He saw himself naked” means that he recognized that he had done all his mitzvos with ulterior motives. When a person does mitzvos with some ulterior motive or out of pride, he is not serving his Creator; he is serving himself. So Dovid saw that he was bare of mitzvos, and he said, “Woe is me, that I stand naked without a mitzvah!” But then he remembered the mitzvah of milah and reflected on it. Every Jew does this mitzvah with no ulterior motive at all, since it is done when he is a baby eight days old. Through this mitzvah Dovid's mind was set at ease.

2bThis also lets us properly understand the blessing “Just as he has entered the covenant, so may he enter into Torah …,” said at a bris milah. We are praying that just as this little child was privileged to do the mitzvah of milah without ulterior motives, so may he be privileged to do all the other mitzvos in the same way, without any ulterior motive, “to Hashem alone.”⁵

3As is well known, the sale of Yosef came about because the tribes judged him according to Torah law. They reckoned that he had become liable to this punishment, as the commentators, such as the Sforno, explain.⁶ But they had an ulterior motive in this, as it is written, “And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers …,” and “his brothers were jealous of him.”⁷ That caused the holy tribes to stumble on a point of halachah, and they did not judge him properly. So now, when Yosef made himself known to his brothers, he came to rebuke them for the ulterior motive they had had when they sold him. He told them to look at the mitzvah of milah and learn from it: when a Jew does a mitzvah, he must check carefully that he is not doing it out of ulterior motives. This is the meaning of Rashi's words “he showed them that he was circumcised.” Rashi does not mean that they saw it in the plain sense; it is like the saying “I see the words of Admon,” meaning “I agree with them.”⁸ In other words, Yosef told them to reflect on the mitzvah of milah and learn from it that the mitzvos must be fulfilled like milah, without any ulterior motives at all.

4This explains why the verse does not use the language of hearing here, but says “and behold, your eyes see”: seeing here means understanding and accepting, as in “I see the words of Admon.” It also explains why Yosef did not include Binyamin with the others. Binyamin had no part in the sale of Yosef, so Yosef said “and behold, your eyes see” only to the other tribes. With Binyamin he did not use the language of seeing [in the verse, “see” belongs to “your eyes” alone].

5May Hashem grant that we be privileged to do His mitzvos without ulterior motives, solely to give the Creator satisfaction.⁹ Amen, may it be His will.