זוהר בראשית — דף קפ ע”א

Rabbi Yose explains “The righteous man has perished”: when the world is not as it should be, the Holy One, blessed be He, takes the righteous so that judgment may settle, for as long as the righteous is in the world, judgment cannot rule, as with Moses: “had not Moses, His chosen one, stood in the breach before Him.” So in Jacob’s days no judgment settled and the famine was suspended; the same held for Joseph, and when he died the exile began. The “dwelling-fears of his father” are the harsh judgment, to which the land is attached. On “These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph,” the text says that Joseph, the level called righteous, brings forth offspring, and that his likeness is his father’s. On “seventeen years old,” Jacob wept for seventeen years, and God gave him seventeen years of joy in Egypt. At the end, Rabbi Ḥiya opens with “Therefore, men of understanding, listen to me.”