Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Genesis 37:35

And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.

35. his daughters ] Either a different version from that in chap. 30 where Dinah is his only daughter; or referring to his sons’ wives.

the grave ] Heb. Sheol, the name of the abode of the dead, answering to the Greek , e.g. Act 2:27. Sheol, as the region of the dead, is, according to Hebrew ideas, the locality beneath the ground, where the disembodied spirits led a shadowy existence. See Isa 14:9-20. Jacob thinks that he will arrive in Sheol, as he had been on the earth, in mourning for his lost son. See Gen 42:38. The shade of his son will there recognize the signs of his father’s grief for his sake. “To bring a man’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave” (here and Gen 42:38, Gen 44:29; Gen 44:31) does not, therefore, only mean “to bring a man prematurely aged to his grave,” but also “to bring an old man to the place of departed spirits in a state of lamentation for bereavement.”

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Gen 37:35

He refused to be comforted

Real and unreal consolations

Earth is so full of sorrows, and its sorrows are so various, and its cry for their healing so piteous and so importunate, that no man who lives can always stop his ears, if he can even steel his heart, against the demand for his sympathy and his ministration.

The world itself has its forms and its phrases of consolation; borrowed, no doubt, in name, from Christianity and the Bible, but divested, in the transfer, of their efficacy for healing, by being torn (as it were) from the context, and presented bare and solitary to the aching and thirsting heart. And the Church has its ministry of comfort; its ordained and consecrated representatives in things sacred, of whose profession it is one half, and not the least anxious and difficult half, to be at the beck and call of sorrow, whatever its kind or cause, for the express purpose of conveying to it, in Christs behalf, the consolations of the Gospel. Nevertheless, how many are they who, whether the world speaks or the Church, yet, like the patriarch in the text, refuse to be comforted. How small a part of the suffering of mankind as a whole, even in Christendom, is healed, or sensibly mitigated, by the comfort professedly offered it. Let us ask why. Let us take a few specimens of consolation, as the word is commonly understood, and see where and why they fail, and must fail, in doing the thing attempted. We need not, for our present purpose, distinguish accurately between different kinds of distress. Pain is pain, whether it has to do with mind or body, with circumstances or affections, with conscience or the soul. And as the malady is, in this sense, one in all cases, so the idea and principle of consolation, may be the same in very various applications.

1. Thus there is one kind of consolation, the least adroit, it may be, but not the least common, which practically consists in a disparagement of the suffering. This sort of comfort fails in both the essentials. First, it is unsympathizing; and secondly, it is unreal. A man could not thus speak who felt with you. This man is just getting rid of an irksome duty. He does not enter into your ease. Thus the comfort lacks sympathy, and must be refused. But it lacks reality too. It is not true that you exaggerate. Your pain is painful.

2. There is another kind of consolation, of which the characteristic is that it deals largely in false promises. The physician, conjured to be true, looks the patient in the face, and says she thing that is not. He sees nothing to make him anxious. You may live for years. He tells the next person he meets that you are a doomed man. You are anxious–you have cause to be so–about professional success. You confide your misgiving, your apprehension, your mortification, to your friend. To save himself, or to save you, a moments pain, he assures you that you are mistaken. The next turn of fortunes wheel will be in your favour. He has reason to hope, he almost knows, that your name stands next for an appointment. To a third person he says plainly that you are a failure, that you have not a chance. Worse still is it, when the soul is the subject.

3. There is a still larger class of consolations which have this for their feature, that they use true words but apply them falsely. In mere carelessness, in worse than carelessness, in headlong headstrong presumption, a man has incurred a terrible, perhaps fatal, accident. There is instantly a chorus of comforters, it is the will of God. Worse than this: a son has been the plague of his home, the scourge of mother and sister, the ill example, the guide into all mischief, of brothers and schoolfellows! no change, save from worse to worse, comes over his youth; all manner of sin and wickedness is his sport and his occupation; at last he commits a crime, brings shame upon his name, reduces his family to misery and destitution–who cannot anticipate, even then, a view of the terrible history, whichshall lightly and confidently bring into it, if not for the sinner yet for the sufferers, the hand and counsel of God; bidding them believe that the whole aspect of it, for them at least, is one of blessing and hope and fatherly love? And so, when at last the grave closes over one whose whole life has been a denial and defiance of the Bible, whose last breath may have been the repudiation, not only of clergyman or sacrament, but of prayer, and of Christ, and of immortality itself; there are those who can see in all this nothing more than an idiosyncrasy or a misfortune, and who, not contented (as all ought to be) with silence and sorrow, with refraining from cruel judgments and ill-omened words, are ready to offer to the survivors the most cheerful and confident of consolations, as if over a deathbed of sweet hope, crowning a life of consistent, of Christ-like devotion. Brethren, the sight and the touch of suffering is keen and sensitive; and it must revolt against all this as an offensive obstrusion of an unreal and impertinent consolation. That which we could not say without cruelty in the individual instance, or in the house darkened by the calamity itself, we can say and we ought to say in general terms, while it may yet be for the admonition of men whose day of grace is not ended. Truth is not always comfort. We cannot always with propriety say in the moment of sorrow the word which nevertheless may be the true one, about the healing power of time, or the reparative processes of reviving interests and affections. But this has no exception; comfort cannot be without truth. Sympathy itself is dead, being alone. Let us who would be sons of consolation, take good heed to our truthfulness. This estimate of life and the Bible will alter the language of our consolations. It will make them entirely real, and in the same degree strongly supporting. We shall ask no man to call evil good, or to write sweet for bitter. When some terrible thing happens, and we are called to minister, we shall say, Alas, my brother! Let us sit and weep together over the mighty power of evil. Oh, how necessary was the Gospel! Oh, how intelligible has become the Cross! Oh, how desirable that last revelation–death and hell cast into the lake of fire–the tabernacle of God come down to earth, and tears wiped from off all faces! And then, although we cannot offer the false consolation, which confounds light and darkness, receives with an impartial and indifferent complaisance alike the good and the evil, sees a God (so called) equally in both and in neither, and encourages an easy, trivial, light-hearted passage, through a world neither clear nor dark, into another world, itself neither day nor night; yet we shall at least have realized God in His holiness, Christ in His necessity, life in its seriousness, heaven in its glory; we shall at least have renounced for ever that vile flattery which barters truth for a smile–that ignoble traggicing in great names, of which the Nemesis is the forfeiture of great realities. And the moral of it all is weighty and legible. If the battle is so sore around and within us; if good and evil are not words but things; if Christ and Satan are not phantoms but persons; if we must have a side, though we know it not, and he that is not with Christ must be against Him–let us be serious. The mere use of true words will help us.(Dean Vaughan.)

I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning

Jacobs grief for his son

I. IT WAS DEEP AND OVERWHELMING.

II. IT WAS INCONSOLABLE.

III. IT CAST HIM UPON THE FUTURE. (T. H. Leade.)

Jacobs mistake

I will go down to the grave, or to the world of departed spirits, mourning for my son. Jacob did not hope to see any more good in this world, when his choicest comfort in life was taken from him. He had the prospect of no days of gladness, when Joseph, the joy of his heart, was torn in pieces by wild beasts. But he did not know what joys were yet before him in the recovery of his long-lost son. We know not what joys or what sorrows may be before us in the course of our lives. Let us never despond while Gods throne continues firm and stable in heaven. Jacob had the prospect of sorrow while he lived in the world. He knew, and he ought to have rejoiced in the knowledge, that his sorrows would last only during his present life. The saints of God will indeed be in heaviness through manifold temptations, whilst they continue in this bad world. But they have good reason (if they had hearts) to rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory, in the prospect of the unknown joys that lie beyond the grave. The present life is but a single night to their future life; and although sorrow may endure through the whole night, yet joy cometh in the morning. (G. Lawson, D. D.)

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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 35. All his sons and all his daughters] He had only one daughter, Dinah; but his sons’ wives may be here included. But what hypocrisy in his sons to attempt to comfort him concerning the death of a son who they knew was alive; and what cruelty to put their aged father to such torture, when, properly speaking, there was no ground for it!

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

All his daughters; Dinah, and his daughters-in-law, and his sons daughters.

The grave; this Hebrew word sheol is taken sometimes for hell, as Job 11:8; Pro 15:11, but most commonly for the grave, or the place or state of the dead, as Gen 42:38; 44:29,31; Psa 6:5; 16:10, &c. And whether of those it signifies, must be determined by the subject and the circumstances of the place. Here it cannot be meant of hell, for Jacob neither could believe that good Joseph was there, nor would have resolved to go thither; but the sense is, I will kill myself with grief, or I will never leave mourning till I die.

Unto my son; or, for my son: so the preposition el is oft used for al, as 1Sa 1:2,7; 4:19,21,22; 2Sa 21:2.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

35. and he said, For I will go downinto the grave unto my sonnot the earth, for Joseph wassupposed to be torn in pieces, but the unknown placethe place ofdeparted souls, where Jacob expected at death to meet his belovedson.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him,…. His sons must act a most hypocritical part in this affair; and as for his daughters, it is not easy to say who they were, since he had but one daughter that we read of, whose name was Dinah: the Targum of Jonathan calls them his sons wives; but it is a question whether any of his sons were as yet married, since the eldest of them was not more than twenty four years of age; and much less can their daughters be supposed to be meant, as they are by some. It is the opinion of the Jews, that Jacob had a twin daughter born to him with each of his sons; these his sons and daughters came together, or singly, to condole his loss, to sympathize with him, and speak a word of comfort to him, and entreat him not to give way to excessive grief and sorrow:

but he refused to be comforted; to attend to anything that might serve to alleviate his mind, and to abstain from outward mourning, and the tokens of it; he chose not to be interrupted in it:

and he said, for I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning; the meaning is, not that he would by any means hasten his own death, or go down to his son in the grave, strictly and literally taken; since, according to his apprehension of his son’s death he could have no grave, being torn to pieces by a wild beast; but either that he should go into the state of the dead, where his son was, mourning all along till he carne thither; or rather that he would go mourning all his days “for [his] son” e, as some render it, till he came to the grave; nor would he, nor should he receive any comfort more in this world:

thus his father wept for him; in this manner, with such circumstances as before related, and he only; for as for his brethren they hated him, and were glad they had got rid of him; or, “and his father”, c. f his father Isaac, as the Targum of Jonathan, he wept for his son Jacob on account of his trouble and distress; as well as for his grandson Joseph; and so many Jewish writers g interpret it; and indeed Isaac was alive at this time, and lived twelve years after; but the former sense seems best.

e “propter filium suum”, Grotius, Quistorpius; so Jarchi and Abendana. f “et flevit”, Pagninus, Montanus, &c. g Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Abendana, in loc.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

35. And all his sons and daughters rose up. The burden of his grief is more clearly expressed by the circumstance that all his sons and daughters meet together to comfort him. For by the term “rose up,” is implied a common deliberation, they having agreed to come together, because necessity urged them. But hence it appears how vast is the innate dissimulation of men. The sons of Jacob assume a character by no means suitable to them; and perform an office of piety, from which their minds are most alien. If they had had respect unto God, they would have acknowledged their fault, and though no remedy might have been found for their evil, yet repentance would have brought forth some fruit; but now they are satisfied with a vanity as empty as the wind. By this example we are taught how carefully we ought to avoid dissimulation, which continually implicates men in new snares.

But he refused to be comforted. It may be asked, whether Jacob had entirely cast off the virtue of patience: for so much the language seems to mean. Besides, he sins more grievously, because he, knowingly and voluntarily, indulges in grief: for this is as if he would purposely augment his sorrow, which is to rebel against God. But I suppose his refusal to be restricted to that alleviation of grief which man might offer. For nothing is more unreasonable than that a holy man, who, all his life had borne the yoke of God with such meekness of disposition, should now, like an unbroken horse, bite his bridle; in order that, by nourishing his grief, he might confirm himself in unsubdued impetuosity. I therefore do not doubt that he was willing now to submit himself unto the Lord, though he rejects human consolations. He seems also angrily to chide his sons, whose envy and malevolence towards Joseph he knew, as if he would upbraid them by declaring that he esteemed this one son more than all the rest: since he rather desires to be with him, dead in the grave, than to enjoy the society of ten living sons whom he had yet remaining; for I except little Benjamin. I do not, however, here excuse that excess of grief which I have lately condemned. And certainly heproves himself to be overwhelmed with sadness, in speaking of the grave, as if the sons of God did not pass through death to a better life. And hence we learn the blindness of immoderate grief, which almost quenches the light of faith in the saints; so much the more diligent, then, ought we to be in our endeavor to restrain it. Job greatly excelled in piety; yet we see, after he had been oppressed by the magnitude of his grief, in what a profane manner he mixes men with beasts in death. If the angelic minds of holy men were thus darkened by sadness, how much deeper gloom will rest upon us, unless God, by the shining of his word and Spirit, should scatter it, and we also, with suitable anxiety, meet the temptation, before it overwhelms us? The principal mitigation of sorrow is the consolation of the future life; to which whosoever applies himself, need not fear lest he should be absorbed by excess of grief. Now though the immoderate sorrow of Jacob is not to be approved; yet the special design of Moses was, to set a mark of infamy on that iron hardness which cruelly reigned in the hearts of his sons. They saw that, if their father should miserably perish, consumed with grief, they would be the cause of it; in short, they saw that he was already dying through their wickedness. If they are not able to heal the wound, why, at least, do they not attempt to alleviate his pain? Therefore they are exceedingly cruel, seeing that they have not sufficient care of their father’s life, to cause them to drop a single word in mitigation of his sorrow, when it was in their power to do so.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(35) Into the grave.Heb., Sheol, which, like Hades in Greek, means the place of departed spirits. Jacob supposed that Joseph had been devoured by wild beasts, and as he was not buried, the father could not have gone down into the grave unto his son. (Comp. Note on Gen. 15:15.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

35. His daughters “His sons’ wives, or possibly he may have had daughters besides Dinah, which are not mentioned by name . ‘And he said, (I will not be comforted,) for I will go down to my son, mourning, to Sheol . ’ This is the first place in which the word Sheol occurs, which means the place or state of the dead . It is derived by Gesenius from a word meaning to dig, that is, the grave, but has been usually derived from a verb meaning to ask, or demand, the craving grave . Lewis, however, understands the word to express the inquiring wonder with which we ask for the dead, the eager listening at the gates of death . So the Greek word Hades, the unseen, (Sept . translation of Sheol,) sets forth the same world as sealed to the sense of sight. ‘In the one, it is the eye peering into the dark; in the other it is the ear intently listening to the silence. Both give rise to the same question, Where is he? whither has he gone? and both seem to imply with equal emphasis that the one unseen and unheard yet really is.’ Jacob did not expect that his body would lie with Joseph’s in the same grave, for he thought that an ‘evil beast had devoured him,’ yet he expected to go to his son.” Newhall.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments