We still claim to think well of forgiveness, but it has in fact very nearlyn lost its moral weight by having been translated into an act of randomn kindness whose chief value lies in the sense of personal release it givesn us.” So writes Wilfred McClay in a recent essay, “The Strange Persistence of Guilt.” To forgive, he argues, is to have a just claim and abandon it inn the name of love. But when we pardon those who trespass against us becausen we have been told that it’s good for our physical or mental health, we’ren doing something different. We are acting not for the benefit of then offender, but for our own sake. We confuse a freely offered, transcendentn act of love with the psychological equivalent of a laxative.
n Self-regarding release from resentment is not always a bad thing.n Forgiveness or no forgiveness, why remain the psychological hostage of ann abusive person? It is neither healthy nor reasonable to allow such a personn power over our thoughts. All the same, relinquishing angry feelings is ann act of pardon, not forgiveness, because it is not done out of concern forn the offender. “I no longer resent you because you are not worth resenting”n may be justified as a strategy of self-defense. The offender may deserve ton be diminished in our eyes. But rather than ennobling the forgiver, thisn approach merely relieves his pain.n
n So what is the alternative? If we offer forgiveness altruistically ton someone who has injured us, despite the justice of our resentment, out ofn Christian or Jewish duty, we demote the offender, turning him into ann occasion to express our righteousness. Offering forgiveness because then offender supposedly didn’t understand what he did surely facilitates pardonn by extenuating the act, but it does so at the cost of minimizing then offender’s true intentions. The offense is not so much forgiven asn overlooked.n
n If we take seriously the transgression and transgressor, we want then offender to apologize, attempt restitution, and otherwise repent. Thisn enables us to treat him or her respectfully, as an adult. Conjoined withn repentance, forgiveness no longer seems ungrounded and arbitrary. “You haven injured me, but you have admitted your guilt, you have demonstrated an change of heart, and therefore I forgive you.” This is a response thatn safeguards the dignity of the offended person, who should not be expectedn to “play the doormat.” It recognizes the presumed gravity of the offense,n and does not disrespect the person of the offender. In this scenario,n forgiveness is earned, and the act of forgiving comes close to becoming an straightforward moral obligation. “He has shown contrition, therefore I owen him conciliation.” Many dialogues of forgiveness are in fact conductedn along these lines, with satisfactory outcomes.n
n Nonetheless, there is something religiously and emotionally inert about then type of transaction I have outlined. Psalm 51 suggests more. There, then penitent David pleads with God to “restore unto me the joy of yourn salvation.” R. Jonah of Gerona, writing in thirteenth-century Spain,n rephrases this element in atonement as the “restoration of the light ofn one’s face.” He regards this bestowal of joy, insofar as it is provided ton the penitent, as a deepening of the basic experience of repentance. Inn seeking forgiveness, the penitent wants more than to undo offense, moren than the cancellation of rightful punishment, more than the restoration ofn civility. He seeks to restore the violated relationship. And the reflectiven penitent asks how this can be done.n
n The most extensive and perhaps the most intensive biblical story aboutn reconciliation is that of Joseph and his brothers. Much exegeticaln attention is devoted to Joseph’s strange conduct when his brothers visitn Egypt and he pretends not to know them. By these stratagems, he inducesn them to bring Benjamin to him. Then he manufactures a crisis by plantingn the stolen goblet in Benjamin’s sack. This forces Judah to confront him,n leading Joseph to break down and reveal his identity. The brothers, amongn themselves, have already expressed remorse for selling Joseph into slavery.n Now it is time for them to do so in front of the brother whom theyn betrayed.
n Whether Joseph planned it that way and why is a fascinating question butn not the one that concerns me right now. My interest is in what happensn after Joseph’s revelation of his identity (Gen. 45). At first, his brothersn are incapable of responding to him. He asks them to approach him andn maintains that they should not sorrow over having sold him, for God hadn destined Joseph to relieve the famine, and this in turn has ensured then survival of his family. He then moves from consequentialist considerationn to theological ascription: “You did not sell me here but God.” This way ofn thinking may explain why Joseph sheds his resentment. Things have workedn out well all around, thanks to the hand of Providence. Joseph has even gonen so far as to mitigate his brothers’ guilt by making God the agent of hisn enslavement, as if divine foreknowledge annulled human responsibility.n
n Years pass. Their father, Jacob, dies. Apparently, the brothers have notn felt the light of forgiveness on their faces, for they now fear that Josephn will repay their evil. They send a message (Gen. 50): “Please bear the sinn . . . of the servants of the God of your father.” They follow up by goingn to Joseph and promising to serve him. Again Joseph responds by referringn to God’s will: “You plotted evil against me; God meant it as good.” And then narrator adds: “And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.”
Did Joseph forgive his brothers in the way David petitions God to forgiven him? The direct quotations in Genesis do not contain formal words ofn forgiveness. To be sure, the Hebrew root salah is used in then Bible only with respect to God; mahal, which literally means “ton pardon,” as in the case of forgiving a debt, first appears in postbiblicaln literature, a phenomenon that Gary Anderson has investigated in detail.n Joseph could have adopted his brothers’ language and agreed to “bear” orn tolerate the burden of their sin, which would be a technical formula ofn forgiveness. However, Joseph does not respond directly to their plea. Hen likewise does not respond to their protestations of submission to him. Hisn response again treats their evil as insignificant within the larger picturen of God’s plan.
n Does the absence of explicit forgiveness language mean that Joseph did notn forgive his brothers? I don’t think so. The goal of reconciliation is ton “restore the light of one’s face.” This may require more or less than then formal transactions of appeasement and satisfaction. Our goal in seekingn and giving forgiveness is not the self-regarding reaction of then individual disburdening himself of past hatred for the sake of innern tranquility, nor is it the one-sided enactment of self-negating sacrificialn love. Joseph performs the work of reconciliation by reframing his brothers’n misdeeds and his suffering as the story of shared history and destiny.n Joseph advocates the divine perspective, according to which the very actsn the brothers must apologize for form the foundation of their shared future.n This makes further recriminations unnecessary and beside the point.n
n We do not know the precise content of the comfort and kindly words thatn Joseph offered his brothers by way of reassurance. I suspect that thesen unreported words and gestures provide a more potent model of reconciliationn than his preceding dismissal of their responsibility. Like Joseph, each onen of us must seek out the appropriate words of kindness and appreciation forn a shared destiny that will reconcile us with those we have injured andn those who have injured us.n
Shalom Carmy teaches Jewish studies and philosophy at Yeshiva University and is editor emeritus of Tradition.
