After Yaakov died, Yosef stopped inviting his brothers to eat with him as he had during the life of their father. When Yaakov was alive, he insisted on seating Yosef in the position of prominence at the table, but now that Yaakov wasn’t there, Yosef didn’t think that it was appropriate for him to be seated ahead of Reuven who was the firstborn or Yehuda who was the king. However, it was also inappropriate for him to sit below them because of his position as a king in Egypt. The brothers perceived this as Yosef potentially bearing out a grudge that he still held against them for selling him into slavery, and they decided to try to appease him. They told Yosef that Yaakov had instructed them to tell him that he should forgive them. (Yaakov actually never told them to do this but they needed to tell him this story for their personal safety.
Yosef responded by saying “ Fear not for am I instead of God? Although you intended me harm, God intended it for good… So now fear not for I will sustain you and your young ones”. The pasuk then concludes “Thus he comforted them and spoke to their heart”. Rashi explains that there were two parts of Yosef’s statement. First, he told them that by their asking him to forgive them they were placing him in the place of God and he was telling them that he is not. The second part which Rashi says is highlighted by the words “And he spoke to their heart” was what Rashi refers to as words that are accepted on the heart. In this part of his response, Yosef was telling his brothers that there was nothing for them to fear from him because before they came, the Egyptians would deride him and say that he was he was from a lineage of slaves, but now that they saw his family, they knew that he was a free man. If he were to kill them, the people would say that they were not really his brothers to begin with.
There are two ways to understand why there brothers spoke to Yosef to convince him not to hurt them. Either, they weren’t really afraid of Yosef because they knew that Hashem is in control of everything and Yosef could not harm them unless it is His will. However, Hashem wants us to do our (hishtadlus) to do our part to avoid the danger. The other possibility is that their faith was not as completely pervasive, and somewhere in their subconscious they were afraid that Yosef could actually harm them and they were attempting to address a real fear of Yosef’s retribution.
From Yosef’s response, we can see what he thought that the potential concerns were that needed to be addressed. The first part of Yosef’s response addressed the lack of faith that he perceived in the brothers because he reminded them in an accusatory fashion that he has no control over their fate. (The midrashim point out that the words that he used were in fact almost identical to the ones used by Yaakov when he was expressing displeasure with Rachel’s complaint that she didn’t have children.) However, he also knew that it was important for them to know that it was in his self interest to keep them alive and that they were in no danger from him. However, t’s hard to understand why he felt that they still needed to hear this if he truly felt that what they were missing was some level of faith in Hashem’s complete control which he addressed with the first part of his statement?
Apparently, even though Yosef knew that felt that his brothers were great people, and they lived with an elevated state of faith, they still may have had a fear which would have come from a minute wavering of that faith. He also understood that they would not be able to reinforce that faith even when the deficiency was pointed out to them. Therefore, to fully alleviate their fears he explained to them why he didn’t pose any threat to them even in the natural order of things.
It is also interesting that Rashi refers to Yosef’s appeal to nature as “words which are accepted by the heart” which implies that there is a qualitative difference between the two points which makes the second easier than the first to accept. It would seem that this is based on the inherent difficulty to hold off a dissidence which comes as a result of living in a world with natural causes. This dynamic makes it difficult for a person to hold constantly and completely to the knowledge that behind all of those causes is a First and Overriding Cause who is fully in control of everything that occurs. As a result of this difficulty, Yosef felt that he should address both the natural solution to the fear as well as the supernatural one.
The fact that Yosef felt that it was appropriate for him to share the fact that there was less danger naturally than the brothers may have thought originally also teaches us a lesson. Many people would think that when someone is dealing with other people especially those that he knows are true believers in Hashem and who live their lives acting based on that belief that it would be wrong to address the natural lack of what to be afraid of and rather to allow them to come to be comforted by that which is most true that Hashem is in control. But we see from the fact that Yosef told his brothers that there wasn’t really any danger from him that this isn’t how we should deal with people. Rather in some circumstances we should do whatever is in our power to make sure that the person that we are dealing with has all of the information both supernatural and natural to feel that they don’t have what to worry about. And this would apply even by people with whom we can at least have a reasonable expectation that just the lesson in faith would be enough for as we see with Yosef and his brothers.
The fact that it is correct to give people anything that can help them means that it is appropriate sometimes for them to use it. And that is despite the fact that this information is about what should occur naturally which is an illusory version of the truth also tells us something about the way that people should treat the relationship between their human weaknesses and their state in this world. One could say that as long as a person has the knowledge that Hashem is the one in control of everything even if they cannot use that to deal with all of their fears and feel comfortable in the fact that Hashem is looking out for them always they shouldn’t compensate using crutches like the fact that they don’t appear to be in danger according to the natural order. This ideology would then call on a person who wasn’t able to feel fully comfortable knowing that Hashem was in charge to accept the fear that he felt as opposed to consoling himself with nature. Yet we see from the fact that Yosef was providing his brothers with the option of the lack of natural fear that it would be reasonable for them to use that should the faith route not work. This seems to tell us that a person doesn’t need to subject himself to fear as a result of his inability to be comforted by the ultimate truth of Hashem’s control rather they should find ways to comfort themselves even in the less true reality of natures order.