Vayeishev: Saving Yosef — The Brothers' Psak on Mechuyav Misa vs. Rodef

Rabbi Zweig opens with a literary difficulty in Parshas Vayeishev: when Reuven intervenes to save Yosef from Shimon and Levi, the text appears redundant. First he says "lo nakenu nefesh" (we will not kill him), and then he immediately repeats "al tishpechu dam" (do not spill blood). Why the double statement? If both mean "don't kill him," one should suffice. Moreover, the brothers themselves had planned to throw Yosef into a pit full of snakes and scorpions—so why did they first want to kill him with their own hands? If the snakes would finish him anyway, what purpose did direct murder serve? Rabbi Zweig rejects superficial readings (that the brothers were bloodthirsty or money-grubbing) and instead proposes a Brisker-style halakhic chakira embedded in the narrative. Shimon and Levi, he argues, held that Yosef was a **mechuyav misa**—liable to death—because he was actively destroying the structure of Klal Yisroel. By lording over his brothers and demanding their submission to his dreams, Yosef was collapsing the twelve-tribe framework into a single autocracy. The brothers understood this as an irreversible spiritual threat, akin to destroying the nation's very essence. Under that psak, the brothers had a sacred duty to execute him—not out of personal animus, but as a din, a court obligation to carry out justice. From this vantage, throwing him into the pit was merely to conceal the act from Yaakov, not to delegate the killing to animals; they needed to perform the execution themselves because a mechuyav misa requires human agency to effect kapara (atonement).