God-fearing people are continuously looking to grow and improve, and to that end, they are continuously thinking, analyzing and assessing their conduct.
We read in Parashat Miketz of Yosef’s harsh treatment of his brothers when they came to Egypt to purchase grain. Yosef accuses them coming to spy, and demands that they bring their younger brother, Binyamin, from Canaan, to prove the innocence of their trip to Egypt. Initially, Yosef demands that they all remain in Egypt while one returns to Canaan to bring Binyamin. After keeping them in prison for three days, however, he comes to them to announce that he changed his mind, and will allow them all to return, except for one, who must remain as “security” to ensure that the others return with Binyamin.
When Yosef comes to his brothers after their three-day incarceration, he introduces his policy change by proclaiming, “This is what you shall do and thus live; I am God-fearing” (42:18). The simple explanation of the phrase “I am God-fearing,” as noted by several commentators (Ramban, Radak), is that Yosef gives a reason for his new decision. As a God-fearing person, he tells the brothers, he does not want to cause additional suffering to the brothers’ families, who are eagerly awaiting the brothers’ return with desperately-needed food provisions. He would therefore allow nine of the ten brothers to return home and bring food for their families, keeping in Egypt only one brother to guarantee that they would return. Yosef describes himself as “God-fearing” in the sense of moral conscientiousness, agreeing to allow the brothers to return home for the sake of their families suffering from deprivation.
Rav Shimon Schwab, however, in his Ma’ayan Beit Ha-sho’eiva, suggests an additional insight into Yosef’s description of himself as “God-fearing.” One of the hallmarks of yirat Shamayim is constant reevaluation and reexamination of one’s direction and important decisions. God-fearing people are continuously looking to grow and improve, and to that end, they are continuously thinking, analyzing and assessing their conduct. People in positions of power often insist upon the inalterably binding authority of their decisions, but a leadership figure with yirat Shamayim has the humility, integrity and conscience to rethink and revisit past decisions, and consider if he had perhaps erred. Yosef announced to his brothers, “I am God-fearing” – he had this quality of reassessing and reconsidering, and thus concluded that his initial decision to keep nine of the ten brothers in Egypt was unethical.
Rav Schwab goes even further, suggesting that this may have been part of Yosef’s plan to lead his brothers to rethink the way they had treated him. Yosef hinted to his brothers that crucial decisions of the past need to be reconsidered and reexamined, and thus the time has come for them to revisit their fateful decision to sell him as a slave. Sure enough, in the very next verse, we find for the first time the brothers expressing remorse for their hostility to Yosef: “Indeed, we are guilty on account of our brother, that we saw his distress when he pleaded to us, but we paid no heed” (42:21). Yosef had showed them the importance of reconsideration and rethinking one’s course, and thus began to realize that they had been mistaken in the way they had treated Yosef many years earlier.