As we’re working through the life of Yosef in the parashah readings, the question that keeps occurring to me is why Yosef takes so long to reveal his identity to his brothers, who clearly don’t recognize him after 20-plus years of separation and believing him to be lost. Sure, the official answer is that Yosef was testing them, to see if they’d changed and truly repented of what they’d done to him. And that makes sense as far as it goes.

And the messianic addendum to that also makes sense as far as it goes. That Yosef is a foreshadowing of the Messiah Y’shua, who was not recognized by most of his people at the time he first appears to them. But I’m talking about the human level of the story, not the spiritual.

But think about it. A seven-year famine has overtaken the land. His father and brothers are suffering under it. Their lives are at stake and they don’t even have the benefit of disaster kits to help them through it, the way people of our time might. So with that in mind, why drag it out quite so long?

I mean, sure, he makes certain after they come to him that they’re taken care of. He provides them with food and even stashes their money back in the bags containing the grain. But even after the second visit, he doesn’t reveal himself until he pulls the same stunt again and make them fear for the safety of their youngest brother, Binyamin.

It all turns out quite well in the end. But I remain puzzled by Yosef’s motives. That’s the great thing about Torah, though. You become convinced it is historically true because those whose lives are chronicled in it do not act ideally. Their lives are puzzling, contradictory and full of questions. That’s the beauty of it.