Genesis 37:15-17 (JPS translation) reads as follows:

A man came upon him (Joseph) wandering in the fields. The man asked him, “What are you looking for?” He answered, “I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?”  The man said, “They have gone from here, for I heard them say: ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph followed his brothers and found them in Dothan.

      Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Ramban; 1194-1270), in his comment to Genesis 37:15, writes that the prolixity of the biblical narrative is purposeful: although Joseph had many opportunities to give up the search for his brothers and go home to his father, God nonetheless prepared a “guide” to deliver him into his brothers’ clutches. In this context Ramban remarks: ha-gezerah emet ve-ha-haritzut sheqer (translated by Rabbi Chavel as, “the divine decree is true and man’s industry [to try to avoid it] is worthless”). Joseph had an “appointment in Dothan,” and nothing could change that preordained fact.

      Two centuries before Ramban wrote his commentary on the Torah, about the year 1045, R. Solomon ibn Gabirol (ca. 1020—ca. 1058 or 1070) wrote a small ethical treatise, which was translated into Hebrew in the 1160’s with the title Mivhar Ha-Peninim, and subsequently began to have an influence as a work of Hebrew literature. The translator was the celebrated Judah ibn Tibbon (ca. 1120-1190), the head of the family that did much to introduce works of Jewish philosophy written in Judaeo-Arabic to the Hebrew-reading population of Provence. In Mivhar Ha-Peninim we find the following: “It is related that a king ordered the execution of one of this ministers, and the following inscription was found on his girdle: If (God’s) decree be true, men’s diligence is absurd.” 

      A similar idea was introduced to the readers of Jewish philosophical literature by Judah ben Shlomo al-Harizi (1170-1235), who translated Hunaym b. Ishak al-Abadi’s (ca. 809-873) Nawadir al-Falasifa into Hebrew, entitled it Musarei Ha-Pilosophim, and wrote:

“One can find a way to escape anything- except for the divine decree.”

The poet Immanuel of Rome (ca. 1261- after 1328) in his Mahberot, presented this idea twice in almost identical rhyme. The first verse reads: im ha-gezerah yoredah mi-ma‘al, im ken, haritzut ha-anashim hevel. The 2^nd verse reads: im ha-gezerah yoredah mi-ma ‘al, im ken haritzut ha-anashim sheqer.

      The biblical book of Proverbs forms a natural setting both for exhortations to engage in haritzut (variously translated as zeal, industriousness, diligence) and for pronouncements of its efficacy of lack thereof. In the medieval period, Jewish biblical commentators used the book as a point of departure for their observations concerning effort and fate. Sometimes, they observed, human diligence is simply unsuccessful. Proverbs 10:4 states: Negligent hands cause poverty. But diligent hands (yad harutzim) enrich. At the beginning of the medieval period, R. Sa‘adiah Gaon wrote: “And there are cases where there shall be poverty without laziness and wealth without toil, but these are the ways of the world.”

Proverbs 21:30-31 reads as follows: “No wisdom, no prudence, and no counsel can prevail against the L-rd. The horse is readied for the day of battle, but victory comes from the L-rd.” The remark of Joseph ibn Kaspi (1279-1340) on this verse, in his commentary Hatzotzerot Kesef, is short and to the point: im ha-gezerah emet, ha-hariztut sheqer.

      The Ba‘al ha-gezerah, of course, in Ramban and in the other aforementioned sources, is God. Yet one could apply the saying to flesh-and=blood kings as well. Baruch Uzziel (Hesqeto) Forti’s (d. 1571) biography of Don Isaac Abravanel , first published as an introduction to the 1551 Ferrara edition of Abravanel’s Ma‘ayenei Ha-Yeshu‘ah, contains a description, replete with rich biblical allusions, of the latter’s efforts to persuade King Ferdinand to reverse the Edict of Expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. All of Abravanel’s haritzut was in vain, however, for the gezerah (of Ferdinand, and of God) was indeed emet.

      Interestingly, R. Joseph Albo, the early 15^th century Spanish student of R. Hasdai Crescas (ca. 1360-1410), in his work Sefer Ha-Iqqarim also utilized the Joseph narrative to assert that sometimes human effort will fail (See The Book of Roots, ed. by I. Husik, Vol. IV [Philadelphia, 1930], pp. 36-37). As opposed to Ramban, however, R. Joseph Albo does not emphasize Joseph’s initial fall into his brothers’ clutches but their ultimate inability to defeat him. According to R. Albo, sometimes, indeed fate=gezerah is inexorable. In certain cases, man’s effort will indeed be useless, at least in the short term. But in the long term, when self-reflection will lead to improvement  of one’s moral qualities, which itself will lead to God’s annulment of the particular “decrees of the stars” that had been set against this individual, diligence will yield fruit even in those instances. In next week’s parashah (Miqqetz), where we read how Joseph’s brothers are beginning to suffer at the hands of the mysterious ruler of Egypt, and how Reuben upbraids his brothers (Genesis 42:22), one can discern a self-examination on the part of the brothers of Joseph in a general sense. The lesson that one learns from unsuccessful haritzut is a religious/moral one. At a certain point, haritzut gives way to introspection and to repentance.