And now, do not be sad and you should not get angry in your eyes that you sold me here, because Hashem sent me ahead of you to provide life.
The Ohr Hachaim asks a number of questions on this possuk.
- Why did Yosef say ‘now’? What other time was he excluding?
- Why did he repeat himself with asking them not to be upset and not to be angry? What were the two things?
- Moreover, the two should be mutually exclusive. If they were upset that they sold him, that would denote a humility on their part, that they accept blame for what they did. If so, how would they be so arrogant as to get angry about it? And if they were angry, how would they be sad?
- Why does the Torah write הֵּנָּה – here? What is it telling us?
The Ohr Hachaim explains that Yosef was saying that he knew that they regretted the sale.
First, because he heard them saying to each other that they were to blame for their suffering because they saw their brother’s suffering. And second, because they came willing to redeem him for any money in the world. They were sad about what they had done, but now they had no more reason to be sad. That is the meaning of the word וְעַּתָּה – and now. Now that they have seen Yosef in his full glory as a minister in Mitzrayim, they had no reason to be sad about the sale. He was also hinting to them that he knew about their regrets and that he was not angry with them.
However, it was possible that they would still be angry at themselves. After all, the sale of Yosef had caused them no end of trouble, and it was now clear that they had done this to themselves. They wished to sell him as a slave to ensure that his dreams of his brothers bowing down to him would never come true, and now it turned out that it was their actions that caused him to become a minister to whom they all must bow. Essentially, their actions were not only useless, but counter-productive. This could cause them to get angry.
At this, Yosef told them that the end result of their actions was positive. Now they could be supported and sustained by the minister of the king. Although in the short term, their plans were thwarted through their own actions, in the long term they gained.
