Above the Knots: The Pattern We Can’t See
Parshat Vayigash; Genesis 44:18–47:27
Have you ever looked back at a painful chapter and wondered if it was just loss—or if, somehow, it mattered?
Joseph stands before his brothers, twenty years after they sold him into slavery. They barely recognize him. He sees their shock and says: “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for G-d sent me before you to preserve life.” (Genesis 45:5)
This is one of the Torah’s most emotional scenes. It’s also profoundly human—because it lives in that gap between what’s been done to us and what we make of it.
Joseph does not deny what happened. “You sold me.” His brothers made real, damaging choices. And yet, in almost the same breath, he reframes everything: “G-d sent me.” Hurt—that’s not the whole story. Joseph refuses to be defined only by pain or by others’ actions.
Many readers feel the tension here. Is it possible to believe G-d is present, even in suffering? For some, this theology offers comfort. For others, it can feel impossible—or even unfair. The Torah does not ask us to pretend human actions don’t matter, nor does it minimize pain.
Centuries later, classic Jewish commentators wrestle with this too. Rashi, the foremost medieval Torah commentator, reads Joseph’s words as reassurance to his brothers: you hurt me, but it led to a greater good. Ramban (Nachmanides), another major Torah thinker, suggests Joseph accepts that G-d can draw meaning even from human mistakes.
Joseph reaches this understanding slowly—abandoned, enslaved, imprisoned. Each time, Midrash says, he “entered and exited with dignity.” His composure is not naïveté, but a faith in hashgachah pratit, personal Divine supervision: the belief that even painful threads can become part of a larger pattern.
And our lives? They’re often shaped by those painful knots too—a relationship that broke, a setback, a loss. Sometimes we see, much later, that these moments redirected us. Sometimes they just hurt. Both can be true.
A parable makes this vivid. A young apprentice stared up at a tangled loom, sure the tapestry was ruined. Then the master weaver lifted her, letting her see from above. She gasped. The knots made lines of beauty. Below: chaos. Above: design.
The Talmud warns us that anger blinds us, convincing us all is human action, no pattern. Joseph could have stayed angry, could have let resentment write his story. He didn’t. Faith didn’t erase his pain—he wept, again and again—but it changed how he carried it.
Where in your life does pain still obscure purpose?
Is there a knot you grip tightly, certain it has no place in your story?
Joseph’s wisdom isn’t about denial. It’s about hope—a hope that pain is not the whole tapestry, even if we can’t yet see the pattern.
What would it look like, this week, to loosen your grip just enough for a bit of light to shine through? Even if all you see is knots, dare to believe the weaving is not done.
I wish you abundant blessings this holiday season and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yonatan Hambourger