Joseph Makes Himself Known

v. 1. Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. Now that he had such unmistakable proof of the genuineness of his brothers’ repentance, it was no longer possible for him to control his feelings. But he did not want his Egyptian servants to witness his reconciliation with his brothers. And there stood no man with him while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren, all of the attendants having left the room at his command, as being unable to understand the revelations that would now be made.

v. 2. And he wept aloud; his emotion, his agitation, so long repressed, broke forth like a flood carrying with it every obstruction. And the Egyptians, the servants outside, and the house of Pharaoh heard, either because the house of Joseph was near the royal palace or because the news was quickly carried there.

v. 3. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph. The abruptness of the announcement was caused by the intensity of his emotion. Doth my father yet live? He had been given the information before, Gen 43:28, but his loving anxiety demands assurance once more. And his brethren could not answer him, for they were troubled at his presence. The terrors of an evil conscience took hold of them once more, and their astonishment prevented their saying so much as a word.

v. 4. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. He was obliged to coax and invite them. And they came near, more by reason of his invitation than by the power of their love. And he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold in to Egypt. He says it not by way of reproach, but to assure them of his identity.

v. 5. Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither. He saw, from the expression of their faces and eyes, that sorrow over their crime and anger over their miserable jealousy was struggling in their hearts. For God did send me before you to preserve life; the entire matter, though full of human weakness and sin, had, by God’s dispensation, redounded to the preservation of life, not only in Egypt, but also for the patriarchal family.

v. 6. For these two years hath the famine been in the land; and yet there are five years in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. The famine, as Joseph vividly states, was even then in the midst of the land, and for five more years there would be neither plowing nor reaping.

v. 7. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. The saving of the patriarchal family, the bearers of the Messianic promise, was of even greater importance than the preserving of the Egyptians. It was the will of God, as Joseph now recognized very clearly, that the family and the posterity of Jacob should be kept alive through this famine, the final result being that they would be a multitude, escaped from death and destruction. Even here the Messianic idea is not wanting.

v. 8. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God; they were mere instruments in the hand of Providence; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, his confidential counselor and friend, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Thus Joseph, formerly apparently a tyrant, forgave his repentant brothers their great sin and assured them that he bore them no ill will, just as the Lord, after trying us with great severity, proves Himself our dear Father in Christ Jesus.

v. 9. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt; come down unto me, tarry not;

v. 10. and thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, in the eastern Nile delta, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast;

v. 11. and there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty, be so greatly impoverished as to suffer actual want, his possessions being taken over by others. Toward this message and invitation the entire speech of Joseph had tended. And, the brothers still being perplexed, Joseph once more urged them to see the situation correctly.

v. 12. And, behold, your eyes see and the eyes of my brother Benjamin that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you, that the entire scene was not a dream and a delusion.

v. 13. And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. The more complete the description of actual conditions, the sooner would Jacob believe; and what Joseph desired above all was haste.

v. 14. And he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. Having relieved his heart of its pent-up emotion in this manner, Joseph now greeted, first of all, his brother Benjamin, as was to be expected after a separation of more than twenty years.

v. 15. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them, while they were in his embrace; and after that his brethren talked with him, having now gained the assurance that Joseph did not intend to take revenge upon them, but that his love had forgotten all the wrong committed by them.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Gen 45:1, Gen 45:2

Then (literally, and) Joseph could not refrain himself (i.e. keep himself from giving way to the impulses of love) before all them that stood by him (i.e. the Egyptian officials of his household); and he cried (or made proclamation, issued an instruction), Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. It was true delicacy on the part of Joseph which prompted the discovery of himself to his brethren in private; not simply because he did not wish to pain his brethren by a public reference to their past wickedness, ne facinus illud detestabile multis testibus innoteseat (Calvin), but because the unrestrained outburst of emotion erga fratres et parentem non posset ferre alienorum praesentiam et aspectum (Luther). And he wept aloud (literally, and he gave forth, or uttered, his voice in weeping): and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. The meaning is that the Egyptian officials of Joseph’s house, who were standing outside, heard, and reported it to the house of Pharaoh (Keil, Murphy). It is not necessary to suppose that Joseph’s residence was so close to the palace that his voice was heard by the inmates (Lunge).

Gen 45:3

And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph. The effect of this announcement can be better imagined than described. Hitherto he had been known to his brethren as Zaphnath-paaneah. Now the voice and the appearance of their long-lost brother would rush upon their minds at the first sound of the familiar name, and fill them with apprehension. Probably Joseph’s discernment of this in their countenances was the reason why he asked so abruptly after Jacob. Doth my father yet live? It is not now “the old man of whom ye spake” (Gen 43:27) for whom Joseph inquires, but his own beloved and revered parent”my father.” “Before it was a question of courtesy, but now of love” (Alford). And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled (or cast into a trepidation, hence terrified) at his presenceliterally, before his face. Not only did his present greatness overawe them, but the recollection of their former crimes against him filled them with alarm.

Gen 45:4-13

And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. It is probable they had instinctively shrunk from his presence on learning the astounding fact that he was Joseph, but felt reassured by the kindly tone of Joseph’s words. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. It was impossible to evade allusion to their early wickedness, and this Joseph does in a spirit not of angry upbraiding, but of elevated piety and tender charity. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves (literally, let it not burn in your eyes, as in Gen 31:35), that ye sold me hither (their self-recriminations and heart upbraidings for their former wickedness Joseph in all probability saw depicted in their faces): for God (Elohim) did send me before you to preserve life (literally, for the preservation of life). For these two years hath the famine been in the land (literally, in the midst of the land): and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earning nor harvestliterally, neither ploughing nor reaping, the term ploughing, or earing, charish (cf. , aratio, Anglo-Saxon, origin), being derived from a root signifying to cut. And God (Elohim, the use of which here and in Gen 45:5 instead of Jehovah is sufficiently explained by remembering that Joseph simply desires to point out the overruling providence of God in his early transportation to Egypt) sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth (literally, to keep for you a remnant on the earth, i.e. to preserve the family from extinction through the famine), and to save your lives by a great deliveranceliterally, to preserve life to you to a great deliverance, i.e. by a providential rescue (Rosenmller, Kalisch, Murphy, ‘Speaker’s Commentary’), which is better than to a great nation or posterity, being understood, as in 2Sa 15:14; 2Ki 19:30, 2Ki 19:31, to mean a remnant escaped from slaughter (Bohlen), an interpretation which Rosenmller thinks admissible, but Kalisch disputes. So now (literally, and now) it was not you that sent me hither, but Godliterally, for the Elohim (sent me). Joseph’s brethren sent him to be a slave; God sent him to be a savior (Hughes). And he hath made me a father to Pharaoh,i.e. a wise and confidential friend and counselor (Keil, Kalisch, ‘Speaker’s Commentary;’ cf. 1 Macc. 11:32). Murphy explains the term as signifying “a second author of life,” with obvious reference to the interpretation of his dreams and the measures adopted to provide against the famineand lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land Egypt (vide Gen 41:40, Gen 41:41). Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God (Elohim) hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: and thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen. Goshen, (LXX.), was a region on the east of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, extending as far as the wilderness of Arabia, a land of pastures (Gen 46:34), exceedingly fertile (Gen 47:6), styled also the land of Rameses (Gen 47:11), and including the cities Pithon and Rameses (Exo 1:11), and probably also On, or Heliopolis. And thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: and there will I nourish thee (the verb is the Pilpel of , to hold up, hence to sustain); for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to povertyliterally, be robbed, from , to take possession (Keil), or fall into slavery, i.e. through poverty (Knobel, Lange). And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. And ye shall tell my father of (literally, ye shall relate to my father) all my glory (cf. Gen 31:1) in Egypt, and of all (literally, ail) that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. Calvin thinks that Joseph would not have made such liberal promises to his brethren without having previously obtained Pharaoh’s consent, nisi regis permissu; but this does not appear from the narrative.

Gen 45:14, Gen 45:15

And he (i.e. Joseph) fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. “Benjamin is the central point whence leads out the way to reconciliation” (Langs). “Here brotherly affection is drawn out by affection, tear answering tear” (Hughes; cf. Gen 33:4). Moreover he kissed all his brethren,”the seal of recognition, of reconciliation, and of salutation” (Lange)and wept upon them. It has been thought that Benjamin stood when Joseph embraced him, and that the two wept upon each other’s neck, but that the brethren bowed themselves at Joseph’s feet, causing the expression to be, “and he wept upon them” (Lange). And after that his brethren talked with himfeeling themselves reassured by such demonstrations of affection.

HOMILETICS

Gen 45:1-15

Joseph’s discovery of himself to his brethren.

I. THE ANNOUNCEMENT. “I am Joseph, whom ye sold into Egypt.”

1. How it was made.

(1) In privacy. “There stood no man with Joseph, while he made himself known to his brethren.” This was natural. The emotions of the moment were too strong and deep to be shared in or even witnessed by strangers. But it was also merciful. Joseph knew that he could not divulge his secret without a reference to the past, and he would not expose his brothers’ guilt and shame in the presence of unsympathizing lookers-on.

(2) With tears. “Joseph could not refrain himself” even “before all them that stood before him,” and scarcely had they withdrawn than “he wept aloud.” From the first Joseph had a Herculean task to perform in keeping his emotion within bounds. This was partly the explanation of the rough treatment he gave his brethren. Had he yielded to the tender feelings which the sight of Reuben and Judah and the others kindled in his breast, he would at once have been discovered. Yet it was all that he could do to avoid detection. Once and again he had to retire from their presence to relieve his bursting heart by “weeping” (cf. Gen 42:24; Gen 43:30). But this time the rising flood of emotion was too strong to be repressed even long enough to admit of his escape. The pathetic eloquence of Judah, the earnest, tearful pleading combined with the sublime and affecting heroism of the man who offered himself to be a bondman for ever, that his young brother might escape and that his father’s heart might not be broken, was too much for the Egyptian viceroy, and he sobbed aloud.

(3) With forgiveness. Few things are more touching in this wholly melting story than the considerate tenderness of Joseph in sparing his brethren’s feelings, and the exquisite delicacy with which he leads them to understand that he cherishes against them not the least resentment. Scarcely has he made the startling disclosure that he was Joseph, than, as if to prevent them from thinking of their sin, he hurries on to ask about their father. Then, as he sees them shrinking in alarm from his presence, expecting doubtless that the hour of recompense for Dothan had arrived, he kindly asks them not to stand aloof from him, but to come near. Again, as he understands the impossibility of their ever shutting their eyes to their deplorable wickedness, he tries to lead them rather to contemplate the wonderful way in which the hand of God had overruled his captivity for the salvation of their entire household. “So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” Beautiful sophistry of love! I do not know that Joseph’s brethren would believe it: but it is obvious that in the enthusiasm of his forgiving love Joseph did.

2. How it was received.

(1) With surprise. This was only to be expected. It must have fallen on Joseph’s brethren like a thunderbolt. It manifestly struck them into silence. “They could not answer him.”

(2) With alarm. Apprehending vengeance, they were “troubled at his presence,” and involuntarily shrank from before him.

(3) With pain. They were grieved and angry with themselves, not that Joseph was alive, but that ever he had been sold. Many a time during the past years, and in particular since their first visit to Egypt, they had mourned over their sin against the child of Rachel. Now the anguish of their self-reproach was almost more than they could bear. And this was the best sign of its sincerity, that it was intensified rather than diminished by the sight of Joseph (cf. Zec 12:10). True penitence, as distinguished from remorse, is sorrow for sin, irrespective altogether of its consequences.

II. THE COMMISSION.

1. To carry an invitation. “Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, and tarry not.”

2. To deliver a promise. “And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen,” and “there will I nourish thee.”

3. To explain a reason “For yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty.”

4. To provide an authentications. “And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you.”

5. To supply an encouragement. “And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt.”

6. To return with an answer. “And ye shall haste and bring down my father hither.”

III. THE RECONCILIATION.

1. With tears of joy. “He fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck.” Over the rest of his brothers also as they bowed before him “he wept.”

2. With kisses of love. “Moreover he kissed all his brethren”not even forgetting Simeon, who probably had bound him.

3. With words of cheer. “After that his brethren talked with him.”

Lessons:See in the character of Joseph, as portrayed in this touching scene, a brilliant constellation of heavenly virtues and holy graces.

1. Of fraternal affection in his tender dealing with his brethren.

2. Of filial piety in his considerate regard for his father.

3. Of eminent devotion in recognizing the hand of God in all his past fortunes.

4. Of exquisite sensibility in being so quickly moved to tears.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Gen 45:1-15

Darkness turned into light.

Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brethren in the atmosphere of the purest brotherly affection and grateful acknowledgment of Divine goodness. Only small natures are ashamed of tears. At first the men who had a great sin upon their consciences were only troubled at the presence of their injured brother, but soon the free and full manifestation of his love turns all their fears into rejoicing. Joseph wept for joy at their return to him, and they were henceforth his brethren indeed. Although for a time we carry the burden of our sins and feel their weight, even though we believe that they are forgiven, still as God reveals himself to us and surrounds us more and more with the embrace of his love, we lose the constraint of our painful remembrance, and rejoice with all our hearts in present peace and future glory.R.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Gen 45:3

The great announcement.

Not a stranger, but a brother. Yet they were slow to receive comfort from it. The fact beyond all expectation; the suspicion of the unknown ruler attaching itself to the newly-found brother; the remembrance of their own former cruelty; the doubt whether indeed the past were forgiven, combined to make them “troubled at his presence.” Akin to this is the slowness with which the great revelation of the gospel is received, our adoption as sons (Gal 4:5) through our brotherhood with Christ; members of Christ, and thus children of God. Not the doctrine, for we are familiar with its terms, but the practical reception of it. The gospel preached is “good-will to men;” the foundation on which it rests is the work whereby the eternal Son became our brother and representative (2Co 5:14). The means of appropriation, belief that God has indeed done this thing for us (Mat 11:28). Yet even to those who are longing for peace and salvation the message often seems to bring no real comfort. The truth of the doctrine is admitted, but Jesus is not recognized as a personal, present Savior. There is a feeling that something not declared lies behind; that there is some unexplained “if,” some condition to be fulfilled, some part of the work to be done, ere it can be safe to trust. Conscious of sin, they do not fully receive the offer as made to them such as they are. The fact is, men often want to begin at the wrong end; to make some worthy offering to God ere they have it to give (cf. 1Ch 29:14; 1Co 4:7); want to gather fruit ere the tree is planted; to build a spiritual house ere the foundation is laid.

I. GOD‘S OFFER PRECEDES FAITH. The gospel proclaims a factChrist crucified for us, the fulfillment of Isa 53:5. Its primary message is not of something to follow our faith, but of that on which our faith rests. The “foundation” of spiritual life is not our belief but Christ’s work (1Co 3:11). But in practice many seem to regard the right to trust in Christ’s work as depending on their being in a fitting state of mind. And thus their mind is turned away from Christ to their own state (cf. Mat 14:30). No doubt there must be a conviction of need ere the Savior can e welcomed (Mat 9:12). But the evidence of that conviction is not our feelings but laying our burden upon the Lord.

II. GOD‘S OFFER MUST BE RECEIVED BY FAITHthat is, it must be accepted as it is made; not something else put in its place. God’s message is, Trust in Christ. To do this is to exercise faith. But the answer often is, I must first see whether I have faith. It is as if when our Lord bade the impotent arise, he had answered, I must first feel that I have the power. Faith depends not on accurate knowledge. The gospel is for the ignorant; and what it claims is that we receive it according to the measure of our knowledge, guided by those means of instruction which we possess.

III. GOD‘S OFFER IS TO MAKE US WHAT WE OUGHT TO BE. Christ accepted, trusted, is made unto us wisdom, &c. (1Co 1:30). Faith leads to more communion with Christ. The Bible becomes a living voice instead of a dead letter. Channels of knowledge are opened, and daily increasing powers are given where the will is to be really Christ’s (Joh 6:68).M.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Gen 45:5

Providence.

“Now therefore be not grieved,” &c.

I. THE END IS GOODNESS AND MERCY.

1. To preserve life.

2. To set the seed of the better society in the midst of the corruptions and imperfections of the old.

3. To prepare the way for the higher revelations of the future.

II. GOD‘S METHOD OF INSTRUMENTALITIES HIS GLORY.

1. The history of his people, their persecutions, their apparent humiliations, their marvelous victories.

2. The transformation of men, whereby enemies are made friends, &c.

3. The biographies of distinguished servants of God illustrate his grace in bestowing fitness for appointed work.

III. MYSTERIES LOOKED AT FROM A HIGHER POINT OF VIEW BECOME REVELATIONS.

1. Time a great revealer. Wait for the Lord.

2. The narrow circle of a family history taken up into the higher sphere of Divine purposes concerning nations and humanity itself.

3. Ultimate vindication of the spiritual men and spiritual principles as against the merely earthly and selfish aims of individuals or communities.R.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Gen 45:1. Then Joseph could not The beauties of this chapter are so striking, that it would be an indignity to the reader’s judgment to point them out: all who can read and feel must be sensible of them; as, perhaps, there is nothing in sacred or prophane history more highly wrought up, more interesting or affecting.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

SEVENTH SECTION

The second journey. Benjamin accompanying. Joseph maketh himself known to his brethren. Their return. Jacobs joy.

Genesis 43-45

A. The trial of the brethren. Their repentance and Josephs reconcilableness. Joseph and Benjamin.

Gen 43:1 to Gen 44:17

1And the famine was sore in the land. 2And it came to pass, when they had eaten up the corn which they had brought out of Egypt, their father said unto them, Go again, buy us a little food. 3And Judah spake unto him, saying, The man did solemnly protest unto us, saying, Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you. 4If thou wilt send our brother with us, we will go down and buy thee food; 5But if thou wilt not send him, we will not go down; for the man said unto us, Ye shall not see my face [again], except your brother be with you. 6And Israel said, Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother? 7And they said, The man asked us straitly of our state, and of our kindred, saying, Is your father yet alive? have ye another brother? and we told him, according to the tenor of these words; could we certainly know that he would say, Bring your brother down? 8And Judah said unto Israel his father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go; that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones. 9I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him; if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever; 10For except we had lingered, surely now we had returned this second time. 11And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds; 12And take double money in your hand; and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight; 13Take also your brother, and arise, go again unto the Man 1:14 And God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may send away your other brother, and Benjamin.1 If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. 15And the men took that present, and they took double money in their hand, and Benjamin, and rose up, and went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph. 16And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the ruler of his house, Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready; for these men shall dine with me at noon. 17And the man did as Joseph bade; and the man brought the men into Josephs house. 18And the men were afraid, because they were brought into Josephs house; and they said, Because of the money that was returned in our sacks at the first time are we brought in; that he may seek occasion against us,2 and fall upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses. 19And they came near to the steward of Josephs house, and they communed with him at the door of the house. 20And said, O sir, we came indeed down at the first time to buy food; 21And it came to pass, when we came to the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, every mans money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight; and we have brought3 it again in our hand. 22And other money have we brought down in our hands to buy food; we cannot tell who put our money in our sacks. 23And he said, Peace be to you, fear not; your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks; I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto them. 24And the man brought the men into Josephs house, and gave them water, and they washed their feet; and he gave their asses provender. 25And they made ready the present against Joseph came at noon; for they heard that they should eat bread there. 26And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which was in their hand into the house, and bowed themselves to him to the earth. 27And he asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive? 28And they answered, Thy servant our father is in good health, he is yet alive. And they bowed down their 29heads, and made obeisance. And he lift up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his mothers son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake unto me? And he said farther [without waiting for an answer] God be gracious unto thee, my son. 30And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother; and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber and wept there. 31And he washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself, and said, Set on bread. 32And they set en for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves; because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews: for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians. 33And they sat before him, the first born according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth; and the men marvelled one at another. 34And he took and sent messes unto them from before him; but Benjamins mess was five times so much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry with him.

Gen 44:1 :And Joseph commanded the steward of his house, saying, Fill the mens sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put every mans money in his sacks mouth. 2And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sacks mouth of the youngest, 3and his corn-money. And he did according to the word that Joseph had spoken. As 4soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away, they and their asses. And when they were gone out of the city, and not yet far off, Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore 5have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing. 6And he overtook them, and he spake unto them these same words. 7And they said unto him, Wherefore saith my lord these words? God forbid that thy servants should do according to this thing; 8Behold, the money which we found in our sacks mouths, we brought again unto thee out of the land of Canaan; how then should we steal out of thy lords house silver or gold? 9With whomsoever of thy servants it be found, both let him die, and we also will be my lords bondmen. 10And he said, Now also let it be according unto your words; he with whom it is found shall be my servant; and ye shall be blameless. 11Then they speedily took down every man his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack. 12And he searched, and began at the eldest, and left at the youngest; and the cup was found in Benjamins sack. 13Then they rent their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and returned to the city. 14And Judah and his brethren came to Josephs house; for he was yet there; and they fell before him on the ground. 15And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine? 16And Judah said, What shall we say unto my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants; behold, we are my lords servants, both we, and he also with whom the cup is found. 17And he said, God forbid that I should do so; but the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant; and as for you, get you up in peace unto your father.

B. The narrative of the reconciliation and the recognition. Judah and Joseph.

Chap. Gen 44:18 to Gen 45:28

18Then Judah came near unto him, and said, O my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lords ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant; for thou art even as Pharaoh. 19My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother? 20And we said unto my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. 21And thou saidst unto thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes upon him. 22And we said unto my lord, The lad can not leave his father; for if he should leave his father, his father would die. 23And thou saidst unto thy servants, Except your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more. 24And it came to pass when we came up unto thy servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. 25And our father said, Go again, and buy us a little food. 26And we said, We can not go down; if our youngest brother be with us, then will we go down; for we may not see the mans face, except our youngest brother be with us. 27And thy servant my father said unto us, Ye know that my wife bare me two sons; 28And the one went out from me [and did not return], and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces; and I saw him not since; 29And if ye take this also from me, and mischief befall him, ye 30shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave [sheol]. Now, therefore, when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us, seeing that his life is bound up in the lads life; 31It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die; and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave. 32For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to 33my father for ever. Now, therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad, a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren. 34For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father.

Gen 45:1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. 2And he wept aloud; and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. 3And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. 4And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye 5sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me thither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. 6For these two years hath the famine been in the land; and yet there are five years in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. 7And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity 8in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. 9Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt; come down unto me, tarry not; 10And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen [East district of Egypt; the name is of Koptic origin. Uncertain: district of Hercules], and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy childrens children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast; 11And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. 12And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. 13And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. 14And he fell upon his brother Benjamins neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. 15Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them; and after that his brethren talked with him.

C. The glad tidings to Jacob, Gen 44:16-28.

16And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaohs house, saying, Josephs brethren are come; and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. 17And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; 18And take your father, and your households, and come unto me; and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. 19Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. 20Also regard not your stuff; for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours. 21And the children of Israel did so; and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. 22To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. 23And to his father he sent after this manner; ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she-asses laden with corn, and bread, and meat for his father by the way. 24So he sent his brethren away, and they departed; and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way. 25And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father. 26And told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacobs heart fainted, for he believed them not. 27And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them; and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. 28And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive I will go and see him before I die.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Contents: a. The trial of the brethren. Their repentance and Josephs forgiveness. Joseph and Benjamin. Gen 43:1 to Gen 44:17 : 1. Judah as surety for Benjamin unto his father, Gen 43:1-14; Genesis 2. Joseph and Benjamin, Gen 43:15-30; Genesis 3. the feast in honor of Benjamin, Gen 43:31-34; Genesis 4. the proving of the brethren in respect to their disposition towards Benjamin, especially after the great distinction shown to him, Gen 44:1-17 b. The story of the reconciliation, and of the recognition, as presented under the antithesis of Judah and Joseph, Gen 44:18; Gen 45:13. 1. Judah as surety and substitute for Benjamin, Gen 44:18-34; Genesis 2. Josephs reconciliation and making himself known to them, Gen 45:1-5; Genesis 3. Josephs divine peace and divine mission, Gen 43:5-13; Genesis 4. the solemnity of the salutation, Gen 43:14-15. c. The glad tidings to Jacob, Gen 43:16 to Gen 28:1. Pharaohs message to Jacob, Gen 43:16-20; Genesis 2. Josephs presents to Jacob, Gen 43:21-24; Genesis 3. the return of Josephs brethren; Pharaohs wagons and Jacobs revivification, Gen 43:25-28.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

a. The proving of the brothers. Their repentance and Josephs forgiveness. Joseph and Benjamin, Gen 43:1; Gen 44:17. 1. Gen 43:1-14; Judah as surety for Benjamin unto the father.Buy us a little bread.In death and famine a rich supply is but little; so it was especially in Jacobs numerous family, in regard to what they had brought the first time.And Judah spake.Judah now stands forth as a principal personage, appearing more and more glorious in his dignity, his firmness, his noble disposition, and his unselfish heroism. He, like Reuben, could speak to his father, and with even more freedom, because he had a freer conscience than the rest, and regarded the danger, therefore, in a milder light. Judah does not act rashly, but as one who has a grand and significant purpose. His explanation to the wounded father is as forbearing as it is firm. If they did not bring Benjamin, Simeon was lost, and they themselves, according to Josephs threatening, would have no admittance to himyea, they might even incur death, because they had not removed from themselves the suspicion of their being spies.Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me?Knobel: His grief and affliction urge him on to reproach them without reason. Unreasonable, however, as it appears, it becomes significant on the supposition that he begins to read their guilty consciences, and, especially, when, with the one preceding, we connect the expression that follows: Me have ye bereaved of my children.The man asked us straitly.[Lange translates the Hebrew literally, or nearly so: er fragte und fragte uns aus; or, as it might be rendered, still closer to the letter, he asked to ask; or, if we take the infinitive in such cases as an adverb, he asked inquisitively, and then proceeds to remark]: This expressive connection of the infinitive with the indicative in Hebrew must not be effaced by grammatical rules; we hold fast to its literalness here. They did not speak forwardly of their family relations, but only after the closest questioning. By this passage and Judahs speech (Genesis 44), the account in the preceding chapter (Gen 43:32) is to be supplemented. They owed him an answer, since the question was to remove his suspicion; and, moreover, they had no presentiment of what he wanted.Send the lad with me. (with me) says the brave Judah. He presents himself as surety; he will take the guilt and bear the blame forever. The strong man promises all he can. To offer to the grandfather his own grandchildren, as Reuben offered his sons, that he might put them to death, was too unreal and hyperbolical to occur to him. We become acquainted with him here as a man full of feeling, and of most energetic speech, as Gen 43:3, and Genesis 33 had before exemplified. He eloquently shows how they are all threatened with starvation. The expression, too: Surely now we had returned the second time, promises a happy issue.If it must be so now.Jacob had once experienced, in the case of Esau, that presents had an appeasing effect on hostile dispositions. From this universal human experience there is explained the ancient custom, especially in the East, of rendering rulers favorably disposed by gifts (see 1Ki 10:25; Mat 2:11; Pro 18:16; Pro 19:6).Of the first fruits of the land.(Lange translates: Of that which is most praiseworthy.) Literally, of the song; i.e., that which was celebrated in song. The noblest products of nature are, for the most part, celebrated and symbolized in poetry. In presents to distinguished persons, however, the simple money-value of the things avails but little; it is the peculiar quality, or some poetic fragrance attached to them, that makes them effective. Delitzsch doubts this explanation, but without sufficient reason. They are especially to take balm, the pride of Canaan, but in particular of Gilead. Then honey. Knobel and Delitzsch suppose it to be the honey of grapes, Arab., dibs. Grape syrup; i.e., must boiled down to one third, an article, of which, even at the present day, there are sent yearly three hundred camel-loads from Hebrons vicinity to Egypt. Delitzsch. But this very abundance of the syrup of grapes would lead us to decide rather for the honey of bees, were it not for the consideration, that in the Egypt of to-day great attention is given to the raising of bees, and that it is no wine country, although not wholly without the culture of the vine (Gen 40:10).Spices.(Lange, tragacanth-gum.) A kind of white resinous medicament (see Winer, Tragacanth).Myrrh.Frankincense, salve medicament (see Winer, Ladanum).Nuts.The Hebrew word occurs here only, but by the Samaritan translation it is interpreted of the fruit of the Pistacia vera, a tree similar to the terebinthoblong and angular nuts of the size of a hazel-nut, containing an oily but very palatable kernel, which do not, however, grow any more in Palestine (as is stated in Schuberts Travels in the East, ii. p. 478; iii. 114), but are obtained from Aleppo (comp. Rosen., in the German Orient. Magazine, xii. p. 502). Keil.Almonds.(See Winer, Almond-tree.) On the productions of Palestine in general, see CalwerBibl. Natural History, etc.And take double money.(Lit. second money. They are not to take advantage of the mistake, even though no unfavorable construction should be put upon it, or it should occasion them no harm.And God Almighty.Here, when some strong miraculous help is needed, he is again most properly designated by the name El Shadai.If I be bereaved of my children.Be it so. An expression of resignation (Est 4:16). As his blessing here is not a prayer full of confidence, so the resignation has not the full expression of sacrifice; for Jacobs soul is unconsciously restrained by a sense of the ban resting upon his sons. He is bowed down by the spiritual burden of his house.

2. Gen 43:15-30. Joseph and Benjamin.And stood before Joseph.Knobel justly states that the audience they had with Joseph did not take place until afterwards. The meaning here is that they took their place in front of Josephs house, together with Benjamin and the presents, and so announced to him their arrival.Bring these men home.With joy had Joseph observed Benjamin with them, and concludes from thence that they had practised no treachery upon him, through hatred to the children of Rachel, the darlings of their father. Benjamins appearance sheds a reconciling light upon the whole group. He intends, therefore, to receive them in a friendly and hospitable manner. His staying away, however, until noon, characterizes not only the great and industrious statesman, but also the man of sage discretion, who takes time to consult with himself about his future proceeding.And stay.Bohlens assertion that the higher castes in Egypt ate no meat at all, is refuted by Knobel, p. 326.At noon.The time when they partook of their principal meal (Gen 18:1).And the men were afraid.Judging from their former treatment they know not what to make of their being thus led into his house. If a distinction, it is an incomprehensibly great one; they, therefore, apprehended a plan for their destruction. Some monstrous intrigue they, perhaps, anticipate, having its introduction in the reappearance of the money in their sacks, whilst the fearful imagination of an evil conscience begins to paint the consequences (see Gen 43:18). A thief, if unable to make restitution, was sold as a slave (Exo 22:3). Therefore they are not willing to enter until they have justified themselves about the money returned in their sacks. They address themselves, on this account, to Josephs steward, with an explanatory vindication.When we came to the inn.In a summary way they here state both facts (Gen 42:27; Gen 42:35) together. For afterwards they might have concluded that the money found in the sack of one of them was a sign that that money had been returned in all the sacks.In full weight.There was, as yet, no coined money, only rings or pieces of metal, which were reckoned by weight.Peace be to you.It can hardly be supposed that the steward was let into Josephs plan. He knew, however, that Joseph himself had ordered the return of the money, and might have supposed that Josephs course toward them, as his countrymen, had in view a happy issue. In this sense it is that he encourages them.Your God and the God of your father.The shrewd steward is acquainted with Josephs religiousness, and, perhaps, has adopted it himself. He undoubtedly regards them as confessors of the same faith with Joseph. Knobel: His own good fortune each man deduces from the God he worships (Hos 2:7).Has given you treasure.Thus intimating some secret means by which God had given it to them; but for all this they still remain uneasy, though sufficiently calmed by his verbal acknowledgment of receipt: I had your money, but more so by the releasing of Simeon. It is not until now that they enter the house which they had before regarded as a snare. Now follow the hospitable reception, the disposition of the presents, Josephs greeting, and their obeisance.And he asked them of their welfare.This was his greeting. See the contrast, Gen 37:4. For the inquiry after their fathers welfare they thank him by the most respectful obeisance, an expression of their courtesy and of their filial piety. They represent their father, just as Benjamin represents the mother, and so it is that his dream of the sun and moon fulfils itself (Gen 37:9). If we suppose Benjamin born about a year before Josephs sale, he would be now twenty-three years of age. Knobel does not know how to understand the repeated expressions of his youth (, etc.). But they are explained from the tender care exercised towards him, and from the great difference between his age and that of his brothers.And he said.It is very significant that Joseph does not wait for an answer. He recognizes him immediately, and his heart yearns.My son.An expression of inner tenderness, and an indication, at the same time, of near relationship.And Joseph made haste.His overwhelming emotion, the moment he saw his brethren, like Jacobs love of Rachel, has a gleam of the New-Testament life.4 It is not, however, to be regarded as a simple feeling; it is also an emotion of joy at the prospect of that reconciliation which he had, for some time, feared their hatred towards Rachels children might prevent, and so bring ruin upon Benjamin, upon Jacobs house, and upon themselves. No emotions are stronger than those arising from the dissolution of a ban, with which there is, at the same time, taken away the danger of a dark impending doom, and the old hardening of impaired affection.

3. Gen 43:31-34. The banquet in honor of Benjamin.And he washed his face.A proof of the depth of his emotion. It was still hard for him to maintain a calm and composed countenance.And they set on for him by himself.Three tables, from two different causes. Josephs caste as priest, and in which he stood next to the king, did not allow him to eat with laymen. And, moreover, neither Josephs domestics, nor his guests, could, as Egyptians, eat with Hebrews. Concerning the rigidness of the Egyptian seclusion, see Knobel, p. 328. Besides, the Hebrews were nomads (Gen 46:34). On the Egyptian castes, see Von Raumer, Vorlesungen ber die alte Gesch, i. p. 133.And they set.They were surprised to see themselves arranged according to their age. But the enigma becomes more and more transparent; whilst strange presentiments are more and more excited. The transaction betrays the fact that they are known to the spirit of the house, and that it can distinguish between their ages. The Egyptians sat at table, instead of reclining; as appears from their pictures.And he took and sent messes.They were thus distinguished by having portions sent to them; whilst, as yet, they were hindered by no laws from eating of Josephs meat.But Benjamins mess.This is a point not to be overlooked in the proving of the brethren; it is an imitation, so to say, of the coat of many colors. It would determine whether Benjamin was to become an object of their jealousy, just as his fathers present had before been to him the cause of their hatred (so also Keil, p. 264). His mess is five times larger than the rest. Such abundance was an especial proof of respect. To the guest who was to be distinguished there were given, at a meal, the largest and best pieces (1Sa 9:23; Hom.Il. vii. 321, etc.). Among the Spartans the king received a double portion (Herod, vi. 57, etc.); among the Cretans the Archon received four times as much (Heraclid. Polit. 3). Five was a favorite number among the Egyptians (Gen 41:34; Gen 45:22; Gen 47:2; Gen 47:24; Isa 19:18). It may be explained, perhaps, from the supposed five planets.And they drank and were merry with him.Intoxication is not meant here (see Hag 1:6), but a state of exhilaration, in which they first lose their fear of the Egyptian ruler. Benjamin was sitting as a guardian angel between them, and it was already a favorable sign, that the distinction showed to him did not embitter their joy. Nevertheless, whether Joseph had reached the zenith of an inexpressible rapture, as Delitzsch says, may be questioned. In all this happy, anticipation, we may suppose him still a careful observer of his brethren, according to the proverb invino veritas. At all events, the effect of the present to Benjamin was to be tested, and their disposition towards him was to undergo a severe probing.

4. Gen 44:1-17. The trial of the brothers disposition towards Benjamin, especially after his great distinction.And he commanded the steward of his house.The return of money does not belong to this trial, but only the cup in Benjamins sack. Knobel is incorrect in calling this also a chastisement. So also is Delitzsch, in holding that a surrender of Benjamin by his brethren loses all authentic support, in the fact that in all the sacks something was found that did not belong to them. Rather is Benjamin the only one who must appear as guilty, and as having incurred the doom of slavery (Gen 44:17).Up, follow after the men.The haste is in order that they may not anticipate him in the discovery, and so defeat the accusation by their voluntary return. The steward is to inquire only for the silver cup.And whereby indeed he divineth.In Egypt, the country of oracles (Isa 19:3), hydromancy also was practised, i. e., to predict events from appearances presented by the liquid contents of a cup, either as standing or as thrown. This mode of divination is still practised.5 It was called , lit., whispering (in magic formulas or oracles), divinare. Delitzsch. Compare also Knobel, p. 329. The indicating signs were either the refraction of the rays of light, or the formation of circles on the water, or of figures, or of small bubbles, whenever something was thrown in. According to Bunsen, however, the aim was, by fixing the eyes of the diviner upon a particular point in the cup, to put him into a dream-like or clairvoyant state. Concerning this kulikomancy, or cup-divination, see Schrder. The cup is, therefore, marked, not only as a festive, but also as a most sacred, utensil of Joseph; and, on this account, to take it away was considered as a heinous crime. Knobel, in his peculiar way, here tries to start a contradiction. According to the Elohist (he says), Joseph gets his knowledge of the future from God (Gen 40:8); whilst here he derives it from hydromancy, as practised by one received into the caste of the priests. So, too, did he swear, in all earnestness, by the life of Pharaoh; and the older exegetes would relieve us from the apprehension that in so doing he might have taken a false oath! In a vigorous denial, and with eloquent speech, do the accused repel the charges of the steward and give strong expression to the consciousness of their innocence.With whomsoever it be found, let him die.Whilst consenting to their proposal, the steward moderates it in accordance with the aim of the prosecution. The possessor of the cup alone is demanded, and he, not to die, but to become Josephs slave. He presents this forthwith, so that the discovery again of the money may not be taken into consideration, and that temporary fear of death may not harm Benjamin. Benjamin only is to appear as the culprit, and this is in order to find out whether or not his brethren would abandon him. For these reasons the money found in the sacks is not noticed at all.And began at the eldest.This was in order to mask the deception.They rent their clothes.This was already a favorable sign; another, that they would not let Benjamin go alone, but returned with him to the city; third, that they put themselves under the direction of Judah, who had become surety for Benjamin; and fourth, that they, together with Benjamin, prostrated themselves as penitents before Joseph.Wot ye not?Josephs reproach was not so much for the vileness, as for the imprudence, of the act; since he intends to conduct the severe trial as sparingly as possible. The Hebrew , etc., denotes here a divinely-derived or supernatural knowledge, to which Joseph lays claim, not only as a member of the caste of priests, but as the well-known interpreter of the dreams, owing his reception into this caste to his remarkable clear-sightedness.That such a man as I.He puts on the appearance of boasting, not to represent them as mean persons, but only as inferior to himself in a contest of craftiness. Thus he meets the supposed improbability that he could still divine although the cup was taken from him.And Judah said, What shall we say?Judah considers Benjamin as lost, and without inquiring how the cup came into his sack, he recognizes in this dark transaction the judgment of God upon their former guilt. This appears from his declaration: We are my lords servants.Benjamin, it is true, had no part in that old guilt; neither had Reuben and Judah directly, but concerning this no explanation could be given in the court of the Egyptian ruler. In a masterly manner, therefore, he so shapes his speech ambiguously that the brethren are reminded of their old guilt, and admonished to resign themselves to the divine judgment, whilst Joseph can understand it only that they are all interested in the taking of the cup, and he especially, as the one confessing for them. I, above all, am guilty, says the innocent one, in order that he might share the doom of slavery with the apparent criminal. In this disguised speech the reservatio mentalis appears in its most favorable aspect. For his brethren he utters a truth: Jacobs sons have incurred the divine judgment. For Joseph his words are a seeming subterfuge, and yet a most magnanimous one. Thus the two noble sons of Jacob wrestle with each other in the emulation of generosity, one in the false appearance of a despot and boaster, the other forced to a falsity of self-accusation that seems bordering on despair.And he said, God forbid that I should do so.Here is the culmination of the trial. Benjamin is to be a slave; the others may return home without him. Will they not be really glad to have got rid of the preferred and favorite child of Rachel, in such an easy way? But now is the time when it comes true: Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise (see Gen 49:8).

b. History of the reconciliation, of the recognition, and of their meeting each other again under the antithesis of Judah and Joseph, Gen 44:18 to Gen 45:15.1. Gen 44:18-34. Judah as surety and substitute for Benjamin before Joseph. Judahs speech is not only one of the grandest and fairest to be found in the Old Testament (connecting itself, as it does, with an increased significance, to those of Eliezer and Jacob), but, at the same time, one of the most lofty examples of self-sacrifice contained therein.Then Judah came near unto him and said.Peclus facit disertum, the heart makes eloquent. Necessity, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, give the inspiring confidence ().In my lords ears.He presses towards him, that he may speak the more impressively to his ear and to his heart (Gen 50:4; 1Sa 18:23). And yet, with all his boldness, he neglects not the courteous and prudent attitude.For thou art as Pharaoh.In this Judah intends to recognize the sovereignty which could not be affronted with impunity. For Joseph, however, there must have been in it the stinging reminder that the acme of severity was now reached. The vivid, passionate style of narration, as the ground of treatment in the cases presented, is ever the basis of all Bible speeches.And his brother is dead.Joseph has here a new unfolding of the destiny to which God had appointed him; especially does he begin to perceive its meaning in relation to his father Jacob (Gen 44:28). This language strengthens what is said about Benjamin, as the one favorite child of an aged fatherdoubly dear because his brother is dead.And we said unto my lord, The lad cannot leave his father.From this it appears why Joseph confined them three days in prison. They had refused to bring Benjamin. It appears, too, that they had consented to bring him only because Joseph had especially desired it, and had intimated a favorable reception (that I may set mine eyes upon him, see Jer 39:12). Judah gently calls his attention to this as though it were a promise. And, finally, they are brought to this determination on account of the pressure of the famine. It had cost them, too, a hard struggle with the father. The quotation of Jacobs words (Gen 44:27-29) shows how easily they now reconcile themselves to the preference of Rachel and her sons in the heart of Jacob.That my wife.Rachel was his wife in the dearest sense of the word, the chosen of his heart. Therefore, also, are her two sons near to him.And the one went out from me.Here Joseph learns his fathers distress on his own account. His mourning and longing for him shows how dear Benjamin must be, now the only child of his old age.When he seeth that the lad is not is with us.With the utmost tenderness Benjamin is sometimes called the youngest child, sometimes the lad. Out of this a frigid criticism, that has no heart to feel or understand it, would make contradictions. If Joseph has his way, Jacob will die of sorrow. And now Judah speaks the decisive word,one which the mere thread of the narration would not have led us to anticipate, but which springs eloquently from the rhetoric of the heart.For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father.Therefore the passionate entreaty that Joseph would receive him as a substitute of the one who had incurred the sentence of slavery. In all this he makes no parade of his self-sacrifice. He cannot, and will not, return home without Benjamin. He would even regard it as a favor that he should be received in his place. He would rather die as a slave in Egypt, than that his eyes should behold the sorrows of his father. So stands he before us in his self-humiliation, in his self-sacrifice, equal in both with Joseph, and of as true nobility of soul.

2. Gen 45:1-5. Josephs reconciliation and making himself known.Then Joseph could not refrain.The brethren had not merely stood the trial; Judahs eloquence had overpowered him. Reconciliation never measures itself by mere right; it is not only full but running over. Thus is it said of Israel: he wrestled with God and prevailed. We must distinguish, therefore, between two elements in Josephs emotion: first, his satisfied reconciliation, and, secondly, his inability to restrain any longer, though in presence of all the beholders, the strong agitation of his swelling heart. See a full representation of this as given by Delitzsch (p. 558). When, however, he says, that Benjamins brothers, do not press him (Benjamin) with reproaches, notwithstanding they had reason to regard him as guilty, and as having, by his theft, plunged them into misfortunes, there must be borne in mind their earlier suspicions as expressed Gen 43:18. Doubtless they now conjectured that they were the victims of some Egyptian intrigue; still they recognized it as a divine judgment, and this was the means of their salvation. In their resignation to suffering for Benjamins sake, in their sorrow for their fathers distress, Joseph saw fruits for repentance that satisfied him. He beheld in them the transition from the terror of judgment to a cheerful courage of self-sacrifice, in which Judah offers himself as a victim for him, inasmuch as he does it for his image. This draws him as with an irresistible power to sympathize with their distress, and so the common lot becomes the common reconciliation.Cause every man to go out from me.He wished to be alone with his brethren at the moment when he made himself known to them. The Egyptians must not see the emotion of their exalted lord, the deep abasement of the brethren, and the act of holy reconciliation which they could not understand. Neither was the theocratic conception of the famine, and of his own mission, for Egyptian ears.And he wept aloud.With loud cryings he began to address them; so that his weeping was heard by all who were without, and even by the people in the house of Pharaoh. It follows that Josephs dwelling must have been near the palace; his residence was at Memphis. (Knobel.)I am Joseph.This agitating announcement, for which, however, their despair may have prepared them, he knows not better how to mitigate than by the question: Doth my father yet live?He had already heard this several times, yet he must ask again, not because he doubted, but that, in the assurance of this most joyful news he may show them his true Israelitish heart, and inspire them with courage. Nor are we to forget that Judahs words had vividly pictured to him the danger that the old man might die on account of Benjamins absence, and that it now began painfully to suggest itself to him, how much he might have imperilled his fathers life by the trial of his brethren.For they were troubled.In their terror they seem to draw back.Come near to me, I pray you.I am Joseph your brother whom ye sold into Egypt.It seems as if he had to confess for them the thing they most dreaded.Now therefore be not grieved.Seeing their sorrow and repentance, he would now raise them to faith. The one portion of them, namely, those who were conscious of the greater guilt, must not mar this favorable state of soul, and render faith more difficult by their excessive mourning, nor should the guiltless (Reuben, Judah, Benjamin) produce the same effect by angry recriminations.To preserve life.To this they are now to direct their attention.

3. Gen 45:5-13. Josephs divine peace, and divine mission.To preserve life did God send me.What they had done for evil God had turned to good. And now, having repented and been forgiven, as God had shown to them in his dealings, they are now in a state to understand his gracious purposes. A closer explanation of these words, which would require the giving of his whole history, he, for the present, discreetly waives.And yet there are five years.This shows already the point towards which his mind is aimingto draw them down to Egypt.Neither earing nor harvest.A vivid representation of the years of famine.Before you to preserve you.The preservation of Jacobs house seems now of more importance than that of the Egyptians, and the surrounding peoples.By a great deliverance.The question was not one of assistance merely, however great, but of deliverance from death and famine. It may, however, be so called in reference to the great future, and as containing in it the final deliverance of the world.So now it was not you,but God.Here he makes a pointed contrast: not you; in this is contained: first, his forgiveness; secondly, his declaration of the nullity of their project, and its disappearance before the great decree of God. Thrice does he make these comforting declarations. But in what respects was it God? He made him, first, a father unto Pharaoh, that is, a paternal counsellor (2Ch 2:12; 2Ch 4:16). It was an honorary distinction of the first minister, and which also existed among the Persians (Appendix to Est 2:6; Est 6:10), and the Syrians (1 Maccab. Gen 11:32). Knobel. These words also refer to the interpretation of Pharaohs dreams, and the advice connected with it. The consequence was, that he obtained this high position which he can now use for the preservation of his fathers house.Come down unto me.The immediate invitation given without any conference with Pharaoh shows his firm position; but it was, nevertheless, a hazardous undertaking of his agitated, yet confident heart.In the land of Goshen.(Gen 47:11).Raamses.A district of Lower Egypt, north of the Nile, and very fruitful (Gen 47:6; Gen 47:11), especially in grass (Gen 46:34). Even at this day the province of Scharkijah is considered the best part of Egypt (Robinson. Palst., 1:96). Knobel. See The same, p. 333, and the Biblical Dictionaries. See also Bunsen.And there will I nourish thee.The expression may mean, that thou mayest not become a possession, that is, fall into slavery through poverty, and thus Knobel interprets it with reference to Gen 47:19, etc.; but it may also mean, that thou mayest not be deprived of thy possessions, so as to suffer want,an interpretation which is to be preferred.And behold your eyes.If their father in his distrust (see Gen 45:25) should not credit their testimony, he will undoubtedly believe the eyes of Benjamin.All my glory.He perceives that his aged father, oppressed by sorrows, can only be revived again through vivid representations (see Gen 45:27).

4. Gen 45:14-15. The solemnity of the salutation.And he fell upon his brother Benjamins neck.Benjamin is the central point whence leads out the way to reconciliation.Kissed all his brethren.The seal of recognition, of reconciliation, and of salutation.And wept upon them.Delitzsch: While he embraced them. But of Benjamin it is said, he wept upon his neck. Benjamin would seem to remain standing whilst the brothers bow themselves; so that Joseph, as he embraced, wept upon them.And after that his brethren talked with him.Not until now can they speak with him,now that they have been called, and been forgiven, in so solemn and brotherly a manner. The joy is gradually brought out by an assurance, thrice repeated, that he did not impute their deed to them, but recognized in it the decree and hand of God.

c. The joyful message to Jacob. Gen 45:16-28.Pharaohs commission to Jacob.And the fame thereof was heard.At the recognition Joseph was alone with his brethren; now that he has made known their arrival, he avows himself as belonging to them.And it pleased Pharaoh well.Recognitions of separated members of the same family have an extraordinary power to move the human heart, and we already know that Pharaoh was a prince of sound discernment, and of a benevolent disposition. But what was pleasing to Pharaoh was also pleasing to his courtiers, and his servants. Besides, Joseph had rendered great service, and had, therefore, a claim to Egyptian sympathy. Thus far a dark shadow had rested on his descent; for he had come to Egypt as a slave. Now he appears as a member of a free and noble nomadic family.And Pharaoh said unto Joseph.First, he extends an invitation to the brethren agreeing with Josephs previous invitation. Then follows a commission to Joseph, the terms of which bear evidence of the most delicate courtliness.The good of the land.This is generally taken as meaning the best part of the land, that is, Goshen (Raschi, Gesenius, and others). Knobel, according to Gen 45:20; Gen 45:23, interprets it, of the good things of Egypt: whatever good it possesses shall be theirs. The connection with the following: the fat of the land, would seem to point to a leasing of possession, but, of course, not in the sense of territorial dominion. It is not an argument against this that the leasing of places is afterwards asked for (Gen 46:34; Gen 47:4). On the contrary, the petition there made rather rests on a previous general promise.Now thou art commanded.Pharaoh had refrained from using the form of command towards Joseph, but now in adopting it, in a case of his own personal interest, it must be regarded as, in fact, a refined courtesy. It is the very strongest language of authorization.This do ye.He regards the cause of Joseph, and his brethren, as one and inseparable. The sense, therefore, is not: cause thy brethren so to do (Knobel); for they, of themselves, could not take wagons from Egypt.For your little ones.Egypt was rich in wagons and horses; they are not mentioned among the nomadic Hebrews. The small two-wheeled wagons of the Egyptians could be also used on the roadless wastes of the desert. Keil.Also regard not your stuff.They should not grieve over the articles of furniture they would have to leave behind; since they would have everything abundantly in Egypt.The children of Israel.A decisive step for the house of Israel.Joseph gave them wagonsand provision for the way.Changes of raiment.Lange: Lit., festival habits (holiday clothing) as a change for the usual dress.But to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment.He makes amends to this guiltless brother after the well-meant alarm which he had given him.And to his father.In these presents love seems to surpass the measure of its aim, since Jacob had been invited to come speedily to Egypt; but there might possibly be hindrances to the journey. Besides the ten asses were for the common transportation, and the occasion of their dismission is employed to send along with them costly things of various kinds from the land.See that ye fall not out by the way.The old explanation: do not quarrel by the way, is held by Knobel, Delitzsch and Keil, in opposition to Michaelis, Gesenius, and others, who make it an admonition: fear not. But the language, and the situation, both favor the first interpretation.6 The less guilty ones among them might easily be tempted to reproach the others, as Reuben had done already.Joseph is yet alive.In this message his heart lost its warmth7 and joy. He had not full trust in them. It was by no means the incredulity of joy (Luk 24:44), because the news seemed too strangely good to be true; rather had his suspicion, in its reciprocal working with their long consciousness of guilt, made him fundamentally mistrustful. And now that dreadful shalit of Egypt turns out to be his son Joseph! Even Benjamins witness fails to clear up his amazement.And when he saw the wagons.Not until they had told him all the words of Joseph, and added, perhaps, their own confessionhow they had sold him, how Joseph had forgiven them, how he had referred them to the divine guidanceis Jacob able to believe fully their report; and, now, in connection with all this, there come the Egyptian wagons, as a seal of the storys truth, as a symbol of Josephs glory, a sign, in fact, from God, that the dark enigma of his old years is about to be solved in the light of a golden sunset.It is enough.His longing is appeased, he has as good as reached the goal.I will go.The old man is again young in spirit. He is for going immediately; he could leap, yes, fly.

Now purified at last, with hope revived,
For lifes new goal he starts.
(See the close of the dipus Coloneus.) Delitzsch: Thus Jacobs spirit lives again.And Israel said.It is Israel now that speaks. How significant this change of name.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

(Gen 43:1 to Gen 44:17)

The great trial: 1. Its inevitableness; 2. its need; 3. its apparent end (the banquet); 4. its acme; 5. its glorious issue.
1. The pressure of want, and its power in the hand of providence: 1) How inexorable in its demands. Jacob is to deliver up Benjamin. 2) How full of grace in its designs. By it alone can Jacobs house be delivered from the burden of deadly guilt.

2. Judahs confidence. A lions whelp (Gen 49:9). This confidence he would not have had, if he had not formerly proposed to sell Joseph in order to save him, or had be not been willing to sacrifice himself for Benjamins safe return: The spirit of self-sacrifice is the great source of courage.

3. It is in the name of Israel that Jacob treats with his sons in the giving up of Benjamin. His reproach, too (Gen 43:6), is in the name of Israel. It seems to come, indeed, from Jacobs weakness, and to be, therefore, wrongly used; but behind the mere sound there lies the hidden announcement of a suspicion that they were dealing unfairly with the sons of Rachel. We now recognize Israels character, especially in the following traits: 1) Not to his other sons does he entrust Benjamin, not even to Reuben, whose weakness he knows, but only to Judah, whose frankness, honesty, and strength seem to inspire him with confidence. 2) He again employs the old weapon, the giving of presents to a threatening antagonist; yet well knowing that the Egyptian would not, like Esau, look to the quantity so much as the quality of the things offered, and so he sends him the most highly prized or celebrated products of the land. 3) With a severe uprightness does he require his sons to return the money found in their sacks, and thus disarm the suspicion of the Egyptian. 4) He entrusts to them Benjamin as their brother. 5) He commits himself to the protection of Almighty God, i. e., the delivering and protecting God of the patriarchs, who wrought miracles on their behalf. 6) He resigns himself to Gods providence, even at the risk of becoming entirely childless.

4. The prized fruits of the land of Canaan. In Jacobs words there appears an objective poetry, or the poetry of the lands, as it may be called. First of all, it consists in their noblest products, not as they serve the common wants of life, but rather its healing, adornment, and festivity. When he selected them, however, Jacob could have had but little thought how mighty the influence these noble gifts of Canaans soil would have upon the great Egyptian ruler,how they would impress him as the wonders of his youth, the glories of his native land.

5. Josephs state of soul at the appearance of Benjamin: 1) His joy; 2) his deep emotion; 3) his doubt, and the modes of testing it: a. the feast; b. the cup; c. the claim to Benjamin. If at the first meeting with his brethren Joseph had to struggle with his ill-humor, he now has to contend with the emotions of fraternal love.

6. The agitating changes in the trial of Josephs brethren: 1) From fear to joy: 2) from joy to sorrow; 3) and again from sorrow to joy.
7. Their negotiation with the steward, or the delusions of fear. They are innocent (respecting the money), and yet guilty (in respect to their old crime). Having once murdered confidence, there lies upon them the penalty of mistrust, compelling them to regard even Josephs house as a place of treachery. They could have no trust whilst remaining unreconciled.
8. The steward. Josephs spirit had been imparted to his subordinates.
9. Good fortune abounding (the money given to them; Simeon set free; the honorable reception; the banquet; the messes); and yet they had no peace, because the pure foundation for it was not yet laid.
10. Josephs deep emotion, a sign of reconciliation.
11. The banquet, and Egyptian division of castes. (The distinction of caste is here recognized as custom interpenetrated by dogma, and this gives the method of the struggle. Joseph sends messes from his table. The true tendency of the caste doctrine is to absorb everything into that of the priesthood.) Egyptian forms (honorary dishes; the number five). An Israelitish meal. As the banquet of Josephs joy, of his hope, of his trying watch. As the feast of reviving hope in Josephs brethren; their participation without envy in the honoring of Benjamin. As an introduction to the last trial, and a preparation for it.
12. The successful issue in the fearful proving of Israels sons.

(Gen 44:18 to Gen 45:16. Joseph and Judah.)

1. Judahs speech. Delitzsch: Judah is the eloquent one among his brethren. His eloquence had carried the measure of Josephs sale; it had prevailed on Jacob to send Benjamin with them; and here, finally, it makes Joseph unable to endure the restraint which he wished to put upon himself. The end, however, is attained, not more by his touching eloquence than by his heroic deed, when lie offers himself as surety for Benjamin, and is willing to sacrifice himself by taking his place.

2. And I said. This citing of Jacobs language, in Judahs speech, must have had something especially agitating for Joseph,all the more so because the speaker is not aware of the deep impression it must have made upon him. In this citation of Jacobs last words in respect to that old event, there is reflected, as Schrder rightly remarks, Jacobs doubt. I said, that is, I thought at that time.

3. The moral requisites of reconciliation, whether human or divine, are quite obvious in our narrative. Reuben represents the better element in the moral struggle, Benjamin the innocent party, Judah the surety, who takes upon himself the real guilt of his brethren and the factitious guilt of Benjamin. Repentance, faith, and the spirit of sacrifice, severally appear in these representatives. Through three stages do these elements prepare the reconciliation to Josephs heart and to the brethren as opposed to him. It has for its foundation a religious ground, though only in an Old-Testament measure. The thrice-repeated declaration of Joseph: Ye have not sent me, but God has done it, is the strongest expression of restored peace and forgiveness. As Benjamin, so to speak, had taken his place, the conclusion avails: Whatever ye have done to him, ye have done it even unto me.
4. It is an especial New-Testament trait in Josephs mode of thinking, that he so fully recognizes how the sin of his brethren, after having been atoned for, is entirely taken away; the divine providence having turned it to good. This truth, which he so promptly read in his mission, many Christians, and even many theologians, are yet spelling out in the letter. Joseph, however, recognizes, as the central point of the divine guidance, his mission to save Israels house from starvation, and to preserve it for a great deliverance. In this thought there lies enclosed the anticipation of a future and an endless salvation. For this end the treachery of the brethren is first turned away, as guilt expiated, and then, under the divine guidance, turned to good. Thus Josephs mission becomes a type of the cross of Christ; though the expiating points, which are found separated in Josephs history, are wholly concentrated in the person of Jesus. Here they appear in divers persons: It is Reuben the admonisher, Benjamin the innocent, Judah the surety, Joseph the betrayed and the forgiving, Jacob the father of a family pressed down by the guilt of his house.

5. Josephs kiss of peace reminds us of Christs greeting to his disciples and to the world.
6. Benjamin, by the way, became in after times, a wild and haughty tribe, then deeply humbled (in the days of the Judges), then Judahs rival, in the opposition of Saul and David, then Judahs faithful confederate and protege; in the New-Testament time, Paul again, its great descendant, connects himself in faithful devotion, with the lion of the tribe of Judah.

7. The recognitions of relatives, friends, lovers, long lost to each other, are among the most important occurrences in human life, especially as they appear in their reality, and in the poetry of antiquity8 (see Langes History of the Apostolic Times, i. p. 42). In the most conspicuous points, however, of outward recognitions, are reflected the spiritual (Luk 15:20), and, in both, those of the world to come.

8. The ambiguous forms that present themselves in the history of Joseph, and in which, at last, Judah and Joseph stand opposed to each other, lose themselves entirely in the service of truth, righteousness, and love. At the same time they appear as imperfections of the Old-Testament life in comparison with the joy of confession that appears in the New Testament. What they represent, of the things that last forever, is the caution and the prudence of the New-Testament wisdom. Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

(Gen 45:18-27. Joseph and Jacob.)

1. The joyful news: 1) The announcers: Joseph, Pharaoh, Egyptians, the sons of Jacob. 2) Their contents: Joseph lives; his glory in Egypt; come down. 3) Jacobs incredulity; the chill of his heart at the words of his sons, whom he does not credit. 4) The evidences and the tokens: Josephs words, Pharaohs wagons. 5. Jacob becomes again Israel in the anticipation of the serene clearing up of his dark destiny, in the discharging his house of an old ban. Josephs life restores to him the hope of a happy death.
2. Delitzsch: In Josephs history the sacred record maintains all its greatness; here, in this scene of recognition, it celebrates one of its triumphs. It is all nature, all spirit, all art. These three here become one; each word is bathed in tears of sympathy, in the blood of love, in the wine of happiness. The foil, however, of this history, so beautiful in itself, is the , the glory, of Jesus Christ, which, in all directions, pours its heavenly light upon it. For as Judah (?) delivered up Joseph, so the Jewish people delivered Jesus into the hands of the heathen, and so, also, does the antitypal history of this betrayal lose itself in an adorable depth of wisdom and divine knowledge. The same: This Jacob, over whom comes again the spirit of his youth, is Israel. It is the name of the twelve-tribed people, whose migration to Egypt, and new-birth out of it, is decided by the , I will go, of the hoary patriarch.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Doctrinal and Ethical. Forms of character. Forms of reconciliation. The types in our history. Taube: Josephs revelation to his brethrena type of. Him who rose to his disciples.

(Gen 43:10 to Gen 44:17.)

Starke: Gen 43:10. Bibl. Tub.: A less evil should justly be preferred to a greater.The same: A Christian must bear with resignation the troubles that God ordains.At the door of the house. Perhaps that they might leave in time. The guilty conscience interprets everything in the worst way (Luther). [Sitting at a meal is more ancient than lying (Exo 32:6); the latter mode came much later into use, among the delicate and effeminate Persians.]Osiander: Let every land keep its own customs, unless they are in themselves indecent and godless. [Gen 44:15; Joseph is said to have learned magic in Egypt; but this is hardly credible.][Gen 43:9; that was said very rashly (?).]Gen 44:16. Cramer: God knows how to reveal secret sins in a wonderful manner (Psa 50:21).Calwer Handbuch: In suffering for Benjamin, they were to atone for their sins toward Joseph.Schrder: Conscience is greater than heaven and earth. If this did not exist hell would have no fire and no torment.

(Gen 44:18 to Gen 45:18.)

Starke: When God has sufficiently humbled his faithful children, he makes a way for their escape (1Co 10:13).Gen 45:5. Luther: A poor weak conscience, in the acknowledgment of its guilt, is filled with anguish. We must hold up and counsel, open heaven, shut hell, whoever can, in order that the poor soul may not sink into despair. When a Christian has been exalted by God to high worldly state, he must not be ashamed of his poor parents, brothers, sisters, and other relations, nor despise them (Rom 8:28).The same: I wonder how Joseph must have felt when he came to kiss Simeon, the ringleader in the crimes committed against him; and yet he must have kissed him, too.Comparison of Christ and Joseph, according to Luther and Rambach.Mat 5:24. Calwer Handbuch: That is the most rational view in all cases, especially in the dark dispensations of human life, not to halt at human causes, or stay there, but to look at Gods ways, as Joseph does here; and to trace his leading, like a golden thread drawn through all the follies and errors of men.Schrder: Here (at the close of Judahs speech) is the time that the cord breaks (Luther).The thoughts and feelings of Jacobs sons are all directed intently to this one thing: Benjamin must not be abandoned; everything else ceases to trouble them.Judah is bold because he speaks from the strong impulse of his heart.Luther, on Judahs speech: Would to God that I might call upon God with equal ardor.Judah shows that he is the right one to be surety (Richter).Judah may have closed with tears, and now Joseph begins with them (Richter).Joseph shows himself a most affectionate brother, while, as a genuine child of God, he points to him, away from himself and his people.In God all discords are resolved. Grace not only makes the sin as though it had never been, but throws it into the sea (Mic 7:19); without abolishing sin as sin, that is, as unexpiated, it makes the scarlet dyed as white as snow (Isa 1:18)Heim: Jerem. Risler, is section 40. of his historical extracts from the books of the Old Testament, presents not less than twenty-two points of resemblance between Joseph and Jesus. Such a gathering, however, of separate resemblances may easily divert us from the main features. Each essential homogeneity is always reflected in many resemblances. Yet Rislers parallel is quite full of meaning (see Heim, p. 540). As yet we have had before us the fulfilment of the type in the course of history; the fulfilment of the other half still lies in the future (namely, that Jesus makes himself known to the Jews, the brethren who rejected him), Zec 12:10; Mat 23:38-39; Rom 11:25-26.

(Gen 45:17-28.)

Starke: Egypts great honor and glory; its showing hospitality to the whole Church, that is, the house of Jacob. After dark and long-continued storms, God makes again to shine upon his people the sun of gladness. The joy of pious parents and children at seeing each other again in the life to come.Schrder: (Three hundred pieces of silver, equal to two hundred dollars.) He not only wished to show his love to his brethren, but also, to induce the absent members of the family to undertake the journey (Calvin). On the journey to eternity we must not become angry, either with our companions, or with God (Berl. Bib.). Christians, as brethren, ought not to quarrel with each other on the way of life.Heim: The first impression that the joyful news made upon the aged and bowed-down Jacob, was to chill his heart. Cases are not unfrequent of apoplexy and sudden death arising from the reception of glad tidings. It was somewhat like the joy of Simeon (Luk 2:29-30).

Footnotes:

[1][Gen 43:14. . Rendered: If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. Our translators, by putting in children, would seem to have regarded it as emphatic, thus: If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved of all. It may be taken, however, as a declaration of submission to what appears inevitable, as in Est 4:16, . Or it may be regarded as a passionate exaggeration in view of Josephs supposed death, Simeons confinement, and the demand for Benjamin: I am bereaved of all my children, one after the other.T. L.]

[2][Gen 43:18.. The here is servile. Compare Mal 2:13 and Gen 28:6. In Gen 30:15, we have both forms of the infinitive ( and ) in immediate connection. See it explained in the Sepher Harikma, or Hebrew Grammar, of Ben Gannach, p. 30, line 30. He regards both alike as infinitives.T. L.]

[3][Gen 43:20. . Gesenius regards in this and some similar cases (see Jos 7:8), as a contraction for , from the root , a very rare word in Hebrew, though very common in the Chaldaic and Syriac. In the sense of entreaty, occurs only Isa 21:12, and of inquiry, Oba 1:6. Abbreviations are made only of words that are much used, and we cannot, therefore, regard it as a forma precationis (, my prayer), having such an origin. The Targum of Onkelos interprets it in this way, but this is owing to its being written in the Chaldaic language. A much better view is that of Aben Ezra, who regards it as the preposition and pronoun, with an ellipsis of the word , as in 1Sa 25:24, , on me my Lord be the guilt. Or it may be a sort of ejaculatory phrase, with an ellipsis of the precatory verb,as would seem to be confirmed by Jdg 6:13, , come tell me, my lord, if Jehovah is with us, why, etc. See Ben Gannach, Sepher Harikma, 32, 31. The view of Gesenius was suggested, probably, by the Syriac rendering of this passage, Jdg 6:13, . In Jos 7:8, where the same phrase occurs, the Syriac has left it out entirely.T. L.]

[4] [A glimpse of the New-Testament life. It is very common to represent the Old Testament as containing the harsher dispensation, and as presenting the sterner attributes both of God and man. This is often done without much thought, or discrimination of the respects in which it may be false or true. The Old Testament is, indeed, a less full revelation of mercy as a doctrine, or a scheme of salvation, but the mercy itself is there in overflowing measure, and expressed in the most pathetic language. It is peculiarly the emotional part of Holy Scripture, presenting everything in the strongest manner, and in strongest contrast, whether it be wrath or tenderness, indignation against apostasy or love for the oft-times apostate and rebellious people. It may even be maintained that the New Testament, though more didactic, is less tender in its language, less abounding in pictures of melting compassion on the part of God, and of devoted affection of one human heart to another. What more moving, in this respect, than the language of the prophets (compare Isa 49:15; Isa 54:8-10; Isa 57:15-16; Psa 103:13-15; Gen 8:21; Deu 10:12; Deu 10:19; Deu 24:14-22; Eze 16:60-63; Hos 11:8-9; Mic 6:8; Mic 7:18-19), so full of Gods pathetic yearning, we might style it, towards humanity! On the other hand, what more exquisite pictures can there be found of human tenderness, than those of David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, the pathetic meeting of Joseph and his brethren as here described, Davids forgiving tenderness towards Saul, and even Esaus reception of Jacob (Gen 33:4-15) after all the wrong he had apparently, or in reality, received from him. In this latter case, we may regard Esau as one who had but little if any grace, and yet the feeling here, viewed as growing out of the patriarchal life and religious ideas, may well be compared with any general influence of our nominal Christianity in arousing men to deeds of tenderness and heroism. This false view of the Old Testament, which ignorance of the Bible is causing more and more to prevail, is a great wrong to the whole cause and doctrine of revelation. Even the most tender dialect of the New Testament, is drawn from the Old. Its Hebraisms are its most pathetic parts. Of this there is a good example in the very style of language here employed. The expression , rendered, his bowels did yearn (rather, warmed), has been naturalized in the New-Testament Greek, where is used for . It may be said, however, that both the Hebrew and the Greek are marred for the English reader by the rendering bowels, especially if taken in the sense of intestina, instead of the larger meaning that belongs to the Latin viscera. It may be doubted whether does ever, of itself, denote any part of the body, either more or less interior. When the singular is used for the womb, it is rather to be regarded as a metaphorical use of its primary sense of cherishing, or as that which loves and cherishes. The Greek counterpart, , denotes the most vital parts, such as the heart, the lungs, and the liver, the parts which, in the case of animals slain, were regarded as the choicest eating, and were given as an honorary portion to the guest. See Homer everywhere. They included the , with the , or prcordia, and the , or liver. Another word was , which was used exactly as is used here, and with a similar verb signifying to be warm, or burn; as Odyss. i. Genesis 48 :

, .

My heart is burning for the brave Ulysses; with an evident paronomasia in and . Compare Psa 39:4 , my heart grows hot within me, , the fire is burning; also Luk 24:32, , was not our heart burning within us? Instead of bowels, it would be more in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew word to render it here, his heart yearned, or warmed. Rosenmller, on this passage, makes one of his wise remarks about the ancient men (prisci homines), and their great simplicity in regarding these parts of the body as the seat of the affections. It has, however, always been so, more or less, in all languages. In the ancient tongues even intellect is generally assigned to these middle regions, and but rarely, or comparatively so, to the head. With us it seems almost a matter of consciousness that we think with our heads, but this is an effect rather than a cause of the change of language. In the Latin, cor is used for wisdom, prudence, and cordatus is equivalent to , a wise and prudent man. The Greek popular language placed thought in the , not in the , or brain, although the latter is sometimes referred to in this light, especially by Aristotle. Demosthenes once makes a popular allusion to some such notion in the oration De Haloneso; but the poetical language, the best representative of the popular feeling, is all the other way. So in the Hebrew, the seat of thought, is in the reins, , Latin renes, Greek (with digamma) : try the hearts and the reins, Psa 7:10; in the night season my reins instruct me, Psa 16:7. Only once in the Bible is the head so referred to; and that is in the Chaldaic of Dan 4:7, where Nebuchadnezzar says: the visions of my head upon my bed, . Everywhere else it is the heart, , or the reins , or the inward part , or sometimes expressions denoting something still more interior, as and , rendered the hidden part, Psa 51:8 : In the hidden part make me to know wisdom. The practice of divination, by the inspection of these parts in sacrifice shows the same mode of thinking, and a similar verbal consciousness.T.L.]

[5][See in the text notes, p. 323 (5, Gen 9:6), another interpretation of this by that acute Jewish grammarian, Ben Gannach. The in he renders concerning it, instead of by it,that is, as a means of divination. Could not such a man find out by divination who had his cup?T. L.]

[6][The old rendering is supported by the fact that the primary sense of is not fear, but excitement of mind in any way, like Greek , , by which the LXX translate it, Psa 4:5 (see, also, Eph 4:26, Be ye angry, yet sin not), and which is one of the places referred to by Rosenmller for the sense of fear. In the other places cited by him the sense of anger, or excitement, suits the context best; as Exo 15:14; Deu 2:25. In all other places the sense of rage or anger () is beyond doubt. There is no intimation of anything on the way which should cause fear (in the sense of terror, commotion) any more than in any of their previous goings and comings. The fear of apprehension, or anxiety, such as might be felt on account of the mishap of the money found in the sacks, would be expressed by a very different word. Whereas everything in the context renders this advice of Joseph, that they should get into no disputes with one another, very probable. LXX, , Syriac, , do not quarrel on the road. So the Targum.T. L].

[7] [Hebrew, and his heart grew chill. It is the same idea as the Greek , , , an onomatopic word of the second class, denoting some resemblance between the sound and the effect producedhardness, solidness, compactness; hence solidity, coldness. The heart stopping in chill and amazement. It is interesting, too, to note how common in language is this metaphor, or secondary sense, expressing hope and joy by warmth, distrust and despair by a chill. As in the Odyssey, i. 167

,

.

No warmth to us,that is, no warming hope, should any one on earth declare that he would come again,forever gone, the day of his return. This is very much as old Jacob felt. Compare, also, the Iliad, vi. 412, where , warmth, in this sense, is opposed to chilling grief. , cold, is used in the opposite way.T. L.]

[8][The dramatic power of such recognitions appears in their having been made the effective points in some of the noblest Greek tragedies. Aristotle has a special section upon the , as it is technically named, in his Ars Poetica, ch. xi., defining it as , . He cites as examples the recognitions in the Odyssey, and especially that of Orestes and Iphigenia, from Euripides. He might have cited, as a still more striking example, that of Orestes and Electra, in Sophocles. This story of Joseph, had it been known to him, would have furnished the great critic with the best illustration of what he calls the pathetic, , as the chief clement of power in the dramatic exhibition.T. L.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

Nature was wound up to the highest pitch in the bosom of Joseph, by the address of Judah in the foregoing Chapter, and could no longer contain. In the opening of this Chapter it gave vent, in Joseph declaring: who he was, and by following the information with expressions of the utmost tenderness to his brethren. The effect of this discovery is related. And after the first emotions of surprise and joy, mingled with shame and reproach in the breasts of Joseph’s brethren, are subsided, they converse together. Pharaoh king of Egypt is informed of the event, and he and his people rejoice at it. Joseph dismisseth his brethren to his father with the intelligence; invites him to come unto him and sends waggons for his convoy. The heart of Jacob misgives him at the first account; but when he had received fuller evidences of the truth of Joseph’s being alive; Israel resolves to go and see his son before his death. Gen 45:1

What must have been the feelings of the brethren at this unexpected discovery? But Reader! spiritualize the subject and then say, what are the feelings of every poor sinner when JESUS makes himself known to him as his brother and Redeemer? Joh 14:21-22 ; Heb 2:11-12 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Gen 45:5

‘The case of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph; on being banished into Egypt he also grew in favour with the king, and told his wife “he had been undone, unless he had been undone”. For God esteems it one of His glories that He brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust God to goven His own world as He pleases; and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh, or the reason be discovered.’

Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living.

References. XLV. 5. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a year, vol. ii. p. 81. XLV. 8. R. S. Duff, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 378. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 179. XLV. 14. J. Vaughan, Sermons (9th Series), p. 77. XLV. 19, 20. J. A. Aston, Early Witness to Gospel Truth, pp. 161, 175. XLV. 21. W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches, p. 47. XLV. 24. C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p. 33. XLV. 25-28. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 61. XLV. 28. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1489, p. 65. XLV. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2470. XLV. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 165. XLVI. 1-4. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2116. XLVI. 2. A. F. Barfield, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii. p. 12. XLVI. 3, 4. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 133. XLVI. 3,9. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 279. XLVII. 1-12. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Genesis, p. 272.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

Joseph’s Revelation

Gen 44:1-5

How wonderfully even spoiled children may be developed in those very faculties which are supposed to lie dormant under all the pampering and care-taking of exaggerated parental affection! You have observed, from time to time, how deep, yet how simple, how complete, yet apparently how easy, have been all the plans and schemes which Joseph devised to meet the exigencies of his trying course. Think of him as the spoiled boy with whom we began. The rough wind was not to beat upon him; he was never to get his feet wet; any little thing that his father could do for him was to be done; he was to be coddled, and protected, and saved from every little annoyance; and if there was an extra drop of sweetness for any member of the family it found its way into Joseph’s cup. You say, after reading all this, “What kind of a man will he make? Why, if there were any germ in him of manhood at the beginning, it must have been worn out and wasted by such excessive pampering, such ill-spent care and attention, as Jacob’s.” Yet he comes out of it all sagacious as a statesman, with a wonderful breadth and solidity and substance of character, upsetting all the calculations and notions of people who say that if you take too much care of a boy, pamper a life to excess, you are actually doing more harm than good. Now, let us be clear about that, because there is a particle of truth in that theory. I pause here, if haply my printed words I dare not say my spoken message should reach any spoilt child, any over-pampered life. There is no reason why you should not, after all, be a man! Your father’s fondling and your mother’s caresses need not kill the vigour that God gave you. You may come out of it all a strong and tender, wise and efficient servant of the public. It has been said, too, by those people who observe the ways of men, that oftentimes those who have been most carefully brought up can, when occasion requires, rough it with the best grace, and can do things which excite everybody’s wonder. We say, concerning certain boys who have had nothing but confectionery to eat ever since they were born, that have always been kept out of dangerous places, “Depend upon it, when the wind turns into the east, when there is a flood or a fire, when there is some sudden and terrible adversity in their lives, they will be unprepared for such a visitation.” And it has turned out that the spoilt child has sometimes been the best man. He has stooped with a grace which has excited the wonder of everybody; he has shown how possible it is, under the covering of decoration and excess of attention, to be cultivating the best strength, and preparing for the wettest day. Some of us, who never had two halfpennies to make a noise with, when we have got into a little prosperity, and then a little adversity has come sharply and suddenly round upon us, why, we have grunted and complained, and been pettish and snappish, as though we had been nursed in the very lap of heaven and never set our feet on anything coarser than gold. Oh, be men! Do have a life that domineers over circumstances; that takes the bitterest cups, or the exile’s solitude, or the slave’s lash, and that says, “After all, I am God’s child, and I will live for that dear Father.”

“And Judah said, What shall, we say unto my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants: behold, we are my lord’s servants, both we, and he also with whom the cup is found” ( Gen 44:16 ).

Contrast that speech with the scene at the pit’s mouth. Can you recall the former scene? They put the boy into the pit, sit down and eat bread, see a party of merchantmen in the distance, suddenly resolve on selling him; and they exchange their brother body, soul, and spirit for a handful of shekels, and never say good-bye to the child. But, now, “What shall we say unto my lord?” Judah came near and said, “Oh, my lord.” “My lord asked his servants.” “And we said unto my lord.” Yet once again Judah said, “My lord.” It is the same Joseph, it is the same Judah. Such are the alterations which occur in man’s life! One great difficulty which some of us feel, is the difficulty of punishing a body of men. It is comparatively easy to punish one man. But it is next to an impossibility to punish a committee. The Church can injure its one poor minister; but what can the minister do in the way of bringing punishment not vindictive punishment, but righteous retaliation upon an immoral, corrupt Church, that will do things in its corporate capacity which every individual member would shrink from in horror and disgust?

Joseph has had his task set in this business, so to work that he can bring the rod down upon the whole lot. How is it that we lose our consciences when we join bodies of men? How is it that our moral nature becomes diluted the moment we consent to act upon a committee? How comes it, that the honest man, when he joins a Church, may be persuaded to hold up his hand in confirmation of a resolution which is based on corrupt morals? Yet this may be done. There is in England today many a man smarting from resolutions passed by corporate bodies, and yet not one of the members of these corrupt bodies will come forward and say, “I took my full share of that resolution, and I accept the responsibility connected with it” One hands over the responsibility to another. One man says “he would not have voted for it, just as it stands, but he thought it might have saved something worse.” Another says that he “didn’t fully understand it: it was made in such a hurry, and passed in such a tumult.” And so they go on! But they are breaking one man’s heart all the time. God’s righteous curse rest upon such foul conspiracy! These are not passionate words. If I have spoken fire, it is because there was fuel enough to light.

So they called him, My lord! my lord my lord! You cannot redeem your character by paying compliments after the deed is done. No man can redeem himself by too late courtesies. There are civilities which are right in their season, beautiful when well-timed. But they may come at a time which aggravates the old memory and tears open the old sore. This was so long in coming! Let us add up the years, and see how long Joseph was in hearing such words. He was seventeen when he went out first to seek his brethren; he was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Thirteen years we have up to this point. Then there were seven years of plenty, during which time Joseph never heard from his brethren. At the end of the seven years, making twenty in all, his brethren began to come before him. So it required something like twenty years to bring about the scene which is now before us. Some interpretations are a long time on the road. Some men have long to nurse their hopes, and to cheer themselves up, thinking that after all God will come. Twenty years is a period which takes the strength out of a man, sucks the very sap out of his power, unless he have meat to eat that the world knoweth not of, unless he knows the way to the wellhead and can refresh himself with the springing water. So long in coming, but it came at last! This is it, sirs. The bad man’s day is a wasting day. Every moment is a moment ticked off, it is one fewer. But the good man’s day is an augmenting quantity, knows no diminution. Whilst it wastes, it grows; every passing hour brings the day nearer; and the day of the good man has no sunset. Judah continued to speak with marvellous eloquence and pathos, pleading for the release of Benjamin and making wonderful use of the old man and the grey hairs. In the thirty-second and thirty-third verses he said:

“For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. Now, therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren” ( Gen 44:32-33 ).

Showing the possibility of being so very careful about one member of the family and caring nothing about another. Here is Judah pleading for Benjamin as if he were his own child; yet this same Judah took part in selling another brother. So many of us are only good in little bits! We have points of excellence. People say about us, “After all, there are some points about him that are tolerably good.” But what is that? We don’t want to be good in points, we want to be good altogether! Not to love for such reasons as Judah suggested even, in this eloquent and pathetic appeal; but to be good for goodness’ own sake. Not to save some man’s grey hairs; but to honour God’s law, and thus to be most profoundly and universally gentle and pathetic Then there is a great fallacy underlying all such pleading as Judah’s; at all events, a possible fallacy. We try to compensate for our evil deeds to some people, by being extra-kind to others. Brethren, it cannot be done! You used your poor friend very ill, twenty years ago, and the memory of it has come upon you again and again. You have reproached yourself, and cursed yourself, for your unkindness, neglect, misapprehension, cruelty; and, in order to appease yourself, to make atonement to yourself, you have been very kind to some other friend. But you cannot touch the dead one! all your efforts towards helping Benjamin have had in them some hope of doing something at least towards making up for your cruelty to Joseph. But these efforts have been unavailing. Whilst your friend is with you, love that friend. It is but a short grey day we are together. There ought not to be time for strife, and debate, and harshness, and bitterness. The hand is already laid on the rope that shall ring the knell! And when the eyes once close in the last sleep they do not open again. It is all over! Then come pangs, scorpions, poisonings, piercings! We would give all the world to have another hour one more short hour with the dear, dear dead one! But it may not be. Whatever we may do to survivors and relatives, we do not touch the great and terrible blemish of our past life.

Now I have this question to ask: Is there any means by which I can touch the whole of my life? There is not. “Why,” you say, “that is the language of despair.” So. it is, for you, believe me; and if the despair is settled upon your soul, then you are so far prepared for the gospel, which is this: You can find no means of touching all your yesterdays, all your past life; but God has found such means. “The blood of Jesus Christ, Son of God, cleanseth from all sin.” When we get into the mystery of his Cross, we see how every sin can be met. Believe me, it can be met only by all the mystery of that infinite, unspeakable love. So why should we be endeavouring to reach the past, when we have enough to do today? Why should we seek to hold a lifetime, when we cannot keep ourselves right for one hour? What then? I rest on Christ, and go up to his dear Cross, and say, “If I perish, I will perish here, where no man ever yet did perish.” May God torment our consciences, raise us to the highest point of self-accusation, remind us of all our neglects, all our harshness, and all our cruelty, till we feel ourselves surrounded by scorpions, by messengers of judgment, and by terrible forces of all kinds: until there be extorted from our hearts the cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Then there shall come out of the Cross a glory which will cast the night of the soul away.

Judah having concluded his speech, we read in the next chapter that Joseph could not refrain himself before all those that stood by him. The room was cleared. Joseph wept aloud, and said unto his brethren, “I am Joseph!” Joseph, and yet more than Joseph. We shall not be the same men twenty years hence that we are today. The old name yet there may be a new nature. The old identity yet there may be enlarged capacity, refined sensibilities, Diviner tastes, holier tendencies. I am Joseph! It is as if the great far-spreading umbrageous oak said, “I am the acorn”! or the great tree said, “I am the little mustard-seed”! Literally it was Joseph; yet in a higher sense it was not Joseph: but Joseph increased, educated, drilled, magnified, put into his right position. You have no right to treat the man of twenty years ago as if twenty years had not elapsed. I don’t know men whom I knew twenty years ago! I know their names; but they may be if I have not seen them during the time, and if they have been reading, thinking, praying, growing entirely different men. You must not judge them externally, but according to their intellectual, moral, and spiritual qualities. To treat a man whom you knew twenty years ago as if he were the same man is equal to handing him, in the strength and power of his years, the toys with which he amused his infancy. Let us destroy our identity, in so far as that identity is associated with incompleteness of strength, shallowness of nature, poverty of information, deficiency of wisdom; so that men may talk to us and not know us, and our most familiar acquaintance of twenty years ago may require to be introduced to us today as if he had never heard our name.

But the point on which I wish to fasten your attention most particularly is this: that in human life there are days of revelation, when people get to know the meaning of what they have been looking at, notwithstanding the appearances which were before their eyes. We shall see men as we never saw them before. The child will see his old despised mother some day as he never saw her. And you, young man, who have attained the patriarchal age of nineteen, and who smile at your old father when he quotes some trite maxim and wants to read a chapter out of what he calls the Holy Bible, will one day see him as you have never seen him yet. The angel of God that is in him will shine out upon you, and you will see whose counsel you have despised and whose tenderness you have contemned. We only see one another now and then. Sometimes the revelation is quick as a glance, impossible to detain as a flash of lightning. Sometimes the revelation comes in a tone of unusual pathos, and when we hear that tone for the first time we say, “We never knew the man before. Till we heard him express himself in that manner, we thought him rough, and coarse, wanting in self-control, and delicacy, and pathos; but that one tone! Why, no man could have uttered it but one who has often been closeted with God, and who has drunk deeply into Christ’s own cup of sorrow.”

Joseph made a more eloquent speech than Judah had done. He said to his brethren in the course of his address: “So, now, it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” The great man is always ready to find an excuse for the injury that is done him, if he possibly can find one! This grand doctrine is in the text: that all our little fightings, and scratchings, and barterings, and misunderstandings: all our tea-table criticisms of one another, and magazine articles in mutual depreciation: all our little schemes to trip one another up, and to snip a little off each other’s robe, all these things are after all secondary and tributary. “The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.”

“Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him” ( Gen 45:15 ).

A day of reconciliation! A family made one. Brethren coming together again after long separation. It is a beautiful picture. Why should it not be completed, where it needs completion, in our own day amongst ourselves? Ministers sometimes have misunderstandings and say unkind things about one another and exile one another from love and confidence for years. Is there never to be a day of reconciliation and Christian forgetfulness of wrong, even where positive wrong has been done? Families and households often get awry. The younger brother differs with his elder brother, sisters fall out. One wants more than belongs to him; another is knocked to the wall because he is weak; and there come into the heart bitterness and alienation, and often brothers and sisters have scarce a kind word to say of one another. Is it always to be so? Do not merely make it up, do not patch it up, do not cover it up, go right down to the base. You will never be made one, until you meet at the Cross and hear Christ say, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” It is in Christ’s sorrow that we are to forget our woes; in Christ’s sacrifice we find the answer to our sin; in Christ’s union with the Father we are to find all true and lasting reconciliation. But who is to begin? That is the wonderful question that is often asked us. Who is to begin? One would imagine that there were some very nice people about who only wanted somebody to tell them who was to begin. They want to be reconciled, only they don’t know who is to begin, I can tell you. You are! But I am the eldest, yes, and therefore ought to begin. But I am the youngest. Then why should the youngest be obstinate? Who are you that you should not go and throw yourself down at your brother’s feet and say, “I have done you wrong, pardon me”? Who is to begin? You! Which? Both! When? Now! Oh, beware of the morality which says, “I am looking for the opportunity, and if things should so get together ” Sir, death may be upon you before you reason out your wretched casuistry; the injured or the injurer may be in the grave before you get to the end of your long melancholy process of self-laudation and anti-Christian logic

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Joseph’s Death

Gen 45:9-11

Joseph was still a son, though lord of all Egypt. He had still an affectionate heart, though pomp and circumstance conspired to give him great eminence and wonderful power in the whole land of his enforced adoption. A man should never forget his father. Twenty years afterwards and more, Joseph’s heart yearned after his father with all a child’s clinging trustfulness and unsophisticated trembling pathos. A man should always be a boy when his father is at hand. Did I say always? Alas! I am compelled to add that there are circumstances under which fathers cease to be fathers. There may arise such combinations of circumstances as shall dispossess a man of his fatherhood, that shall turn him into a stranger and an alien. It is well, therefore, for us, whether fathers or children, clearly to understand this matter. Nothing but moral considerations should ever separate a father and his child. Not because the father is poor should the child disown him or treat his name lightly; not because he is destitute of learning should a child affect to contemn his parent. But when the father is morally corrupt, when all the rain, and sunshine, and dew, and living breeze of a child’s long-continued patient love have been lost upon him, then there may come a time of final separation, when the child says, “I have no father.” What is animal parentage, after all? You say you are a man’s father: but what is the meaning of that? If that fatherhood is but fleshly, it is not parentage in any deep, tender, lasting sense of the term. It may be a relationship that can hardly be helped, an external temporary relationship; there is no kinship enduring that is not moral. It is when souls are akin that fatherhood and sonship, brotherhood and sisterhood, are established. It may come to be the same thing with the son. There are fathers who have been compelled to shut the door on their own sons, and did not do so lightly; it was not for the first offence, it was not until every hope had been disappointed, every godly desire had been repulsed and mortified, and all the volume and passion of human love had been repelled and scorned and blasphemed. Blessed are they who would for ever keep all family relationships, all tender kindreds, fresh, blooming, bright! If they would do so they must live in Christ, their centre must be fixed upon the eternal love of the One Father. Then they will never outgrow their affections; they will be young for ever, responsive to the voice of love, always sensitive, tender, good.

A very beautiful speech is this which Joseph makes concerning his father. “Say unto him, God hath made me lord of all Egypt; therefore the bond between us is cut. Say to him, I disown my relationship to a shepherd: a man living in the bush, keeping flocks and herds, and wandering about from place to place. Say I am lord of all Egypt, and to come within the circle of my influence is to be blinded and dazzled by my glory.” What a chivalrous, filial, beautiful speech! But, fortunately, we have put that speech into Joseph’s mouth. Yet how well it would come after the introduction, “Say unto him, I am lord over all Egypt.” But that is not the message. You would say, you who had not read it, but only heard it, “It sounded very like that.” So it did, but it was perfectly different from that. The speech reads: “Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt.” It is the word God that saves the speech, that makes it musical, that gives it high tone and noble bearing, profound and gentle meaning. If Joseph had said, “Tell my father I am lord over all Egypt,” I should have expected a different ending to the speech. But when a man’s greatness whatever it be, political, social, or religious is all traced to God, out of that one consideration will come wisdom, and nobleness, and pathos. Always depend upon a man who finds in God the Redeemer of his soul, the Elevator of his circumstances. Religion never made a man haughty; Christianity never made a man unendurable. There have been many great men, self-conceited, dangerous to go near, self-important, always standing upon what they call their dignity; but they did not know what it was to live in God and to live for Christ, and to exert their influence from the elevation of the Cross. My young friend on the way to eminence, having a sceptre of wide influence just in view, seeing thy way clear to ten thousand a year and many accessories to thy greatness and stability, know this: that thy throne will have but a tottering foundation if it rest anywhere but upon the omnipotence and all-graciousness of God.

The next point arises in connection with Jacob’s receipt of the intelligence:

“And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father, and told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob’s heart fainted, for he believed them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: and Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die” ( Gen 45:25-28 ).

Observe, in the first instance, the old man’s heart fainted, for the news was to him too good to be true. There is in life an element which is continually upsetting probabilities, thus calling men up from lethargy, from that flatness, staleness, and unprofitableness of existence which would necessarily predominate if there was nothing strange, sensational, and romantic in our human relationships and in the events by which we are surrounded. Now and then we require to be startled a little. Men do us good who rouse us. The preacher who makes me shake does me good, who gives me a new view of truth, who rouses me out of my indifference, who gives me to feel that as yet I know next to nothing. So in daily life, things that are common sometimes flame up before us into new significance, and old ruts seem sometimes to have new spikes of grass and new roots coming out of them. These things call us away from apathies that would benumb and deaden the soul. But we cannot always live in the wonderful. It is there that so many persons get wrong. You cannot live upon champagne; you cannot live upon luxuries; you cannot live healthily upon sensation. You must have something substantial, real, deep, vital, something that touches the profoundest experience of your life, the inmost consciousness of your spirit, and that follows you through all the engagements of the day. You must have the practical, as well as the imaginative; you must have the substantial, as well as the poetical. I believe in the airy dream; I believe also in the solid rock. I like to look on the far-flashing cross that surmounts the great pile; but let me remember that yonder cross never would have blazed in the rising or setting sun if there were not somewhere the great strong foundation upon which it is rested.

So though the news was too romantic for Jacob, though it caused him to fail into a swoon, yet the old man, who always had an eye for the practical, looked up, saw the waggons, and his heart revived. We must have waggons as well as poems. It is a sad and vulgar thing; but we must have the substantial, the tangible, and the appreciable, as well as the metaphysical, the transcendental, the mystical, the bewildering, and the grand. It is even so in the religious life. The long prayer must be succeeded by the noble deed. The bold theological statement must be flanked and buttressed, or otherwise supported by unchallengeable morality. What if a man says he believes in God and his deeds be ungodly? what does his belief in God do for him? What if a man says “I have faith,” and have no works? What if a man preach the gospel and be not himself the gospel?

The brethren had good news for their father. But beyond the good news there must be something else to bring it near to his appreciation. You require to meet men according to their circumstances. God must himself become man before he can touch us and get his mighty redeeming hold upon us; for we know not the infinite except as it be accommodated to us through the medium of Christ’s dear personality, except as it be focalised in the one redeeming life. What did Jacob say when power of speech returned to him? “It is enough; Joseph is yet alive.’ What did his brethren say about his being in Egypt? They said he was governor over all the land of Egypt. Joseph sent word that he was lord over all the land. Jacob said, “He is alive!” A man cannot live upon lords, and governors, and fine eminent personages, in their merely official capacity. There are times when we strip away all ribbons, and flowers, and decorations, and other trumperies, and go right into the life and heart of things. Why, if they had said to Jacob, “Joseph is yet alive: we found him lying in the hedgeside, just alive, with hardly anything to cover him, a poor, lonely, forlorn wanderer”! would that have made any difference to Israel? Would he not just as much have yearned for his child? Let us hope he would. There are times, I repeat, when we want to know about the life rather than the condition. A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Whatever Israel’s feelings might have been concerning Joseph, had the statement of the circumstances been other, let me preach this glorious gospel: God does not ask whether we be lords, potentates, or governors; but whether we have turned our poor dying eyes towards our abandoned home. The moment he hears and he always listens the soul say, “I will arise and go to my Father,” he comes to meet us, to anticipate the statement of our sin and penitence, and to clothe us with his unsearchable riches. Men cannot believe that. It is at that point that souls are ruined by the million. They want to send word to him that they are lords over the land and governors over their circumstances; that they can maintain themselves pretty well, after all; but, if he likes to meet them on an independent basis, they will hold an interview with Almighty God. He will not accept that challenge. He does not know us when our heads are lifted up in that insanity. It is when we are nothing and have nothing, and know it, and turn our poor disappointed, shattered hearts towards his dwelling-place, towards the Cross of Christ, that he meets us with the infinite fulness of his pardon, and all the assurance of his willingness to save.

Then the third point brings up the meeting between Joseph and his father:

“And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive” ( Gen 46:29-30 ).

A beautiful combination of official duty and filial piety! The whole land of Egypt is suffering from famine. Joseph is the controller and the administrator of the resources of the land. He does not abandon his position and go away to Canaan; but he gets the chariot out, and he must go part of the road. “I know I am father to Pharaoh and all his great people. I shall not be away long; I shall soon be back again to my duties. I must go a little way to meet the old man from home.” Yes, I do not care what our duties are, we can add a little pathos to them if we like; whatever be our lot, we can add a little sentiment to our life. And what is life without sentiment? What are the flowers without an occasional sprinkling of dew? It may be a grand thing to sit on a high stool and wait till the old man comes upstairs. But it is an infinitely grander thing, a “lordlier chivalry,” to come off the stool and go away to meet him a mile or two on the road. Your home will be a better home I do not care how poor the cot if you have a little sentiment in you, a little tenderness and nice feeling. These are things that sweeten life. I do not want a man to wait until there is an earthquake in order that he may call and say, How do you do? I do not want a man to do earthquakes for me. Sometimes I want a chair handed, and a door opened, and a kind pressure of the hand, and a gentle word. And as for the earthquakes, why wait until they come!

What a beautiful picture of reunion is this! “He fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.” See them there! The old man not speaking, because he cannot speak, speaking most because saying nothing. Joseph not speaking for some time. Only weeping upon one another! Then Jacob, not wanting the thing to be spoiled, says, “Now the next thing, the next thing, Joseph, must be heaven! Whatever comes after this will be an anti-climax. Now let me die!” It was as old Simeon spake when he saw the Child of God, “Now let thy servant depart in peace.” We do now and again in life come to points we do not want to leave. We say, “Lord, let us build here.” But the Lord says, No, not here, because there is a lunatic at the foot of the hill; and you must not build and put yourself into nice places, and settle down, until you have seen whether you cannot heal the lunacy that is in the world below.

I cannot look upon those two men together without feeling that moral gulfs may be bridged. Joseph was no prodigal son. But, as I see Joseph and his father resting on each other, and weeping out their joy, I cannot but think of that other and grander meeting, when a man who has been twenty years away from God, or fifty years away from all that is true and beautiful in moral life, finds his way back! He does not go in a chariot or walk uprightly, but crawls on his bare hands and knees; and God meets him, lifts him up, and when the man begins to tell “how poor and ” God hushes him with a great burst of forgiving love! It seems as if God will never allow us to finish the statement of our penitence. It is enough for him that we begin the story, punctuating it with sobs and tears. He causes the remainder of the statement to go down in the ocean of his love, in the infinitude of his mercy! Is there to be any home-going today? Is any man going to say, “I will arise and go to my Father”? Go! He calleth thee, poor old pilgrim, grey-headed, burdened, sinful, self-abhorring! Go! And thou shalt come out no more for ever!

The fourth point arises in connection with Jacob’s introduction to Pharaoh:

“And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage” ( Gen 47:7-9 ).

It is very tender, pathetic, and instructive to hear an old man sum up his life. How did Jacob sum up his earthly course? He said it was a “pilgrimage.” He had been going from place to place, hardly ever resting, always on the move, scarcely ever taking off his sandals, scarcely laying down his staff. Life is a pilgrimage to us. We are strangers here; we have no continuing city here. Jacob also said that the days of the years of his life had been few! Think of a man over a hundred years of age saying that his days had been few! They are few when looked back upon. They seem so to run into one another as to make but a moment. You look a hundred years ahead, and you cannot endure the thought of existing under present circumstances, so long a time. Yet, if you could go to the end of the century and look back upon the vanished days, you would say they had been few. Jacob said that not only the days had been few but evil. We get to see the brokenness of life, its incompleteness, its fragmentariness, when we get through it. But when it is all over, and the old man looks back, he says, “Evil have been my days. If not morally evil altogether, if here and there there are signs of holiness and trust in God, yet, looked at as a whole, my life has been a poor structure; my days have been evil; I have been wanting in effective work. There is not one word of self-praise I can claim, when I look back on the days of my pilgrimage.”

Now we come to the last scene of all to the close of this strange eventful history. “Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.” Joseph died! Then after all, he was but mortal, like ourselves! It is important to remember this, lest we should let any of the great lessons slip away under the delusion that Joseph was more than man. We have seen fidelity so constant, heroism so enduring, magnanimity so I had almost said Divine, that we are apt to think there must have been something more than human about this man. No. He was mortal, like ourselves. His days were consumed, as are our days; little by little his life ebbed out; and he was found, as we shall be found, dead. So, then, if he was but mortal, why cannot we be as great in our degree? If he was only a man, why cannot we emulate his virtues, so far as our circumstances will enable us to do so? We cannot all be equally heroic and sublime. We can all be, by the grace of God, equally holy, patient, and trustful in our labour.

Joseph died! Thus the best, wisest, and most useful men are withdrawn from their ministry! This is always a mystery in life: that the good man should be taken away in the very prime of his usefulness; that the eloquent tongue should be smitten with death; that a kind father should be withdrawn from his family circle; and that wretches who never have had a noble thought, who do not know what it is to have a brave, heavenly impulse, should seem to have a tenacity of life that is unconquerable; that drunken men and hard-hearted individuals should live on and on, while the good, the true, the wise, the beautiful, and the tender, are snapped off in the midst of their days and translated to higher climes. The old proverb says, “Whom the gods love die young.” Sirs! There is another side to this life, otherwise these things would be inexplicable, would be chief of the mysteries of God’s ways. We must wait, therefore, until we see the circle completed before we sit in judgment upon God.

Joseph died! Then the world can get on without its greatest and best men. This is very humiliating to some persons. Here is, for example, a man who has never been absent from his business for twenty years. You ask him to take a day’s holiday, go to a church-opening, or to a religious festival. He says, “My dear sir! Why, the very idea! The place would go to rack and ruin if I was away four-and-twenty hours.” It comes to pass that God sends a most grievous disease upon the man, imprisons him in the darkened chamber for six months. When he gets up at the end of six months, he finds the business has gone on pretty much as well as if he had been wearing out his body and soul for it all the time. Very humiliating to go and find things getting on without us! Who are we? The preacher may die, but the truth will be preached still The minister perishes, the ministry is immortal. This ought to teach us, therefore, that we are not so important, after all; that our business is to work all the little hour that we have; and to remember that God can do quite as well without us as with us, and that he puts an honour upon us in asking us to touch the very lowest work in any province of the infinite empire of his truth and light.

When few die we can name them one by one, count them on our fingers. “Joseph died.” Some deaths are national events. Some deaths are of world-wide importance. “And all his brethren.” There we begin to lose individuality. Death is coming upon us now quicker. We have no time to go through them, Judah, Simeon, Reuben, and so forth. “All his brethren, and all that generation.” Death is mowing them down! You have no time to read their names and pick each out individually. Such is death! Crushing up one generation in one grasp; mowing down the next with one swing of the scythe. We cannot all, therefore, be equally conspicuous; each cannot have his name written in history as having died. Some of us will be classed in dozens. “All his brethren,” and no name left! Others of us will not even be known as families and households. We die as parts of a generation, a great crowd, an innumerable body! What of it? The thing is not to leave a name behind us a mere name. It is to leave behind influences that hearts will feel, memories that will be cherished at home, and that will be blessed by those whom we have served and helped in life. Die! The time will come when men will laugh at death. We shall one day get such a view of the universe, that we shall look down upon death, and say, “O death, where is thy sting?” How so? Jesus Christ abolished death. If we believe in him, death will no longer be to us a spectre, a ghost, an ugly guest in the house, sucking out our blood and darkening our future. It will then become a swinging door, and, as it swings, we shall pass in to light, to music, to rest. Death will always be a frightful thing to the man who has no Saviour. Death must be more or less a terror to every man who is not in Christ. He may have lived himself into that measure of beasthood that will not confess terror. I never knew of a felled ox, saying, “Death is very terrible.” So there are some men who have lived themselves down so beast-ward and devilward that they hardly know death from life. But to a man who has any consciousness of right and wrong, any moral sensitiveness, if he have not God in the house, death must be an unwelcome thing to him, a dark and terrible interlocutor. But the man who is in Christ, his life is above the reach of death. When the body crumbles and falls down, to get up no more in this state of things, the soul is a guest in Heaven. A guest? Nay, he is a child at Home!

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXX

JOSEPH IN EGYPT

Genesis 42-45

The history of Joseph in Egypt is exquisitely charming in style, the most beautiful story of any language, and so plain that anybody can understand it. There are no critical questions to discuss, but I will emphasize some points.

Stephen, in Acts, says that this famine extended over Egypt and Canaan; other references indicate that it was much more extensive. Anyhow, it came to Jacob at Hebron, and he sent his ten sons to buy wheat. Corn in the Old Testament does not mean Indian corn, or maize, which was not known until the discovery of America. Many other things were not known until that time. The world had no sugar, molasses, coffee, tobacco, or potatoes. When Sir Walter Raleigh first carried Irish potatoes to England, they ate the tops like salad, not knowing the roots were good. So Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to bring back a caravan load of corn, and Joseph recognizes them. As they did not recognize him, he affected to consider them as spies. But he had a purpose in view. His heart was very kind and generous to them, but he wanted to impress some very solemn lessons on them. He put them in ward for three days. On the third day he took them out and said that by leaving one of their brethren as a hostage they could take corn home to their father, and if they had told the truth and were not spies, when they returned they must bring the youngest brother, about whom they had spoken.

Now follows this language, which I have often made the occasion of a sermon: “And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he besought us, and would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them, saying, Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; but ye would not hear? therefore also, behold, his blood is required.” The point is that they were convicted of the sin of having sold Joseph into Egypt. Joseph had not said anything to them about it. The crime had been committed a long time back) and they had never shown any compunction of conscience. A circumstance comes up in a strange land, and all at once every one of them is convicted of sin. The use I make of that in preaching is this: I begin at the first of Genesis and go through the entire Bible, making a digest of every case of conviction of sin mentioned. I write that case out, stating what the sin was, how long after the sin before conviction came, and the causes of conviction. The object of the study is to prepare me to preach to the unconverted. If you cannot convict people of sin, they do not want a Saviour. Their own consciences convicted these men. A sinner becomes apprehensive; he flees when nobody pursues. He will construe any sudden judgment as a punishment for that sin. Unless you know that about human nature, you won’t know how to deal with conviction. That was exactly the effect that Joseph wanted to bring about, but not by open accusation or denunciation. He wanted to treat them in such a way that they would get into a tight place and their consciences would do the rest. Other remarkable cases of conviction are where Nathan convicted David; Jonah the Ninevites; and the cases on the day of Pentecost. After studying the Bible through, I go to my experience to find the first thing that made me feel that I was a sinner, and the other times I have felt conviction of sin. From my own experience I learn how to deal with others in their experience. That I regard as the most important thought in this lesson.

Before these boys get home, they find the money paid for the wheat in their sacks. See how that conviction creeps out again: “Behold, my money is returned, and their hearts went out, and they turned trembling one to another, saying, What is this that God has done unto us?” When they got home they had to explain to their father the absence of Simeon, the return of their money, and that they must take Benjamin with them on their return. Jacob said, “Me have you bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.” I used to treat that this way: that in our pessimism we are apt to construe things against us that ultimately prove good for us. I illustrate it by: “All things work together for good to them that love God.” But from the translation: “On me are all these things,” you get an entirely different and very suggestive sermon. Jacob hints that they had killed Simeon, or disposed of him some way like they had Joseph. The thought is this: no man can commit a sin that terminates in himself. It always breaks some other heart. If a boy steals, it hurts his mother worse than it hurts him. If a man commits a murder, his wife may say, “On me is this thing.” If he is a drunkard, on her and her children are all those things. In the social order no human being is independent of others, but bound by indissoluble ties of blood and society; nor stands by himself, and cannot sin by himself. Preaching on that subject once, I drew a picture of a North Carolina boy who went away from home and left his widowed mother in sorrow. While traveling he took a religious furlough; played cards, drank whiskey, became dissipated, finally had delirium tremens, spent all his money, got into debt, lost his reputation, and determined to commit suicide. I drew a picture of him standing on the brow of a precipice, ready to jump. I called attention to a cord around him which went back, and I followed that cord back to North Carolina, and found it knotted around his mother’s heart. When he jumped it tore her heart also. “On me are all these things.”

We come to the generous proposition of Reuben: “My two eons shalt thou slay if I bring him not to thee.” Since Reuben was not guilty of selling Joseph, it was very generous on his part. But his father could not trust Reuben: “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left: if harm befall him by the way in which ye go, then will ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave [Sheol].” But Jacob did not take into account the pressure of the famine. We stand against many things, sometimes, to which after awhile we yield. Judah now proposes to become a surety for the lad: “My life and everything I have is in thy hands, if I don’t bring this boy back.” That has often been used as a representation of Christ’s becoming surety for this people. Jacob most reluctantly gives his consent, and with his usual wisdom takes every precaution to guard against trouble: “Take of the choice fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, a little honey, spicery and myrrh, nuts and almonds.” He has done all that he could; now he is going to pray: “And God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may release unto you your other brother and Benjamin.”

We have an account of their reception in Egypt, and I want you to note the working of that conviction again. Joseph made ready a feast for them, released Simeon to them, “And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph’s house, and they said: Because of the money that was returned in our sacks at the first time are we brought in: that he may seek occasion against us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses.” How easy it is for an apprehensive heart to suppose that every seeming sinister thing is a messenger of God and of judgment. So they stepped out to the man who had charge of Joseph’s house and explained about the matter. They supposed that accusation was going to be made against them, and sought to defend themselves beforehand. Shakespeare in Hamlet thus refers to the queen: “The lady protests too much, I think.” Whenever anybody gives you an explanation of a thing before there is an accusation and keeps on explaining, it instantly creates a thought in the minds of others that something needs explaining.

Here in Gen 43:27 , is a very touching thing, and in studying literature you ought always to notice pathetic and delicately expressed things: “And he asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he yet alive? And they said, Thy servant, our father, is well, he is yet alive.” Now, when he asked that question how must his heart have stood still until he got the answer, and how much he was touched at the sight of Benjamin. Notice in Gen 43:32 , that Joseph could not eat with his brethren, because Egyptians could not eat with strangers. The Jew to this day will not eat with Gentiles. A Jewish drummer has to get a dispensation from his Rabbi to eat at hotels. The Egyptians required certain precautions in order to escape ceremonial defilement, and would not eat with those who ate certain animals. They would not eat with any one who would kill a cow, a crocodile, a beetle, or sacred animal. The Jews once brought complaint against Peter because he had eaten with uncircumcised Gentiles. Notice Gen 43:34 : “And he took and sent messes to them from before him: but Benjamin’s mess was five times so much as any of theirs.” That has become a proverb. Old Baptists used to say, “Have you prepared a feast for us today?” “Yea, a Benjamin’s mess.”

The next chapter tells how Joseph sent them out again and put their money back; and how he had his silver cup inserted in Benjamin’s sack. When they had gone, he sent men after them with this question: “Wherefore have ye requited evil for good? Is not this that in which my lord drinketh, and whereby he indeed divineth?” What is meant by divining with a cup? When I was a little fellow they used to divine this way: They would take a cup of muddy coffee and let the coffee escape, leaving the grounds (dregs) in the bottom of the cup, and would whirl the cup around, and tell a fortune by the position the dregs assumed. That was a very simple Arkansas method of divining, but it was exactly in line with this Egyptian method. Gipsy women divine with cards, or by the lines of one’s hands. They denied having the cup, but when the bags were opened it was found in Benjamin’s bag. In v. II notice that conviction of sin again. When they got back Judah said, “What shall we say unto my lord? What shall we speak? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants,” still carrying everything back to that crime they had committed. It is that response of human conscience that enables criminal lawyers, who understand human nature, to become mighty prosecutors of crime. Daniel Webster used to say, when they were morally sure of the guilt of a man and he had no legal evidence, ‘”Never mind, I will get the testimony.” Then he would begin his speech. He would draw a supposititious picture of the crime; how the man crept in at the window, etc., and if he did not tell it exactly right the fellow would cry out: “It was not that way”, which would betray him. If he would follow the crime to the line, the criminal would show the fear in his face. Webster always had an ally in the conscience of the criminal.

Now we come to one of the greatest pieces of oratory in the world, the speech of Judah before Joseph. Analyze the power of Judah’s speech. In Scott’s Heart of Midlothian , in Jeanie Deans’ speech before the queen of England, you will find the only thing in literature which I think compares with this speech of Judah. Effie Deans, sister of Jeanie, had been convicted of a crime; Jeanie walked most of the way from Scotland to make a petition for her sister’s pardon. The Duke of Argyll befriended her, and managed that she should have an interview with the queen, and told her just to speak her heart, and not to fix up anything to say. This noble Scottish girl and that part is history as well as romance delivered one of the most impressive, affecting, pathetic little speeches that ever fell from the lips of mortal. I will glance at this speech of Judah’s and show you what I think constitutes its elements of power. “And Judah came near to him, and said, O my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant, for thou art even as Pharaoh.” Notice two elements of power: the humility of the speaker and the conciliation of the one whom he addressed: “Thou art even as Pharaoh.” The next element of power is that he most delicately makes Joseph responsible for the situation: “My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father or brother? And we said unto my lord, we have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother.” “His mother is dead and his father loves him, and you made us bring him.” Having made that point clear, he introduces the father, “Thy servant, my father, said unto us, Ye know that my wife bare me two sons and one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces, and I saw him no more, and if you take this one also from my presence, and harm befall him, ye will bring my gray hairs in sorrow to the under-world. Now, when I go to my father, and the lad is not with us, it will come to pass that he will die.” And he comes to the last point of power, and that is his proposition of substitution: “Now, therefore, let thy servant remain instead of the lad, and let the lad go to his father.” When Judah reached the climax it had power with Joseph. Judah was a father himself and many times had made that generous proposition to go into bondage in place of the boy.

Whereupon Joseph makes himself known to his brethren. And Joseph said, “Come near, I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” That brings up the question: Who sent Joseph into Egypt? Their consciences told them they had done it, and they knew it. But they sent him for evil, but God sent him for good. That will enable you to get a principle by which the hardest doctrines in the Bible will be reconcilable. We are all the time conscious of doing from our own will. AB Peter said to the Jews: “What God had predetermined to be done, ye with wickedness have done.” There is predestination on God’s part, and action on their part, which did not exculpate them from blame, on account of free moral agency and predestination.

Alexander Carson, one of the greatest Baptist writers, a Presbyterian, converted in North Ireland, has written a book on the providence of God, and illustrates his theme by the case of Joseph, showing that while the father had his care, the boys their sin, and Joseph wept at being put into the pit and sold into bondage, and that Potiphar’s wife intervened with her lust, and that the prison held Joseph, yet over all these intermingling human feelings and devices and persecutions, far beyond human sight, the government of God was working. An examination question will be: “Who wrote a book on the providence of God, and illustrated it by the life of Joseph?” After this reconciliation Joseph sends his brothers back home to bring their father back. We will take up the story there in our next discussion.

QUESTIONS 1. What can you say of the story of Joseph in Egypt?

2. What the extent of the famine in Egypt?

3. What did Jacob send to Egypt after, and what several products were then unknown to the people in the Orient?

4. How did Joseph treat his brothers on their first trip, and why?

5. What inner nature of history does the narrative of his brethren disclose?

6. Show the workings of the consciences of his brothers.

7. What direction for a study of conviction?

8. What was the second step of Joseph in convicting them of sin?

9. What explanation did they have to make to Jacob?

10. What was his reply and the lessons therefrom? Illustrate.

11. What was the proposition of Reuben and Jacob’s reply?

12. Who finally prevailed with Jacob, and how?

13. What evidence of the workings of conviction on their return to Egypt and how did they try to excuse themselves?

14. What of Shakespeare’s statement in point and its lesson?

15. What touching incident of their meeting Joseph on the second trip?

16. Why did Joseph not eat with them?

17. What expedient did Joseph adopt to get Benjamin?

18. What is meant by divining with the cup?

19. What evidence of conviction here?

20. What advantage of this principle to criminal lawyers? Illustrate.

21. What is the expositor’s estimate of Judah’s speech before Joseph in behalf of Benjamin?

22. With what speech in the works of Sir Walter Scott may it be compared?

23. Give an analysis of the power of Judah’s speech.

24. Who sent Joseph into Egypt, and what part of the divine government is most strikingly illustrated in his history?

25. What noted Baptist author has written a book on this subject?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Gen 45:1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.

Ver. 1. Then Joseph could not refrain. ] No more can Jesus, in the extreme afflictions of his brethren, Isa 42:14 he must cry like a travailing woman; which, though she bite in her pain for a while, cannot long contain. As Croesus’s dumb son burst forth into, “Kill not King Croesus.” a So when the Church is overlaid by Satan or his instruments, his bowels work, he can hold no longer, but cries, “Save my child, Do the young man Absalom no harm.” “I was but a little displeased, and they have helped forward the affliction. Therefore thus saith the Lord; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies,” or bowels. Zec 1:15-16 Their groans and moans, as every word of Judah’s pathetical speech to Joseph, are as so many darts and daggers at his heart; he must take course for their relief and rescue. For he is a very tender-hearted Joseph, said that martyr, b and though he speak roughly to his brethren, and handle them hardly, yea, and threaten grievous bondage to his best beloved Benjamin, yet can he not contain himself from weeping with us, and upon us, with falling on our necks, and sweetly kissing us, &c.; – as he sweetly goes on in a letter to his wife, Pray, pray for us, everybody; we be shortly to be despatched hence to our good Christ. Amen, Amen.

Cause every man to go out from me. ] That he might weep his fill, and not reveal his brethren’s faults to strangers. It is wisdom in plastering the wounds of others, to clap our hand on the place, that the world may be never the wiser. Mercer thinks that Joseph concealed from his very father the hard dealings of his brethren with him; for if he had known, he would likely have set some note upon them for their cruelty, as he did upon Simeon and Levi for their bloody butchering of the Shechemites.

a A, C . – Herodot.

b Mr Sanders. Act. and Mon., 1564.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Genesis

RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION

Gen 45:1 – Gen 45:15 .

I

If the writer of this inimitable scene of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brethren was not simply an historian, he was one of the great dramatic geniuses of the world, master of a vivid minuteness like Defoe’s, and able to touch the springs of tears by a pathetic simplicity like his who painted the death of Lear. Surely theories of legend and of mosaic work fail here.

1. We have, first, disclosure. The point at which the impenetrable, stern ruler breaks down is significant. It is after Judah’s torrent of intercession for Benjamin, and self-sacrificing offer of himself for a substitute and a slave. Why did this touch Joseph so keenly? Was it not because his brother’s speech shows that filial and fraternal affection was now strong enough in him to conquer self? He had sent Joseph to the fate which he is now ready to accept. He and the rest had thought nothing of the dagger they plunged into their father’s heart by selling Joseph; but now he is prepared to accept bondage if he may save his father’s grey head an ache. The whole of Joseph’s harsh, enigmatical treatment had been directed to test them, and to ascertain if they were the same fierce, cruel men as of old. Now, when the doubt is answered, he can no longer dam back the flood of forgiving love. The wisest pardoning kindness seeks the assurance of sorrow and change in the offender, before it can safely and wholesomely enjoy the luxury of letting itself out in tears of reconciliation. We do not call Joseph a type of Christ; but the plain process of forgiveness in his brotherly heart is moulded by the law which applies to God’s pardon as to ours. All the wealth of yearning pardon is there, before contrition and repentance; but it is not good for the offender that it should be lavished on him, impenitent.

What a picture that is of the all-powerful ruler, choking down his emotion, and hurriedly ordering the audience chamber to be cleared! How many curious glances would be cast over their shoulders, by the slowly withdrawing crowd, at the strange group-the viceroy, usually so calm, thus inexplicably excited, and the huddled, rude shepherds, bewildered and afraid of what was coming next, in this unaccountable country! How eavesdroppers would linger as near as they durst, and how looks would be exchanged as the sounds of passionate weeping rewarded their open ears! The deepest feelings are not to be flaunted before the world. The man who displays his tears, and the man who is too proud to shed them, are both wrong; but perhaps it is worse to weep in public than not to weep at all.

‘I am Joseph.’ Were ever the pathos of simplicity, and the simplicity of pathos, more nobly expressed than in these two words?-There are but two in the Hebrew. Has the highest dramatic genius ever winged an arrow which goes more surely to the heart than that? The question, which hurries after the disclosure, seems strange and needless; but it is beautifully self-revealing, as expressive of agitation, and as disclosing a son’s longing, and perhaps, too, as meant to relieve the brothers’ embarrassment, and, as it were, to wrap the keen edge of the disclosure in soft wool.

2. We have, next, conscience-stricken silence. No wonder his brethren ‘could not answer’ and ‘were troubled at his presence.’ They had found their brother a ruler; they had found the ruler their brother. Their former crime had turned what might have been a joy into a terror. Already they had come to know and regret it. It might seem to their startled consciences as if now they were about to expiate it. They would remember the severity of Joseph’s past intercourse; they see his power, and cannot but be doubtful of his intentions. Had all his strange conduct been manoeuvring to get them, Benjamin and all, into his toils, that one blow might perfect his revenge? Our suspicions are the reflections of our own hearts. So there they stand in open-mouthed, but dumb, wonder and dread. It would task the pencil of him who painted, on the mouldering refectory wall at Milan, the conflicting emotions of the apostles, at the announcement of the betrayer, to portray that silent company of abased and trembling criminals. They are an illustration of the profitlessness of all crime. Sin is, as one of its Hebrew names tells us, missing the mark-whether we think of it as fatally failing to reach the ideal of conduct, or as always, by a divine nemesis, failing to hit even the shabby end it aims at. ‘Every rogue is a roundabout fool.’ They put Joseph in the pit, and here he is on a throne. They have stained their souls, and embittered their father’s life for twenty-two long years, and the dreams have come true, and all their wickedness has not turned the stream of the divine purpose, any more than the mud dam built by a child diverts the Mississippi. One flash has burned up their whole sinful past, and they stand scorched and silent among the ruins. So it always is. Sooner or later the same certainty of the futility of his sin will overwhelm every sinful man, and dumb self-condemnation will stand in silent acknowledgment of evil desert before the throne of the Brother, who is now the Prince and the Judge, on whose fiat hangs life or death. To see Christ enthroned should be joy; but it may be turned into terror and silent anticipation of His just condemnation.

3. We have encouragement and complete forgiveness. That invitation to come close up to him, with which Joseph begins the fuller disclosure of his heart, is a beautiful touch. We can fancy how tender the accents, and how, with some lightening of fear, but still hesitatingly and ashamed, the shepherds, unaccustomed to courtly splendours, approached. The little pause while they draw near helps him to self-command, and he resumes his words in a calmer tone. With one sentence of assurance that he is their brother, he passes at once into that serene region where all passion and revenge die, unable to breathe its keen, pure air. The comfort which he addresses to their penitence would have been dangerous, if spoken to men blind to the enormity of their past. But it will not make a truly repentant conscience less sensitive, though it may alleviate the aching of the wound, to think that God has used even its sin for His own purposes. It will not take away the sense of the wickedness of the motive to know that a wonderful providence has rectified the consequences. It will rather deepen the sense of evil, and give new cause of adoration of the love that pardons the wrong, and the providence that neutralises the harm.

Joseph takes the true point of view, which we are all bound to occupy, if we would practise the Christian grace of forgiveness. He looks beyond the mere human hate and envy to the divine purpose. ‘The sword is theirs; the hand is Thine.’ He can even be grateful to his foes who have been unintentionally his benefactors. He thinks of the good that has come out of their malice, and anger dies within him.

Highest attainment of all, the good for which he is grateful is not his all-but-regal dignity, but the power to save and gladden those who would fain have slain, and had saddened him for many a weary year. We read in these utterances of a lofty piety and of a singularly gentle heart, the fruit of sorrow and the expression of thoughts which had slowly grown up in his mind, and had now been long familiar there. Such a calm, certain grasp of the divine shaping and meaning of his life could not have sprung up all at once in him, as he looked at the conscience-stricken culprits cowering before him. More than natural sweetness and placability must have gone to the making of such a temper of forgiveness. He must have been living near the Fountain of all mercy to have had so full a cup of it to offer. Because he had caught a gleam of the divine pardon, he becomes a mirror of it; and we may fairly see in this ill-used brother, yearning over the half-sullen sinners, and seeking to open a way for his forgiveness to steal into their hearts, and rejoicing over his very sorrows which have fitted him to save them alive, and satisfy them in the days of famine, an adumbration of our Elder Brother’s forgiving love and saving tenderness.

4. The second part of Joseph’s address is occupied with his message to Jacob, and shows how he longed for his father’s presence. There is something very natural and beautiful in the repeated exhortations to haste, as indicating the impatient love of a long-absent son. If his heart was so true to his father, why had he sent him no message for all these years? Egypt was near enough, and for nine years now he had been in power. Surely he could have gratified his heart. But he could not have learned by any other means his brethren’s feelings, and if they were still what they had been, no intercourse would be possible. He could only be silent, and yearn for the way to open in God’s providence, as it did.

The message to Jacob is sent from ‘thy son Joseph,’ in token that the powerful ruler lays his dignity at his father’s feet. No elevation will ever make a true son forget his reverence for his father. If he rise higher in the world, and has to own an old man, away in some simple country home, for his sire, he will be proud to do it. The enduring sanctity of the family ties is not the least valuable lesson from our narrative for this generation, where social conditions are so often widely different in parents and in children. There is an affectionate spreading out of all his glory before his father’s old eyes; not that he cared much about it for himself, since, as we have seen, elevation to him meant mainly work, but because he knew how the eyes would glisten at the sight. His mother, who would have been proud of him, is gone, but he has still the joy of gladdening his father by the exhibition of his dignity. It bespeaks a simple nature, unspoiled by prosperity, to delight thus in his father’s delight, and to wish the details of all his splendour to be told him. A statesman who takes most pleasure in his elevation because of the good he can do by it, and because it will please the old people at home, must be a pure and lovable man. The command has another justification in the necessity to assure his father of the wisdom of so great a change. God had set him in the Promised Land, and a very plain divine injunction was needed to warrant his leaving it. Such a one was afterwards given in vision; but the most emphatic account of his son’s honour and power was none the less required to make the old Jacob willing to abandon so much, and go into such strange conditions.

We have another instance of the difference between man’s purposes and God’s counsel in this message. Joseph’s only thought is to afford his family temporary shelter during the coming five years of famine. Neither he nor they knew that this was the fulfilment of the covenant with Abraham, and the bringing of them into the land of their oppression for four centuries. No shadow of that future was cast upon their joy, and yet, the steady march of God’s plan was effected along the path which they were ignorantly preparing. The road-maker does not know what bands of mourners, or crowds of holiday makers, or troops of armed men may pass along it.

5. This wonderfully beautiful scene ends with the kiss of full reconciliation and frank communion. All the fear is out of the brothers’ hearts. It has washed away all the envy along with it. The history of Jacob’s household had hitherto been full of sins against family life. Now, at last, they taste the sweetness of fraternal love. Joseph, against whom they had sinned, takes the initiative, flinging himself with tears on the neck of Benjamin, his own mother’s son, nearer to him than all the others, crowding his pent-up love in one long kiss. Then, with less of passionate affection, but more of pardoning love, he kisses his contrite brothers. The offender is ever less ready to show love than the offended. The first step towards reconciliation, whether of man with man or of man with God, comes from the aggrieved. We always hate those whom we have harmed; and if enmity were ended only by the advances of the wrong-doer, it would be perpetual. The injured has the prerogative of praying the injurer to be reconciled. So was it in Pharaoh’s throne-room on that long past day; so is it still in the audience chamber of heaven. ‘He that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy.’ ‘We love Him, because He first loved us.’

The pardoned men find their tongues at last. Forgiveness has opened their lips, and though their reverence and thanks are no less, their confidence and familiarity are more. How they would talk when once the terror was melted away! So should it be with the soul which has tasted the sweetness of Christ’s forgiving love, and has known ‘the kisses of His mouth.’ Long, unrestrained, and happy should be the intercourse which we forgiven sinners keep up with our Brother, the Prince of all the land. ‘After that his brethren talked with him.’

JOSEPH, THE PARDONER AND PRESERVER

II

THE noble words in which Joseph dissipates his brothers’ doubts have, as their first characteristic, the recognition of the God by whom his career had been shaped, and, for their next, the recognition of the purpose for which it had been. There is a world of tenderness and forgivingness in the addition made to his first words in Gen 45:4 , ‘Joseph, your brother .’ He owns the mystic bond of kindred, and thereby assures them of his pardon for their sin against it. It was right that he should remind them of their crime, even while declaring his pardon. But he rises high above all personal considerations and graciously takes the place of soother, instead of that of accuser. Far from cherishing thoughts of anger or revenge, he tries to lighten the reproaches of their own consciences. Thrice over in four verses he traces his captivity to God. He had learned that wisdom in his long years of servitude, and had not forgotten it in those of rule.

There will be little disposition in us to visit offences against ourselves on the offenders, if we discern God’s purpose working through our sorrows, and see, as the Psalmist did, that even our foes are ‘ men which are Thy hand, O Lord.’ True, His overruling providence does not make their guilt less; but the recognition of it destroys all disposition to revenge, and injured and injurer may one day unite in adoring the result of what the One suffered at the other’s hands. Surely, some Christian persecutors and their victims have thus joined hands in heaven. If we would cultivate the habit of seeing God behind second causes, our hearts would be kept free from much wrath and bitterness.

Joseph was as certain of the purpose as of the source of his elevation. He saw now what he had been elevated for, and he eagerly embraced the task which was a privilege. No doubt, he had often brooded over the thought, ‘Why am I thus lifted up?’ and had felt the privilege of being a nation’s saviour; but now he realises that he has a part to play in fulfilling God’s designs in regard to the seed of Abraham. Cloudy as his outlook into the future may have been, he knew that great promises affecting all nations were intertwined with his family, separation from whom had been a sorrow for years. But now the thought comes to him with sudden illumination and joy: ‘This, then, is what it all has meant, that I should be a link in the chain of God’s workings.’ He knows himself to be God’s instrument for effecting His covenant promises. How small a thing honour and position became in comparison!

We cannot all have great tasks in the line of God’s purposes, but we can all feel that our little ones are made great by being seen to be in it. The less we think about chariots and gold chains, and the more we try to find out what God means by setting us where we are, and to do that, the better for our peace and true dignity. A true man does not care for the rewards of work half as much as for the work itself. Find out what God intends, and never mind whether He puts you in a dungeon or in a palace. Both places lie on the road which He has marked and, in either, the main thing is to do His will.

Next comes the swiftly devised plan for carrying out God’s purpose. It sounds as if Joseph, with prompt statesmanship, had struck it out then and there. At all events, he pours it forth with contagious earnestness and haste. Note how he says over and over again ‘My father,’ as if he loved to dwell on the name, but also as if he had not yet completely realised the renewal of the broken ties of brotherhood. It was some trial of the stuff he was made of, to have to bring his father and his family to be stared at, and perhaps mocked at, by the court. Many a successful man would be very much annoyed if his old father, in his country clothes, and hands roughened by toil, sat down beside him in his prosperity. Joseph had none of that baseness. Jacob would come, if at all, as a half-starved immigrant, and would be ‘an abomination to the Egyptians.’ But what of that? He was ‘my father,’ and his son knows no better use to make of his dignity than to compel reverence for Jacob’s grey hairs, which he will take care shall not be ‘brought down with sorrow to the grave.’ It is a very homely lesson-never be ashamed of your father. But in these days, when children are often better educated than their parents, and rise above them in social importance, it is a very needful one.

The first overtures of reconciliation should come from the side of the injured party. That is Christ’s law, and if it were Christians’ practice, there would be fewer alienations among them. It is Christ’s law, because it is Christ’s own way of dealing with us. He, too, was envied, and sold by His brethren. His sufferings were meant ‘to preserve life.’ Stephen’s sermon in the Sanhedrin dwells on Joseph as a type of Christ; and the typical character is seen not least distinctly in this, that He against whom we have sinned pleads with us, seeks to draw us nearer to Himself, and to lead us to put away all hard thoughts of Him, and to cherish all loving ones towards Him, by showing us how void His heart is of anger against us, and how full of yearning love and of gracious intention to provide for us a dwelling-place, with abundance of all needful good, beside Himself, while the years of famine shall last.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Gen 45:1-3

1Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried, “Have everyone go out from me.” So there was no man with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. 2He wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard of it. 3Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

Gen 45:1 “Then Joseph could not control himself” This is a VERB (BDB 407, KB 410, negated Qal PERFECT and a Hithpael INFINITIVE CONSTRUCT, BDB 67, KB 80), which is used of Joseph in Gen 43:31, where he was able to get control of his emotions. Here he wept so loudly (cf. Gen 45:2) that everyone heard him weeping!

“everyone go out from me” The command (BDB 422, KB 425, Hiphil IMPERATIVE), possibly spoken in Egyptian, is directed to all of Joseph’s servants (even his special steward). He is left with only his eleven brothers.

“when Joseph made himself known to his brothers” What a moment this must have been! Joseph was emotional and they became emotional (cf. Gen 45:3).

Gen 45:2 “He wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard of it” Joseph had sent all his Egyptian servants out of the room. This was either (1) so as not to embarrass his brothers or (2) so as not to show such great emotion in this personal matter before the Egyptians. However, the Oriental practice of loud wailing was heard by the servants who were close enough to respond if Joseph had called them. Apparently, Joseph was a very loved man in Egypt and his servants were personally concerned about him or were concerned about his expertise and governmental administration being lost, therefore, they reported to Pharaoh what they had heard.

Gen 45:3 “I am Joseph” This is an exclamation with no VERB. It is supposition that he spoke in Hebrew, but because it seems obvious to assume that his brothers did not speak Egyptian and that there was no translator present, maybe Joseph shocked them by speaking to them in their native tongue and making such a dramatic statement (cf. Gen 45:4).

“Is my father still alive” Some commentators have doubted the veracity of this verse because in Gen 43:27 Joseph asked the same question. However, it seems possible that the term (BDB 311, cf. 1Sa 25:6) can mean more than simply physical life. Apparently he was asking about his father’s well-being, which we learn from later verses, had not been the same since the supposed death of Joseph (cf. Gen 45:27).

“they were dismayed” This is a strong VERB (BDB 96, KB 111, Niphal PERFECT, cf. Jdg 20:41; 1Sa 28:21; 2Sa 4:1; Job 21:6; Job 23:15; Psa 6:3; Psa 30:8; Psa 48:6; Psa 83:17; Psa 90:7; Psa 104:29; Isa 13:8; Isa 21:3; Eze 7:27).

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Chapter 45

Then Joseph could not refrain himself before them that stood by him; and he cried and he said, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard him ( Gen 45:1-2 ).

Actually he said, “Get out of here all you Egyptians”. And then he let his brothers know who he was and he was crying just aloud, saying, “I’m Joseph, I’m Joseph”. And they were standing outside the door; they all heard him. And they ran to Pharaoh and they said, “Hey, Joseph’s brothers are here, having a big party, a reunion and all”.

And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph; does my father still live? And his brothers couldn’t answer him; they were speechless, they were troubled at his presence ( Gen 45:3 ).

It wasn’t such a happy occasion for them yet. They didn’t know what he was going to do.

And Joseph said to his brothers, Come near to me, I pray you. And so they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold to Egypt. Now therefore don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me: for God did send me before you to preserve life ( Gen 45:4-5 ).

Don’t be grieved. Don’t be upset with yourselves because you sold me, God’s hand was in it all.

We should never be upset with secondary causes that God uses to bring His primary purposes into our lives. Their selling of him was a secondary cause. “Don’t be grieved over that. Hey, don’t you realize God’s hand was in the whole thing? He sent me down here in order to preserve the family.” Joseph could see he had the advantage of hindsight, he could see how God’s hand was in this whole thing. “God sent me before you. Don’t be upset over yourselves and grieve.”

For these two years have the famine been in the land: but there’s going to be five more years, in which there will be neither earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives alive by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me here, but God: and he has made me a father to the Pharaoh ( Gen 45:6-8 ),

Man, it’s far out what I’ve got down here, you know. And God’s done it. You didn’t do this. God is the One that did this. Seeing the providential hand of God in the whole experience. Oh, how glorious when we can see beyond secondary causes and see the hand of God’s providence working in all of the circumstances of our lives. “You didn’t do this, God did it. And God just sent me down to providentially spare the family.”

Now hurry, and go back to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith your son Joseph, God has made me the lord of all Egypt: come down and don’t waste any time: And you will dwell in the land of Goshen, you and all will be near me, and all your children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that you have: And I will there nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest you, and your household, and all that you have, come to poverty ( Gen 45:9-11 ).

Five years more could wipe him out. So come on down. I’ll take care of you. I’ll nourish you. You’ll be near me and all.

And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, you can see that it’s my mouth that’s speaking to you. And tell my father of my glory in Egypt, and all that you have seen; and ye shall make haste and bring down my father. And he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and he wept; and Benjamin wept on his neck. And moreover he kissed all of his brothers, and wept on them: and after that his brothers talked to him ( Gen 45:12-15 ).

Finally, they said, “Well, I guess the guy’s serious”. He’s crying and weeping and he doesn’t intend us harm and so they were finally able to speak. They were so shocked. It was just a wipe out. They didn’t know what had happened to Joseph. And now all of a sudden here is a guy. He’s the lord in Egypt and all. “I’m Joseph, I’m your brother. You can see it’s me. It’s my mouth. I’m talking to you, man.” And they just were wiped out over the whole experience. They just could hardly answer.

Now in this you remember Jesus said to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He said, “Are you blind? Do you not understand the scriptures?” And He began with Moses and went all the way through and showed them where the scriptures spoke of Christ. To the Pharisees He said, “You do search the scriptures, in them you think you have life. But actually they testify of Me.” Now the scriptures testify of Christ plainly and then in allegories and in analogies and in types and in various ways. The scriptures testify about Jesus Christ.

And Joseph as we pointed out before is a beautiful type of Christ. A type of Christ being sold, rejected by his brothers. They refused him. They rejected him and sold him into slavery. But now at their second coming, he makes himself known to them. He’s revealed at the second coming who he really is. And as He is revealed unto them, He has great mercy upon them.

The Bible tells us that when Jesus comes again, that the Jews-it says they are going to look on Him whom they have pierced. They’re going to weep and travail over what they have done. How could we have rejected our Messiah? How could we have rejected God’s plan? And they will look upon him whom they have pierced. They said, “What are the meaning of those wounds in your hands?”

And rather than being vindictive and all, He said, “These are the wounds that I received in the house of my friends”. But He’s going to receive them. There’s going to be a glorious acceptance of the Messiah and Christ accepting them and the grace and the mercy that He’ll bestow upon them. And the riches of God’s grace that shall be bestowed upon these people when they are brought back again and they receive the gracious forgiveness of their Brother whom they rejected, whom they despised, whom they destroyed.

And so Joseph’s revealing of himself as a type of the future when Christ will come again to the nation Israel and will reveal Himself to them and they will recognize Him in truth and will be accepted and forgiven. The whole thing is just a beautiful picture of that which is yet future. Now go tell your dad, my dad, all the things God has done for me. Tell him how I’m lord down here in Egypt. I rule over the country and man, I just really have it made.

And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh’s house, as they said, Joseph’s brothers are come: and it pleased the Pharaoh well, and his servants. And the Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto your brothers, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get unto the land of Canaan; And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat of the fat of the land. Now command this; that you take wagons out of Egypt for the little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. Also don’t worry about your stuff ( Gen 45:16-20 );

Your utensils and all.

for the good of the land of Egypt is yours ( Gen 45:20 ).

We’ll replace anything you’ve got to leave.

And the children of Israel did so: and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and he gave them provision for the way. And to all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but unto Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. And to his father he sent after this manner; ten donkeys loaded down with the good things of Egypt, ten she donkeys laden down with wheat and bread and meat for his father by the way ( Gen 45:21-23 ).

His father had sent down a few little bits of dried fruit and some almonds and all. And so Joseph loads down twenty donkeys and sends it back full of stuff for his dad.

So he his brothers departed: and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way ( Gen 45:24 ).

In other words, have a safe journey.

And they went up out of Egypt, and they came into the land of Canaan and Jacob their father, and they told him, saying, Joseph is still alive, he is the governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob’s heart fainted, for he believed them not ( Gen 45:25-26 ).

He thought, “Oh, come on, what are you guys come to now?” And he was just weakened by the words that they say. It just sort of wiped out.

And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived ( Gen 45:27 ):

The spirit of Jacob. He saw all the loot and the spirit of Jacob revived. But it ends,

And Israel said, It’s enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die ( Gen 45:28 ).

And so in the next chapters we find the glorious reunion of the father and the son down in Egypt, and we’ll finish the book of Genesis next Sunday night. So read on ahead; the story gets exciting and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it thoroughly.

Shall we stand? May the Lord be with you and watch over you through the week. And may you experience the hand of God upon your life and may you recognize the work of God in your life, not just in the blessed things, in the good things, but even in the adverse things.

And may you realize that truly all things are working together for good to those who love God. And thus, as we walk according to His purpose, help us that we might accept, as from God the adverse secondary causes that are bringing to pass God’s primary will within our lives. And may we see beyond the obvious. May we see those things, which are not seen by the normal person; God’s hand working in and behind the scenes of our lives to bring forth His will, His plan. God bless you and watch over you and keep you in Jesus’ love. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Gen 45:1-2. Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him: and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud:

Emotion long pent up grows violent; and when at last it does burst forth, it cannot be restrained: He wept aloud.

Gen 45:2-3. And the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.

What a rush of thoughts must have passed through their minds when they remembered all their unkind behavior toward him! There is no wonder that they were troubled at his presence.

Gen 45:4. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you.

He pleads with them, he who was far greater than theya prince among peasants,now prays to them; and is it not wonderful that the Lord Jesus, our infinitely-greater Brother, at times pleads with us, even as he said to the woman at the well, Give me to drink? Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you.

Gen 45:4-5, And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, not angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.

You did very wrong, but I say nothing about that, for I want you to notice how God has over-ruled your action, how your sin has been made to be the means of your preservation and the preservation of many besides: God did send me before you to preserve life.

Gen 45:6. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be eating nor harvest.

There were to be five more dreary years of utter desolation and want.

Gen 45:7. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

How wonderfully those two things meet in practical harmony,the free will of man and the predestination of God! Man acts just as freely and just as guiltily as if there were no predestination whatever; and God ordains, arranges, supervises, and over-rules, just as accurately as if there were no free will in the universe. There are some purblind people who only believe one or other of these two truths; yet they are both true, and the one is as true as the other. I believe that much of the theology which is tinged with free will is true, and I know that the teaching which fully proclaims electing love and sovereign grace is also true; and you may find much of both these truths in the Scriptures. The fault lies in trying to compress all truth under either of those two heads. These men were verily guilty for selling their brother, yet God was verily wise in permitting him to be sold. The inference which Joseph draws from their misconduct is, of course, an inference of love. Love may not be always logical, but it is sweetly consoling, as it must have been in this case.

Gen 45:8. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

See how Joseph traces Gods hand in his whole career.

Gen 45:9. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not:

See how love attracts; Joseph must have his brothers near him, now he wants to have his father also near. Go up to my father, and say unto him, Come down unto me. See how great love turns pleader again; he who said to his brethren, Come near to me, sends to his father the message, Come down unto me.

Gen 45:10. And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy childrens children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast:

Our common saying, Love me, love my dog, is very true. Love me, love even my flocks and my herds. So the blessing of God extends to all that his chosen people have; not only to their children, but to all that they possess.

Gen 45:11-13. And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither.

Love is impatient to have the object of its affection brought near. Now we will read two short portions out of the Song of Solomon, from which you will see how love evermore craves for nearness to the loved one. The Song opens thus:

This exposition consisted of readings from Gen 45:1-13; Son 1:1-7; Son 3:1-5.

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

In the account of Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brethren, the chief value is in his recognition of the fact that his destiny had been in the hand of God: “It was not you that sent me hither, but God.” This capacity for ignoring secondary causes is one of the surest signs of greatness. So it was that Joseph was able to forget and to forgive his brethren for selling him into slavery. It is a consciousness possible only to the life of habitual communion with God.

The important position Joseph occupied in Egypt is clearly seen in Pharaoh’s attitude toward Joseph’s father and his brothers.

When Jacob heard that his son was alive, his heart was touched to its depth: “It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die.” Thus he was beginning to find out that under the government of his covenant-keeping God the things he had declared to be against him were really for him. How good it is that when our faith wavers, God does not change His mind or purpose for us. He moves right on in infinite love toward the final good. How much feverish unrest we would be spared if only we would learn from these stories of the past to repose our confidence in God rather than in circumstance and quietly await His time.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Joseph Makes Himself Known to His Brothers

Gen 45:1-15

It may be that we have here an exact representation of a scene which shall be transacted some day, when our Lord makes Himself known to His brethren, the Jews. The Apostle Paul tells us that ultimately all Israel shall be saved; and may not this be brought about, when He says to them, I am Jesus, your brother, whom ye delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate? Was not Josephs wife rejoiced by his joy, and will not the Church of the redeemed be glad when that great reconciliation takes effect? What a beautiful interpretation Joseph put on their act of treachery-God did send me before you. Let us always trace Gods plan in the malevolence and opposition of men. They could have no power at all, unless it was given them from above. Joseph supplied all their needs-wagons to carry, food to nourish, raiment to clothe, and greetings to welcome!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Gen 45:3

The difficulties of Joseph’s history begin with his elevation. At the time of the famine there is much to wonder at in Joseph’s conduct to his brethren. Why did he so long and by such strange artifices delay the disclosure which an affectionate heart must have been yearning to make? Why had he never made inquiries about his family, though there was free communication between Egypt and Canaan?

I. We can only believe that Joseph acted thus strangely in obedience to a direct intimation from God, who had wise purposes to answer by deferring for a time his restoration to his family. How are we to explain his conduct when his brethren were actually brought before him: his harsh language; his binding Simeon; his putting the cup in Benjamin’s sack? Joseph was an injured man, and he could not trust his brothers. By calling them spies, and thus throwing them off their guard and making it their interest to tell the truth, he diminished the likelihood of falsehood. He wanted information which he could not procure by ordinary means, therefore he took extraordinary means, for if the brethren never returned he knew too well that Benjamin had perished.

II. How can we explain Joseph’s conduct when his brethren returned and brought Benjamin with them? Strange that he should still have used deceit. The probable explanation is: (1) That Joseph sought to ascertain the disposition of the ten brethren towards Benjamin. He was planning the bringing of the whole family to Egypt, and it was needful to find out first if they were well agreed. (2) He also wished to assure himself that the children of Rachel were as dear to Jacob now as they were in their youth. There was as much affection as wisdom in these multiplied delays, which at first sight appear to have unnecessarily, if not unfeelingly, deferred the moment of reunion.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1488.

Joseph recognised his brethren at once, though they failed, as they bowed before the mighty vicegerent of Egypt, to recognise in him the child by them so pitilessly sold into bondage; and Joseph, we are told, “remembered the dreams which he had dreamed of them”: how their sheaves should stand round about and make obeisance to his sheaf; how sun and moon and eleven stars should all do homage to him. All at length was coming true.

I. Now, of course it would have been very easy for him at once to have made himself known to his brethren, to have fallen on their necks and assured them of his forgiveness. But he has counsels of love at once wiser and deeper than would have lain in such a ready and off-hand declaration of forgiveness. His purpose is to prove whether they are different men, or, if not, to make them different men from what they were when they practised that deed of cruelty against himself. He feels that he is carrying out, not his own purpose, but God’s, and this gives him confidence in hazarding all, as he does hazard it, in bringing this matter to a close.

II. Two things were necessary here: the first that he should have the opportunity of observing their conduct to their younger brother, who had now stepped into his place, and was the same favourite with his father as Joseph once had been; the second, that by some severe treatment, which should bear a more or less remote resemblance to their treatment of himself, he should prove whether he could call from them a lively remembrance and a penitent confession of their past guilt.

III. The dealings of Joseph with his brethren are, to a great extent, the very pattern of God’s dealings with men. God sees us careless, in easily forgiving ourselves our old sins; and then, by trial and adversity and pain, He brings these sins to our remembrance, causes them to find us out, and at length extracts from us a confession, “We are verily guilty.” And then, when tribulation has done its work, He is as ready to confirm His love to us as ever was Joseph to confirm his love to his brethren.

R. C. Trench, Sermons Preached in Ireland, p. 65; also Sermons New and Old, p. 37.

References: Gen 45:3.-G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 370. Gen 45:3-5.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 449.

Gen 45:4

It was by a strange and seemingly circuitous route that these brethren of Joseph were brought near to him. Between Joseph and his brethren there was an immeasurable distance-all the difference between a nature given over to God and one abandoned to the force of evil passion. We may see in this narrative a type of the ways and means God still employs for bringing the wandering brothers of Joseph’s great Antitype near to Him.

I. In order that the brothers may be really drawn near to Joseph, they have first to be separated from him by their own sin.

II. The next step towards bringing them near is their own want.

III. When they get into Joseph’s presence they are suddenly subjected to the most unlooked-for and crushing trials.

IV. They are smitten to the heart with the recollection of bygone sins; these are brought to their remembrance as sins against their brother.

V. They were alone with Joseph when he made himself known to them.

W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons, 1st series, p. 290.

This was the address of Joseph to his brethren-to the brethren who had despised and hated him. There is no anger in the address; it is the expression of love. Joseph seeks not to punish, but to forgive and console them.

I. Christ, the true Joseph, is ever making the same appeal to the hungry and the sinner. There was famine in the land, and the brethren of Joseph were in want of food. Joseph alone has the key of the storehouses that overflow with food. He will not send the empty away, but will fill the hungry with good things. It is so with Christ. If we acknowledge our hunger and turn to Him, He will feed us with the bread of heaven.

II. To the sinner. The appeal of our Lord to those who have sinned against Him is, “Come near to me, I pray you.” The appeal is to man’s free-will. Christ is ready, but man must make a step towards Him.

III. I pray you. How earnest is the entreaty! I-who am God, your Creator; I, whom you have forgotten, wronged, pierced with your sins, and crucified again-“I pray you!”

S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii., p. 78.

Gen 45:5

Joseph looks away from and thrusts aside the wickedness of his brothers, and refers all to the over-ruling providence of God, bringing good out of evil, and making all things work together for good, to the family of His chosen servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In time of bereavement and sorrow we may put these words into the mouth of him whom we have lost. After a death we are apt to reproach ourselves bitterly for things done or left undone. “Now, therefore,” says the one we have lost, whom we trust reposes in Paradise, “be not grieved or angry with yourselves; the faults were not intentional, there was no lack of love. I reproach you not, for God did send me before you, a spy into the promised land. I am at rest, and tarry for you to come to me. I have gone ‘to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.'”

S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii., p. 81.

Gen 45:5, Gen 45:8

The words of Joseph in the text contrast somewhat strangely with the words spoken by his brethren of themselves. It is clear that the view he took of their conduct was the one most likely to give them ease. He assured them that after all they were but instruments in God’s hands, that God had sent him, that God’s providence was at work for good when they sold him as a slave. Both views are true, and both important. The brethren had done what they did as wickedly and maliciously as possible; nevertheless it was true that it was not they, but God, who had sent Joseph into Egypt.

I. That God governs the world, we do not-we dare not-doubt; but it is equally true that He governs in a way which we should not have expected, and that much of His handiwork appears strange. So strange, indeed, that we know that it has been in all times, and is in our time, easy to say, God cares not, God sees not, or even to adopt the bolder language of the fool, and say, “There is no God.” Scriptural illustrations of the same kind of contradiction as we have in the text are to be found: (1) in the case of Esau and Jacob; (2) in the manner in which the hardheartedness and folly of Pharaoh were made to contribute to the carrying out of God’s designs concerning the Israelites; (3) in the circumstances of our Lord’s sorrowful life on earth, and especially the circumstances connected with His shameful and yet life-giving death.

II. Our own lives supply us with illustrations of the same truth. Who cannot call to mind cases in which God’s providence has brought about results in the strangest way, educing good from evil, turning that which seemed to be ruin into blessing, making even the sins and follies of men to declare His glory and to forward the spiritual interests of their brethren. We see human causes producing effects, but we may also see God’s hand everywhere; all things living and moving in Him; no sparrow falling without His leave; no hair of one of His saints perishing.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 5th series, p. 63.

Gen 45:7-8

I. “God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth.” Joseph referred the whole order and purpose of his existence, all that had been adverse to it, all that had been prosperous in it, to God. He knew that violence and disorder had been at work in his life. What temptation had he to think of them as God’s? Imputing to Him a distinct purpose of good and blessedness, what a strange perverseness it would have been to think that anything which had marred the goodness and blessedness, anything which had striven to defeat the purpose, was His! It was the great eternal distinction which a heart cultivated, purged, made simple by God’s discipline, confessed-nay, found it impossible to deny.

II. Joseph starts with assuring his brethren that God had been the orderer and director of his history, and that He had a purpose in it. He thinks that the special work to which he has been appointed is to preserve for them a posterity on the earth. Joseph had no notion that his preservation meant anything, except so far as it served for the establishment and propagation of the covenant family. For the sake of his family he was sent there; he must act for it, whether he puts his brothers to torture or himself.

III. And so he was indeed “saving their lives by a great deliverance.” He was providing against the immediate destruction which the famine was threatening them with; he was providing against the more thorough and permanent destruction which their own selfishness and crimes were working out.

IV. “He hath made me a father to Pharaoh,” etc. Joseph was maintaining, as he believed, a seed in which all families of the earth were to be blessed. But though this obligation was first, it did not exclude the other. God, who had sent him to save his own family, had surely just as much proposed that he should be a father to Pharaoh and a lord of his land. So Joseph judged; on that faith he acted.

F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 137.

I. The dreams. Joseph’s dreams reflected in the quiet of the night the aspirations and ambitious forecasts of the future which haunted his daily life.

II. The discipline. Joseph met with misfortunes, and this experience taught him: (1) independence (e.g., of his father); (2) to serve-that lesson so needful to power; (3) enlarged ideas; (4) the lesson that would be at once the strength of his life and the correction of his vanity-viz., his absolute dependence on God.

III. The fulfilment of his dreams. (1) He met with outward success. (2) Two great changes passed over his character. He learned to ascribe all his success to God, and he perceived the object for which he had been elevated: “God sent me before you to preserve you,” etc.

Bishop Boyd Carpenter, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 217.

Gen 45:8

Joseph was in Egypt in 1730 b.c. At that time, according to the inscription on the tomb of Baba, a great scarcity of food prevailed. The occupant of the tomb relates his good deeds, and these were the doling out of bread to the hungry. Doubtless the man was one of Joseph’s subordinates. The exact meaning of Joseph’s Egyptian name is difficult to determine, but the most plausible explanation is “food of life,” or “food of the living,” a most appropriate name for the man who did so much in the great famine to rescue Pharaoh’s myriads from starvation,

I. The story of Joseph is to all men for ever the best proof of the working of the hand of Providence.

II. As through the life of Joseph, so through our life, there are threads which connect the different scenes and bind together the destinies of the different actors.

III. This history and the inspired commentary on it in Psalm cv. teach us the wonderful continuity of God’s plan and the oneness of the thread that binds together the histories of Israel and of Egypt.

C. H. Butcher, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 208.

References: Gen 45:8.-E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons, 2nd series, p. 179; W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 222. Gen 45:9-11.-Parker, vol. i., p. 352.

Gen 45:14

This incident is the most unquestionable instance in the Bible of tears of love. No other feeling but love made Joseph weep. Sorrow there could not have been, for at that moment, on his side at least, it was all joy. Job says, as the great purpose of all that God did with him, “God maketh my heart soft.” And it is David’s constant experience, of which he speaks with pleasure, “My soul is even as a weaned child.”

I. Tears of love are true evidences-and evidences which can scarcely speak falsely.

II. Tears have much of the nature of sacrifice in them.

III. Though there are no tears in heaven, yet loving tears on earth come nearer than anything else in the world to the alleluias of the saints, for they are the outbursts of an irrepressible emotion.

IV. Tears of kindness act back again, and make the kindness from which they sprang. In order to have the heart soft enough for tears (1) you must lead a pure life; (2) you must feel that you are loved; (3) you must be subdued; (4) you must help yourself by action; (5) you must have pity.

J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 77.

Reference: S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 211.

Gen 45:15

I. We cannot read the history of Joseph without feeling that a greater than Joseph is here; a Son, the well-beloved of His Father, against whom His own flesh and blood conspired to take away His life, but who from His prison came forth to reign, who is exalted at the right hand of God to be a Prince and a Saviour.

II. This marvellous history teaches more than this. We also are guilty concerning our Brother. As for us and for our salvation He came down from heaven to save us by His death, so now that He has gone up to heaven He lives to save us by His life. He makes us feel our need of Him and stand before Him self-accusing, self-condemned.

III. He who has done all this will never leave us, never forsake us, for He dieth no more.

W. W. Champneys, Penny Pulpit, No. 641.

Reference: Gen 45:16.-W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 137.

Gen 45:27

We see here how probabilities are the handmaids and the helpers of faith. Slight tokens become the aliment, the very food, on which action feeds, strengthens, nurtures itself, and goes forth to fulfil the work marked out by Providence for the life.

I. Jacob’s heart fainted; but old men, dying persons, often feel that some unrealised object detains them here. Jacob was like watchers who have gone to the point and taken lodgings, to be the first to hail the ship; and as pennon after pennon flutters in sight they hail it, but it is not the expected vessel, and the heart faints, until at last the well-known signal waves in the wind. Sense sees it, and faith revives.

II. The lesson of the patriarch’s history is that faith may not realise all it desires, but it may realise what confirms, revives, and assures. “He saw the wagons”: “Faith cometh by hearing”; it is a moral principle created in the mind, not so much by facts as probabilities. Faith is moved and swayed by antecedental considerations. So these wagons were, in all probability, an aid to faith, and his heart revived. Treasure up marks and tokens of another country; you will find they will not be wanting.

III. If you deal faithfully with the tremendous hints and probabilities sacred to your own nature, sacred to the Holy Word, sacred to the infinite manifestation of God in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, they will hold you fast in the power of awful convictions, and in the embrace of infinite consolations. The wagons assured Jacob that Joseph was yet alive, and there are innumerable conveyances of grace which assure us that Jesus is yet alive.

E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 161.

I. But for the provision Joseph sent them for the way, Jacob and his sons’ sons and daughters could never have crossed the hot desert. But the impossible had been made possible by the command of Pharaoh and the love of Joseph. The journey was accomplished successfully, the desert was traversed without peril, without excessive fatigue, by means of the wagons sent out of the land of Egypt. When Jacob saw the wagons his heart revived.

II. Let us apply this to our Lord and to ourselves. Jesus Christ, the true Joseph, remembers us in His prosperity, and He sends an invitation to us by the desire of God the Father, who loveth us. He does not bid us come to Him in our own strength, relying only on the poor food which a famine struck land yields-does not bid us toil across a burning desert, prowled over by the lion, without provision and protection. There are sacraments and helps and means of grace, which He has sent to relieve the weariness of the way, to carry us on, to support us when we faint, to encourage us lest we should despair.

III. Let us not despise the means of grace. We may not ourselves want them, but others do. Go in your own wagon, or on your feet if you can and dare, but upbraid not those who take refuge in means of transport you have not tried, or do not require. Those sacraments, those means of grace, those helps, ever new, yet old as Christianity, have borne many and many a blessed one along to the “good land,” who is now resting in Goshen and eating the fat of the land.

S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii., p. 153.

Gen 45:28

Joseph is a type or figure of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I. Joseph, in his younger days, was distinguished from his brethren by a purity of life which became the more observable in contrast with their dissolute manners, and caused an evil report to be sent to their father. His brethren saw him afar off, and conspired to kill him. In this we have a true picture of the Jews’ treatment of Christ.

II. Joseph was carried down into Egypt, even as was Christ in His earliest days. Joseph was cast into prison, emblematic of the casting of Jesus into the grave, the prison of death; Joseph was imprisoned with two accused persons-the chief butler and the chief baker of Pharaoh; Christ was crucified between two malefactors. It was in the third year that Joseph was liberated, and on the third day that our Saviour rose.

III. It is as a liberated man that Joseph is most signally the type of our Redeemer. Set free from prison, Joseph became the second in the kingdom, even as the Redeemer, rising from the prison of the grave, became possessed in His mediatorial capacity of all power in heaven and earth, and yet so possessed as to be subordinate to the Father. Joseph was raised up of God to be a preserver of life during years of famine. Christ, in His office of mediator, distributes bread to the hungry. All men shall flock to Jesus, eager for the bread that came down from heaven.

IV. Joseph’s kinsmen were the last to send into Egypt for corn, just as the Jews have been longest refusing to own Christ as their deliverer. But prophecy is most explicit, that as Joseph was made known to his brethren, so the Jews shall behold in Christ the promised Messiah, and worship Him as their all in all.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1489

References: Gen 45:28.-J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 374. Gen 46:1-6.-W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 137. Gen 46:1-27.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 231. Gen 46:2.-A. F. Barfield, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 12. Gen 46:3, Gen 46:4.-Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 133. 46:28-47:10.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 242. Gen 46-50.-J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 202. Gen 47:1-10.-W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 137. Gen 47:3, Gen 47:9.-G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 279. Gen 47:7-10.-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 556.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 45 Joseph Reveals Himself

1. He reveals himself (Gen 45:1-3)

2. His address (Gen 45:4-13)

3. He kissed his brethren (Gen 45:14-15)

4. Pharaohs command (Gen 45:16-20)

5. His brethren sent away and their return to Jacob (Gen 45:21-28)

These three chapters belong together because they lead up to the great climax in the story of Joseph. The nobility of the character of Joseph is here fully brought out. Besides being a wise man, the great statesman of Egypt, he had a heart of tender love. Seven times we read of Joseph that he wept. The trial with the cup, which had been hidden in Benjamins sack, was the needful and decisive test. Benjamin had become the object of Jacobs love. The trial with the cup was to bring out whether they cherished the same bitter feelings against Benjamin which had governed their conduct towards Joseph. Their behaviour now reveals the great change which had taken place. They confess that their iniquity has been found out and Judah, the spokesman, manifests the most affectionate reverence for his old father and the ardent love for his younger brother.

But who is able to describe the scene where Joseph made himself known to his brethren, when they had come the second time? It is a chapter of great tenderness. Some day He who was rejected and disowned by His brethren, the Lord Jesus Christ, will come the second time. Then when the deep anguish, the soul exercise of the Israel of the end time has reached the climax, He will come and they that pierced Him shall look upon Him. He will forgive them their sins and remember them no more (Rom 11:26-27).

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

could not: Gen 43:30, Gen 43:31, Isa 42:14, Jer 20:9

Cause: 2Sa 1:20, Mat 18:15, Act 10:41, 1Co 13:5

Reciprocal: Jdg 3:19 – And all that 2Sa 13:9 – And Amnon Est 5:10 – refrained Jer 31:16 – Refrain Joh 11:6 – he abode Joh 11:33 – was troubled Act 7:13 – Joseph

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Joseph Making Himself Known

Gen 45:1-28

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

Chapter 44 of Genesis is introductory to 45.

1. Doing evil for good. This is discussed in Gen 44:1-5. Of course the sons of Jacob had not actually stolen Joseph’s cup, as Joseph’s steward charged. The whole idea was an effort to arouse their consciences concerning their former cruelty toward the one they now sought to honor. Charged with doing evil for good, they recoiled. Yet, when they had sold Joseph into slavery to the Ishmaelites, they had done that very thing.

Let the sinner hesitate before he boasts the “Golden Rule”; before he claims that he is the personification of honorable and just dealings; for he has too often done evil for good in his attitude toward the One of all good.

Is any evildoing so sinful as the evil done by men against the One from whom every good and perfect gift comes?

2. Boasting their own goodness and honorable dealings. In Gen 44:7 the brothers say, “God forbid that thy servants should do according to this thing.” They utterly denied any evil toward Joseph, the ruler in Egypt. They went on to announce their own honor and honesty, saying, “Behold, the money, which we found in our sacks’ mouths, we brought again unto thee.” They did not, however, say, “We sold our brother into the hands of Ishmael.” No, the sinner seeks to hide his evil deeds, and to parade only his good deeds.

Much of the raiment which the ungodly wear is only an effort to cover their evil ways. It is Adam and Eve, over again, seeking to hide their nakedness beneath fig leaves.

3. The cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. Why in Benjamin’s sack, and not in that of one of the men who had done the most in his villainy against Joseph? It was because the brothers, and Judah in particular, had sworn unto Jacob that they would forfeit their lives in Benjamin’s behalf, being security for him. It was because Joseph knew that nothing else would so quickly bring their sins before them. In touching Benjamin, Joseph touched them all.

Why did Christ say to the woman of Sychar, “Go, call thy husband”? It was because He would thus arouse her to a sense of her sin and shame; for he with whom she was then living was not her husband. Thus did Joseph stir up the memories of these brethren of his, to their folly.

4. The innocent often suffer for the guilty. Benjamin was altogether blameless, yet his dilemma was brought about by the sinning of the elder brethren. No one lives unto himself. All men are linked and interlinked, woven and interwoven, with all others, even as a train of cars are pinned together and pulled by one engine.

5. Sin will out. In Gen 44:15 Joseph comes into the picture, and he is saying, “What deed is this that ye have done? wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” Joseph was saying, as it were, “Ye sinned against me, and sought to hide your evil deed. Ye took my many colored coat, and sprinkled it with blood as if to prove that I had been slain by wild beasts. Did ye think that God did not know?”

Yes, our Scripture is only urging, “Thou God seest me” only asking “Can any hide himself * * that I shall not see him?”

6. An honest confession. In Gen 44:16, Judah says, “God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants.” Yes, the deep throes of memory were at work, and repentance was being generated in the hearts of these men. The sinner is well on his way to forgiveness when an honest confession of guilt comes from his heart.

The rest of the chapter carries a full record, truthfully stated, of the events which immediately followed the second trip of the sons of Jacob to Egypt. It was enough. Joseph saw that his brethren were speaking the truth, that they were truly sorry for their sins, and he, Joseph, was therefore ready to reveal himself in a gracious revelation of his real identity, and of his love toward them.

I. A LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO (Gen 45:1)

1. Joseph could not refrain himself any longer. Thus far he had covered his identity from his brethren, but now his restraint was gone.

We think of George Matheson as we read of Joseph. It was Matheson who, after the first throes of grief overwhelmed him because of his encroaching blindness and his casting off by his betrothed, cast himself on the Lord, and wrote,

“O joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.”

Even so, Joseph was consumed with a love that would not let him go. He could not hold back from his brethren any longer. He must tell them who he was, and he must reveal unto them how he loves them. Loves them? Loves the ones who had so ruthlessly led him to the slaughter? Yes, he loved even them.

And so also does the Lord Jesus love us. Love us? We who so cruelly slew Him by our sins? Yes, He loves even us. For us He died, for us He lives, for us He will come again.

Wonderful love! The love of Joseph for his brethren reminds us of the love of God; and yet Joseph’s love was as nothing compared to the love of God in Christ toward a world of evil men,

2. Joseph commanded all men to go out from him. He made the Egyptians to go out, while he made himself known to his brethren. There was something so solemn, so sacred in his love to his own, that he wanted to be alone with his beloved. Often, in the Bible, the curtain drops.

When Isaac met Rebekah the Word simply says, “And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, * * and she became his wife.”

When the Lord renewed His tryst with Peter, every detail is omitted, and the Word simply says, “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.”

After the resurrection of Christ, there is never a word about His appearing, save unto His own. To them only He showed Himself alive after His passion.

Thus it was, “There stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.”

II. “I AM JOSEPH” (Gen 45:2-3)

1. Joseph wept. The Egyptians heard his weeping. God heard him weep. His brethren heard him weep. What compassion! What tender love! Yes, and this was the inner heart of Joseph all the time, while he was dealing so seemingly harshly with his brethren. He had rebuked them, to be sure. He had threatened them. He had kept Simeon back from returning with the others. Yet, in it all he had loved them with a tender love.

Even so the Lord Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He wept while others were shouting His praise, and crying “Hosannah!” and saying, “Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.” The Lord, however, knew what lay ahead. Therefore He wept as He said, “The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, * * because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” We might have thought such dire prophecies were heartless and cruel, had we not read that Christ wept.

It was even so, as Christ said, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” He said, simultaneously, “How often would I have gathered thy children together * * and ye would not.”

2. Joseph said, “I am Joseph.” The words must have fallen on startled ears. Little did his brethren know that Egypt’s ruler was none other than Joseph, their brother.

Our thoughts go to Isa 63:1-3. Israel sees their Messiah and Deliverer coming from Edom, “with dyed garments from Bozrah.” They cry out “Who is this?” The Lord answers, “I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” Israel cries out, “Wherefore art thou red in Thine apparel, and Thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?” He answers, “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me.” He seems to be saying, “I am Jesus.”

So, as we think of Joseph saying, “I am Joseph,” we think also of Saul, on the Damascus road, and of how, being reproved of the Lord, Saul cried, “Who art Thou, Lord?” And the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”

Once more we see the Gospel in Genesis, and in Joseph. Once more we behold how the record of our Lord is found in Holy Writ.

III. THE SILENCE OF SHAME (Gen 45:3-5)

1. His brethren could not answer him. We need not marvel at the silence of Joseph’s brethren. Their sin came up before them in such waves of distress that they were engulfed with the sense of their shame. They knew now, full well, the deeper meanings of all that had happened unto them in Egypt. They understood the strange tactics of Joseph; they saw the why of the money in their sacks’ mouths; they knew why they were commanded to bring Benjamin with them into Egypt on their second visit; they comprehended the reason for Simeon being kept a hostage in Egypt. They knew it all.

We wonder just what will happen when national Israel sees the Lord Jesus coming in the skies? We read that they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced. Yes, and they will be startled when they behold those wound marks, and they will say, “What are these wounds in Thine hands?” Then the Lord will answer, “Those with which. I was wounded in the house of My friends.” No marvel that they shall weep and mourn after Him. No marvel that a nation will be born in a day.

2. Joseph called them to come near to him. The words ring out with throes of compassionate love-“Come near to me, I pray you.” Even so has Christ been all the day long holding out His hands unto Israel, calling her to come near.

Then Joseph said, “I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.” What! Did they take and with their hands deliver him to the Ishmaelites? Did they ostensibly slay him? Then why does he love them, and weep over them, and say unto them, “Come near to me”?

Perhaps you may be just as able to explain why Jesus, whom His brethren took and with wicked hands did kill, should say, “Come unto Me.”

Perhaps Joseph’s words to his brethren, at this time, will help us to comprehend something more of Christ’s love toward us, and the reason for that love. Joseph said, “Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.”

Even so did God deliver Christ to the Cross. He made His soul “an offering for sin.” He delivered Him up that He might be a Prince and a Saviour. Thus their sin provided them with a redeemer. Herein is the love of God made manifest.

IV. A GREAT DELIVERANCE (Gen 45:7-8)

1. Joseph sent of God as a preserver. If God had not preserved His people Israel, through Joseph, in that day there had been no Israel. If God had not preserved Israel during many centuries, through Jesus Christ, there had been no Israel at this present hour. What they could not do, the election has done for them. Israel is here, because God is there. Israel is alive today because Christ is risen and lives. He holds them in His hand, and they cannot perish. The believer’s security in Christ Jesus is no more sure than is national Israel’s. If we can change the ordinances of the sun, and of the moon, that they return not in their circuits, then may we change God’s purpose for His chosen race.

2. Joseph provided a great deliverance. Behold his granaries in Egypt filled with corn! Behold His deliverance! It was, indeed, a great deliverance. So when God shall have saved Israel, they will no longer say, “The Lord liveth, that brought up the Children of Israel out of Egypt,” but “The Lord liveth, that brought up the Children of Israel from * * all the lands whither He had driven them.”

3. How God used the wrath of men to work out His plans. Joseph said, “It was not you that sent me hither, but God.” They indeed did send him thither, but they sent him in order to be rid of him, in order that he might die. God, however, took hold of their evil intentions and used them to work out His good intentions. God sent him to be “a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.”

Just so, in the later years, Israel carried Jesus to Pontius Pilate to get rid of Him in order that He might die a death of ignominy and shame; but God sent Him to the Cross to be a Propitiation for our sins and theirs, that we might be saved from the wrath to come. What a wonderful Saviour! What a gracious God!

What now is the status of the wrath of Israel, and of their wickedness? God hath given to Christ, the One they crucified, a Name that is above every name. He hath exalted Him upon the throne on high, seating Him at His own right hand. He hath commanded that, one day, “At the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, * * and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

V. COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOR (Gen 45:9-10)

Joseph said unto his brethren, “Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not.” Let us look into this great message.

Once more we bow the head and worship our God. How perfectly in Joseph does He tell of His so great a love.

1. The news of salvation in Christ must be quickly told. The command of Joseph was, “Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say.” The command of the Lord is, “Haste ye, go into all the world and tell.” We are commanded to carry the news to every creature. Had the sons of Jacob refused to tell of Joseph to Jacob, they had been criminal, indeed. What, then, if we refuse or neglect, in any way, to tell all men of Christ?

2. The message we are to tell is of the exaltation of Christ. He is risen indeed. He is seated at the Father’s right hand. He is given a Name, that at the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.

Let us sound forth the good news. He was dead, but He is alive forever more. He died, but He lives. He was crucified and slain, but is now exalted.

The sons of Jacob had once before told their father that Joseph was dead; now they have a new and more exultant message. To Jacob, Joseph was dead; but to Jacob he is now risen again.

3. The call was, Come down * *, tarry not. This is the call, the blessed invitation of the Gospel. “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

In the Old Testament it reads this way; “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God.” In the last chapter of the Bible it reads: “Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.”

The call, however, is not a mere, “Come.” It is, “Come * *, tarry not.” Here is the way it runs: “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” “Today if we will hear His voice.” What, then, of those who delay? To such God says, “Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, * * whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow.”

VI. A PROMISE OF SUCCOR (Gen 45:10-13)

1. “Thou shalt be near unto me.” Such were the words of Joseph, and such are the words of the Lord. Ye were dead, but God hath quickened you, and made you to sit down with Him. Just so, we read, “Abide with me.”

Joseph wanted his people near him. God wants us near Him. He says even now, “Come unto Me”; “Take up your abode with Me”; “Sup with Me.”

“Near, so very near to God,

I could not nearer be,

For in the Person of His Son

I am as near as He.”

2. “Thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children.” Even so the invitation reads today: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” And he believed on the Lord “with all his house.” God wants to save not only the father, but also the mother and the children-the whole family.

3. “There will I nourish thee.” It gets better and better as we read. Think you that salvation touches only “so great a death”? Nay, salvation affords food for all. Even now we can hear God saying, “Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” The Lord’s Supper, with the bread and the wine, tell us that the Lord not only saves us, but He strengthens us, and satisfies us with the Water from the Rock, and the Bread that came down from Heaven.

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: * * Thou preparest a table before me.”

4. “Tell * * of all my glory.” Thus did Joseph instruct his brethren. They were to relate to Jacob what they themselves had seen of the glory and might of Joseph. This was to assure Jacob that his going down into Egypt was no fool’s errand.

Should we, perhaps, not preach more on the glories of our Lord? Should we not press home to the unsaved not only the message of redemption, but of the all-sufficiency of supply in Christ to meet every need of the soul which trusts in Him?

God has given us a Saviour, however. He has also given us a Keeper, and a Provider.

VII. WHEN JACOB SAW THE WAGONS (Gen 45:27)

1. The fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh’s house. Yea, all Egypt was aglow with the story of Joseph’s kindness to his brethren. They heard it all, and gloried in it all. Beloved, there is nothing that will afford our Lord more glory than the message of God’s great riches of grace. A sinner, brought to God, will ever be the Gospel’s greatest sermon.

2. The bounties for the journey. Pharaoh told Joseph to send everything necessary for the trip of Jacob and his families. “Take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, provision for the way.” Here is what was sent: “Ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his father by the way.”

Think you that there was a scant supply? Far from it. And what is God’s promise of provision for us? Here it is: “All your needs.” If you say Jacob was evidently supplied with more than a poor man’s needs, we answer, yes, he was supplied with needs according to the riches of Pharaoh. So also are our needs promised “According to His riches in Glory.” We certainly ought to be well provided for, when we have such a bounty.

3. A fainting heart. When his sons told all to Jacob, his heart fainted, for he believed them not. Then the sons of Jacob must have led him out of doors, and said, “Behold the wagon and the bounties which Joseph hath sent.” “And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: and Israel (Jacob) said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die.”

O soul that doubts and fears, lift up thine eyes. Behold the wagons of thy God. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” far more than the wagons declare Joseph’s glory. Mere wagons made Jacob believe; will the heavens and their planets not make you believe?

The speech of the glory of the heavens, and of the firmament, reaches every nook and corner of the earth. “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

The earth also acclaims God’s bounty and His glory, for every good and perfect gift descendeth down from above, from the Father of lights.

Behold the wagons, and believe!

AN ILLUSTRATION

Joseph’s kissing his brethren as he made himself known to them broke their hearts.

“A Christian woman laboring among the moral lepers of London found a poor street walker desperately ill in a bare, cold room. With her own hands she ministered to her, changing her bed linen, procured medicines, nourishing food, a fire, and making the poor place as bright and cheery as possible. She pleadingly said: ‘May I pray with you?’ ‘No,’ said the girl; ‘you don’t care for me; you are doing this to get to Heaven.’ Many days passed. The Christian woman was unwearily kind, the sinful girl hard and bitter. At last the Christian said, ‘My dear, you are nearly well now, and I shalt not come again: but as it is my last visit I want you to let me kiss you,’ and the pure lips that had known only prayers and holy words met the lips defiled by oaths and by unholy caresses, and then, the hard heart broke. That was Christ’s way. ‘He humbled Himself.'”

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

Joseph Made Known to His Brothers

Joseph could restrain himself no longer, so he caused all the servants to leave. He revealed his true identity to his brothers and openly wept. The brothers were fearful but Joseph reassured them. Three times in four verses he stated God had been active in his being sold into slavery. He had sent him ahead to preserve life by making him lord over Egypt. He also told them two years of famine were past but five more were yet to come ( Gen 45:1-10 ).

Joseph directed them, especially Benjamin, to go back and assure their father they had seen him with their own eyes. He fell on Benjamin’s neck for a tearful reunion. He kissed each brother and wept over them. Naturally, the report got back to Pharaoh that Joseph’s brothers had come. He told Joseph to load his brothers’ beasts and send them to bring back their father to live in Egypt. They were also given carts to load the children in to bring them. Pharaoh told them not to worry about bringing their possessions because they would be given the best of the land.

Joseph gave each brother a change of clothes. To Benjamin, he gave five changes of clothes and three hundred pieces of silver. Ten donkeys were loaded with good things from Egypt. Ten more were loaded with grain and bread to sustain Jacob until he could come to Egypt.

Joseph sent his brothers to get their father and bring him back. As they left, he warned themnot to quarrel along the way. They might have been tempted to argue over whose fault it had been that they sold their brother. He had already heard Reuben remind them of his warning not to sin against the boy (42:22). Joseph did not want anything to delay his reunion with his father (45:11-24).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Gen 45:1. Then Joseph could not refrain himself Several times before he had found great difficulty to refrain himself, but now, being overcome by Judahs most affecting speech, he was constrained to yield to the emotions of his mind, even before all them that stood before him. He therefore cried, Cause every man to go out from me That is, all the Egyptians, for he would not have them to be acquainted with the guilt of his brethren, whose reputation he wished to preserve: nor would he have any restraint on those affections and tears which he could no longer repress. How must it have amazed Judah and his brethren, who were waiting for an answer, to discover in him, instead of the gravity of a judge, the natural affection of a father or brother!

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Gen 45:5. Be not grieved; that is, not with any farther grief and trouble; for ye have wept and suffered enough. It was God, who taking advantage of your fault, sent me before you to preserve life.

Gen 45:8. It was not you that sent me hither, but God. The Lord takes occasion from the errors and crimes of men to unfold his counsel, and his righteousness. Let it then be noted that Joseph says here, God sent me to save your lives, but not the least extenuation of their guilt by saying, as Mr. Calvin, who presses in more than a folio page, that God wrought admirably by them. Deus Mirabiliter per illos operatur, ut ex impuris fcibus liquidam justitiam eliciat. St. Paul has said, Oh the depth! Notwithstanding the astonishment and displeasure of this Commentator, that we cannot see as he sees, we feel awed at the conclusion that the Just and Holy One in any sense, however disguised, employed these men to commit this complication of crimes against the best of brothers. While Zeno sat on the bench, a thief was put to the bar, who knowing the high stoical sentiments of the judge, pleaded fate and necessity; he could not help doing what he had done. Zeno felt the force of this defence, and colouring up with anger, replied, yes, rogue, I know thou wast fated to be a thief, and I was fated to see thee whipped. See on Jer 36:3.

Gen 45:10. Goshen. A rich district of pasturage, lying between the Nile and the Red sea. A happy soil for Israel to prosper in and increase.

Gen 45:12. It is my mouth that speaketh. He had spoken by an interpreter before: but now his rough and judicial aspect was changed into tears of tenderness and love. Now they heard his voice in the Hebrew tongue, saying, I am JOSEPH!Doth your father yet live?

REFLECTIONS.

What a pathetic and endearing scene is here presented to our view. All the passions are moved, and all the soul is softened at once. Fear, shame, sorrow, gratitude and love, succeed one another as reflection strikes the mind. Seeing them covered with confusion, and silent with astonishment, he said come near. Just so does Jesus Christ view the abased and trembling soul, and invites it to kiss his sceptre, and embrace his mercy; just so does he invite those who have betrayed and crucified him, to dwell in his kingdom and share in all his glory. Oh what a day when the prodigal returns; what joy to angels, what overwhelming consolations inundate the soul!

Does he exhort them not to grieve, and does he comfort them with the idea, that God had sent him? Does he tenderly embrace them, and load them with every princely favour? Let us learn of him the noble temper of forgiveness and brotherly kindness. Let us learn of him, or rather of Jesus Christ, to overcome evil with good; and to show every becoming mark of affection and love to such as are contrite for their faults. These brothers no more hated Joseph, but revered his memory for ever.

Was Israel invited to dwell in Goshen, while a terrific famine pervaded the surrounding nations? Just so while sickness and troubles embarrass the wicked; while their peace is disturbed, and their joys are withered, Israel can say, The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places, I have a goodly heritage. The Lord has invited me to buy wine and milk without money and without price. Who is like unto thee, oh people, saved of the Lord. Meanwhile let us rejoice with trembling, for while in this world, however happy may be our circumstances, it is not Canaan; we have not yet arrived at home; we must expect vicissitudes and troubles till heaven shall become our permanent abode.

But what a day of astonishment and joy was this to Jacob after all his afflictions. He had almost died of grief, and now he almost dies with exultation. Be encouraged then ye fathers, ye mothers, who have long mourned for the loss of children; they are not dead, for God hath sent them before. You shall find your Josephs again, not consumed in the tomb, but elevated in power and glory at the Fathers right hand. Though now, you see them not; though you are not acquainted with their prosperity, yet they all await your arrival in the happy abodes of everlasting repose. Rejoice in hope; the chariots shall soon arrive, that you may ascend, embrace, and dwell with them for ever. What a motive to piety; what an argument to resignation, that afflictions and death shall hasten our union with those we once so dearly loved.

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

Genesis 37 – 50

On which we shall dwell more particularly. There is not in scripture a more perfect and beautiful type of Christ than Joseph. Whether we view Christ as the object of the Father’s love, the object of the envy of His own, – in His humiliation, sufferings, death exaltation, and glory, in all we have Him strikingly typified by Joseph.

In Gen. 37 we have Joseph’s dreams, the statement of which draws out the enmity of his brethren. He was the object of his father’s love, and the subject of very high destinies, and inasmuch as the hearts of his brothers were not in communion with these things, they hated him. They had no fellowship in the father’s love. They would not yield to the thought of Joseph’s exaltation. In all this they represent the Jews in Christ’s day. He came to His own and his own received him not.” He had “no form nor comeliness in their eyes.” They would neither own Him as the Son of God, nor king of Israel. Their eyes were not open to behold “his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of “grace and truth.” They would not have Him; yea, they hated Him.

Now, in Joseph’s case, we see that he, in no wise, relaxed his testimony in consequence of his brethren’s refusal of his first dream. “And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren;” and they hated him yet the more….And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren.” This was simple testimony founded upon divine revelation; but it was testimony which brought Joseph down to the pit. Had he kept back his testimony, or taken off ought of its edge and power, he might have spared himself; but no; he told them the truth, and therefore they hated him.

Thus was it with Joseph’s great Antitype. He bore witness to the truth – He witnessed a good confession He kept back nothing – He could only speak the truth because He was the truth, and His testimony to the truth was answered, on man’s part, by the cross, the vinegar, the soldier’s spear. The testimony of Christ, too, was connected with the deepest, fullest, richest grace. He not only came as “the truth,” but also as the perfect expression of all the love of the Father’s heart:” grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” He was the full disclosure to man of what God was. Hence man was left entirely without excuse. He came and showed God to man, and man hated God with a perfect hatred. The fullest exhibition of divine love was answered by the fullest exhibition of human hatred. This is seen in the cross; and we have it touchingly foreshadowed at the pit into which Joseph was cast by his brethren.

“And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit; and we will say, some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” These words forcibly remind us of the parable in Matthew 22. “But, last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir, come let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” God sent His Son into the world with this thought, “They will reverence my son;” but, alas! man’s heart had no reverence for the “well beloved” of the Father. They cast him out. Earth and heaven were at issue in reference to Christ; and they are at issue still. Man crucified Him; but God raised Him from the dead. Man placed Him on a cross between two thieves; God set Him at His own right hand in the heavens. Man gave Him the very lowest place on earth; God gave Him the very highest place in heaven, in brightest majesty.

ALL this is shown out in Joseph’s history. “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel;) even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breast and of the womb; the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors, unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.” (Gen. 49: 22-26)

These verses beautifully exhibit to our view “the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” “The archers” have done their work; but God was stronger than they. The true Joseph has been shot at and grievously wounded in the house of his friends; but “the arms of his hands have been made strong” in the power of resurrection, and faith now knows Him as the basis of all God’s purposes of blessing and glory in reference to the Church, Israel, and the whole creation. When we look at Joseph in the pit, and in the prison, and look; at him afterwards as ruler over all the land of Egypt, we see the difference between the thoughts of God and the. thoughts of men; and so when we look at the cross, and at “the throne of the majesty in the heavens,” we see the same thing.

Nothing ever brought out the real state of man’s heart toward God but the coming of Christ. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.” (John 15: 22) It is not that they would not have been sinners. No; but “they had not had sin.” So He says, in another place, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin.” (John 9: 41) God came near to man in the Person of His Son, and man was able to say, “this is the heir;” but yet he said, “come, let us kill him.” Hence, “they have no cloak for their sin.” Those who say they see, have no excuse. confessed blindness is not at all the difficulty, but professed sight. This is a truly solemn principle for a professing age like the present. The permanence of sin is connected with the mere profession to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened; but what can be done for one who thinks he sees, when he really does not?

Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch

JOSEPH REVEALS HIMSELF

Now that the grace of God has wrought genuine repentance in the hearts of the brothers, and Judah in particular, Joseph is free to reveal to them His own true identity. He was so deeply affected that he could not restrain himself; and called upon all his servants to leave the room. Only his brothers were with him as he broke down and wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it outside the room, including the household servants of Pharaoh (vs.1-2)

“I am Joseph,” he tells them. What a shock for them! “Is my father still alive?” He wanted such a confirmation from their lips, but they were so stunned they could not speak (v.3). What will be the result also when the great Messiah of Israel reveals Himself to the nation, as the Lord Jesus whom they had crucified? “They will look on Me whom they have pierced, and they mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a firstborn” (Zec 12:10). Like Thomas, they will be broken down to confess, “My Lord and my God” (Joh 20:28).

Yet Joseph’s brothers would have some troubled fear that now they would have to face punishment for their previous treatment of Joseph. How anxious Joseph was to quiet their fears! He did not command them, but asked them, “Please come closer to me.” When they did, he confirmed that he was their brother whom they sold into Egypt. But he adds immediately that he does not want them to be grieved or angry with themselves because of this, for it was God who had sovereignly worked in this experience in order to preserve life for many (v.5). If he did not want them to be angry with themselves, then certainly he was not angry with them. Wonderful attitude for an exalted ruler!

Then he lets them know that the two years of famine they had suffered was only beginning. There were five years to come. They must have wondered how he knew, but they did not question his word. He seeks to impress on them again that it was God who sent him to Egypt in order to preserve the family of Jacob and to save their lives by a great deliverance (v.7). Thus too, it is the Lord Jesus by whom God has actually preserved Israel by means of the rejected exalted one being among the Gentiles as He has been during this dispensation of grace now for many centuries, though Israel has been ignorant of the glory of their rejected Messiah.

So then, he assures them, it was not they who had sent Joseph to Egypt, but God; and God had made him (1) a father to Pharaoh (one whose goodness and guidance depended on). and (2) “Lord of all his house” (having authority second only to Pharaoh in his household) and (3) a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt (one in charge of the administration of all governmental affairs).

He then instructs his brothers to hurry home to their father, with the electrifying news that God made Joseph lord of all Egypt, and to tell him that he is to come immediately to Joseph, bringing all his family and his goods with him, and they might live in the land of Goshen in Egypt (vs.9, 10). Joseph also promises to provide for them during the five years of famine that were yet to come. Thus Joseph returns great good to his brothers for the evil that they had shown him. How much greater yet is the goodness of the Lord Jesus, who has been treated far more shamefully than Joseph was, but will bless Israel (His brethren according to flesh) in overabounding grace in the coming millennial age!

Now that Joseph had fully revealed himself to his brothers and had instructed them to return home bring their father and possessions to Egypt, he again embraced his brother Benjamin, and both of them wept (v.14). Of course Joseph had a special attachment to the one who was the son of his mother. But he afterward did the same to each of the other brothers (v.15) and took time to talk with them.

News of the coming of Joseph’s brothers reaches Pharaoh, who is pleased to hear this (v.16), so that he confirms what Joseph had said, that the brothers should return to Canaan and bring their father and their households with them back to Egypt, where Pharaoh would give them the best of the land (vs.17-18). Of course Pharaoh realized that he was greatly indebted to Joseph and was glad to show his appreciation in this way. More than this orders them to take wagons with them from Egypt in order to bring their wives and children and their father. As to their possessions, he tells them not to be concerned, for everything they needed would be provided for them in Egypt (v.20). Of course they would bring their flocks and herds, and no doubt there would be many things they would not want to leave behind, but Pharaoh wanted them to know that he would supply whatever goods they had need of.

Joseph gave them wagons (which would of course include animals to pull them) and provisions for their journey, even including changes of clothing, but to Benjamin he gave five changes of clothing and added to this hundred pieces of silver. One wonders if Benjamin might have had a little difficulty in knowing how to handle this! But Joseph’s heart was abounding in grace, and he sent to his father ten donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and other food, just for his father’s journey. Evidently he did not consider the wagons sufficient to carry all this food.

In sending them away, Joseph told his brothers not to quarrel on the way (v.24). He knew their character, and the Lord Jesus too knows the natural character of Israel, which is all too sadly reflected in ourselves, even the church of God. They return to their father with the unexpected news that Joseph was still alive and was ruler over all Egypt. Jacob was stunned, and could not believe them. But they told him all the words Joseph had spoken to them. At this time the truth must have come out, that the brothers had sold Joseph into Egypt, for their father had been deceived all these years. But the knowledge that Joseph was living would for Jacob override the deception of his brothers. As well as for Joseph’s reported words, Jacob was persuaded when he saw the wagons that had been sent by Joseph. His spirit revived and he said, “It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go to see him before I die” (vs.27-29).

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

45:1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, {a} Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.

(a) Not because he was ashamed of his kindred, but rather because he wanted to cover his brother’s sin.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

10. Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers 45:1-15

Joseph emotionally revealed his identity to his brothers. He assured them of God’s sovereign control of his life and directed them to bring Jacob to Egypt. He then demonstrated his love for his brothers warmly. This is one of the most dramatic recognition scenes in all literature.

Judah so impressed Joseph with the sincerity of his repentance and the tenderness of his affection that Joseph broke down completely. He wept tears of joy uncontrollably (Gen 45:1-2; cf. 2Sa 13:9). Joseph then explained his perspective on his brothers’ treatment of him. He had discerned God’s providential control of the events of his life. Four times he stated that God, not his brothers, was behind what had happened (Gen 45:5; Gen 45:7-9).

"This statement . . . is the theological heart of the account of Jacob’s line (see Gen 50:19-21; Act 7:9-10). God directs the maze of human guilt to achieve his good and set purposes (Act 2:23; Act 4:28). Such faith establishes the redemptive kingdom of God." [Note: Ibid., p. 563.]

"It is divine sovereignty that undergirds the optimism of Genesis. ’God sent me to preserve life,’ says Joseph." [Note: Wenham, Genesis 16-50, p. 433.]

"Happy is the man whose eye is open to see the hand of God in every-day events, for to him life always possesses a wonderful and true joy and glory." [Note: Thomas, pp. 379-80.]

Part of God’s purpose was to use Joseph to preserve the house of Israel through the famine (Gen 45:7).

"In using terms like remnant and survivors, Joseph is employing words that elsewhere in the OT are freighted with theological significance. It may well be that in the deliverance of his brothers and his father Joseph perceives that far more is at stake than the mere physical survival of twelve human beings. What really survives is the plan of redemption announced first to his great grandfather." [Note: Hamilton, The Book . . . Chapters 18-50, p. 576.]

Joseph called God "Ha Elohim," the personal God, the God of their fathers (Gen 45:8).

"The theme of divine providential care is put into words by Joseph himself (Gen 45:7-8; Gen 50:20), summing up the whole patriarchal story." [Note: Whybray, p. 5.]

Joseph had evidently been planning for his father’s family to move down to Egypt if or when his brothers would prove that their attitude had changed (Gen 45:10). Goshen (a Semitic rather than an Egyptian name) was the most fertile part of Egypt (cf. Gen 45:18). It lay in the delta region northeast of the Egyptian capital, Memphis.

Joseph then embraced Benjamin and all his brothers to express his love and to confirm his forgiveness (Gen 45:14-15). The writer highlighted the genuine reconcilation between Joseph and his brothers by recording that they talked with him (Gen 45:15). Much earlier they could not speak to him (Gen 37:4). After a threefold expression of Joseph’s goodwill toward his siblings (weeping, explaining, and embracing), the shocked and fearful brothers gained the courage to speak. They now recognized Joseph as the one they had so cruelly abused and who was now able to crush them if he chose to do so.

Outstanding in this section is the way in which Joseph’s perception of God’s ways made him gracious, forgiving, and accepting rather than bitter and vindictive. He saw the loving hand of his God behind the cruelty of his brothers. He had accepted all that had come to him as the will of God, and therefore he experienced the blessing of God. Reconciliation is possible when there is forgiveness, and forgiveness is possible when there is recognition of God’s sovereignty.

"Some have questioned the morality of Yosef’s actions, seeing that the aged Yaakov might well have died while the test was progressing, without ever finding out that Yosef had survived. But that is not the point of the story. What it is trying to teach (among other things) is a lesson about crime and repentance. Only by recreating something of the original situation-the brothers are again in control of the life and death of a son of Rachel-can Yosef be sure that they have changed. Once the brothers pass the test, life and covenant can then continue." [Note: E. Fox, In the Beginning, p. 202.]

Though the Bible never identifies Joseph as a type of Christ, many analogies are significant. Both were special objects of their father’s love. Their brethren hated them both, rejected their superior claims, and conspired to kill them. Both became a blessing to the Gentiles. Both received a bride. Joseph reconciled with his brethren and exalted them, and so will Christ.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

THE RECONCILIATION

Gen 45:1-28

By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel and gave commandment concerning his bones.-{Heb 11:22}

IT is generally by some circumstance or event which perplexes, troubles, or gladdens us, that new thoughts regarding conduct are presented to us, and new impulses communicated to our life. And the circumstances through which Josephs brethren passed during the famine not only subdued and softened them to a genuine family feeling, but elicited in Joseph himself a more tender affection for them than he seems at first to have cherished. For the first time since his entrance into Egypt did he feel, when Judah spoke so touchingly and effectively, that the family of Israel was one; and that he himself would be reprehensible did he make further breaches in it by carrying out his intention of detaining Benjamin. Moved by Judahs pathetic appeal, and yielding to the generous impulse of the moment, and being led by a right state of feeling to a right judgment regarding duty, he claimed his brethren as brethren, and proposed that the whole family be brought into Egypt.

The scene in which the sacred writer describes the reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers is one of the most touching on record; -the long estrangement so happily terminated; the caution, the doubts, the hesitation on Josephs part, swept away at last by the resistless tide of long pent-up emotion; the surprise and perplexity of the brethren as they dared now to lift their eyes and scrutinise the face of the governor, and discerned the lighter complexion of the Hebrew, the features of the family of Jacob, the expression of their own brother; the anxiety with which they wait to know how he means to repay their crime, and the relief with which they hear that he bears them no ill-will -everything, in short, conduces to render this recognition of the brethren interesting and affecting. That Joseph, who had controlled his feeling in many a trying situation, should now have “wept aloud,” needs no explanation. Tears always express a mingled feeling; at least the tears of a man do. They may express grief, but it is grief with some remorse in it, or it is grief passing into resignation. They may express joy, but it is joy born of long sorrow, the joy of deliverance, joy that can now afford to let the heart weep out the fears it has been holding down. It is as with a kind of breaking of the heart, and apparent unmanning of the man, that the human soul takes possession, of its greatest treasures; unexpected success and unmerited joy humble a man; and as laughter expresses the surprise of the intellect, so tears express the amazement of the soul when it is stormed suddenly by a great joy. Joseph had been hardening himself to lead a solitary life in Egypt, and it is with all this strong self-sufficiency breaking down within him that he eyes his brethren. It is his love for them making its way through all his ability to do without them, and sweeping away as a flood the bulwarks he had built round his heart, -it is this that breaks him down before them, a man conquered by his own love, and unable to control it. It compels him to make himself known, and to possess himself of its objects, those unconscious brethren. It is a signal instance of the law by which love brings all the best and holiest beings into contact with their inferiors, and, in a sense, puts them in their power, and thus eternally provides that the superiority of those that are high in the scale of being shall ever be at the service of those who in themselves are not so richly endowed. The higher any being is, the more love is in him: that is to say, the higher he is, the more surely is he bound to all who are beneath him. If God is highest of all, it is because there is in Him sufficiency for all His creatures, and love to make it universally available.

It is one of our most familiar intellectual pleasures to see in the experience of others, or to read, a lucid and moving account of emotions identical with those which have once been our own. In reading an account of what others have passed through, our pleasure is derived mainly from two sources-either from our being brought, by sympathy with them and in imagination, into circumstances we ourselves have never been placed in, and thus artificially enlarging our sphere of life, and adding to our experience feelings which could not have been derived from anything we ourselves have met with; or, from our living over again, by means of their experience, a part of our life which had great interest and meaning to us. It may be excusable, therefore, if we divert this narrative from its original historical significance, and use it as the mirror in which we may see reflected an important passage or crisis in our own spiritual history. For though some may find in it little that reflects their own experience, others cannot fail to be reminded of feelings with which they were very familiar when first they were introduced to Christ, and acknowledged by Him.

1. The modes in which our Lord makes Himself known to men are various as their lives and characters. But frequently the forerunning choice of a sinner by Christ is discovered in such gradual and ill-understood dealings as Joseph used with those brethren. It is the closing of a net around them. They do not see what is driving them forward, nor whither they are being driven; they are anxious and ill at ease; and not comprehending what ails them, they make only ineffectual efforts for deliverance. There is no recognition of the hand that is guiding all this circuitous and mysterious preparatory work, nor of the eye that affectionately watches their perplexity, nor are they aware of any friendly ear that catches each sigh in which they seem hopelessly to resign themselves to the relentless past from which they cannot escape. They feel that they are left alone to make what they can now of the life they have chosen and made for themselves; that there is floating behind and around them a cloud bearing the very essence exhaled from their past, and ready to burst over them; a phantom that is yet real, and that belongs both to the spiritual and material world, and can follow them in either. They seem to be doomed men-men who are never at all to get disentangled from their old sin.

If any one is in this baffled and heartless condition, fearing even good lest it turn to evil in his hand; afraid to take the money that lies in his sacks mouth, because he feels there is a snare in it; if any one is sensible that life has become unmanageable in his hands, and that he is being drawn on by an unseen power which he does not understand, then let him consider in the scene before us how such a condition ends or may end. It took many months of doubt, and fear, and mystery to bring those brethren to such a state of mind as made it advisable for Joseph to disclose himself, to scatter the mystery, and relieve them of the unaccountable uneasiness that possessed their minds. And your perplexity will not be allowed to last longer than it is needful. But it is often needful that we should first learn that in sinning we have introduced into our life a baffling, perplexing element, have brought our life into connection with inscrutable laws which we cannot control, and which we feel may at any moment destroy us utterly. It is not from carelessness on Christs part that His people are not always and from the first rejoicing in the assurance and appreciation of His love. It is His carefulness which lays a restraining hand on the ardour of His affection. We see that this burst of tears on Josephs part was genuine, we have no suspicion that he was feigning an emotion he did not feel; we believe that his affection at last could not be restrained, that he was fairly overcome, -can we not trust Christ for as genuine a love, and believe that His emotion is as deep? We are, in a word, reminded by this scene, that there is always in Christ a greater love seeking the friendship of the sinner than there is in the sinner seeking for Christ. The search of the sinner for Christ is always a dubious, hesitating, uncertain groping; while on Christs part there is a clear-seeing, affectionate solicitude which lays joyful surprises along the sinners path, and enjoys by anticipation the gladness and repose which are prepared for him in the final recognition and reconcilement.

1. In finding their brother again, those sons of Jacob found also their own better selves which they had long lost. They had been living in a lie, unable to look the past in the face, and so becoming more and more false. Trying to leave their sin behind them, they always found it rising in the path before them, and again they had to resort to some new mode of laying this uneasy ghost. They turned away from it, busied themselves among other people, refused to think of it, assumed all kinds of disguise, professed to themselves that they had done no great wrong; but nothing gave them deliverance-there was their old sin quietly waiting for them in their tent door when they went home of an evening, laying its hand on their shoulder in the most unlooked-for places, and whispering in their ear at the most unwelcome seasons. A great part of their mental energy had been spent in deleting this mark from their memory, and yet day by day it resumed its supreme place in their life, holding them under arrest as they secretly felt, and keeping them reserved to judgment.

2. So, too, do many of us live as if yet we had not found the life eternal, the kind of life that we can always go on with-rather as those who are but making the best of a life which can never be very valuable, nor ever perfect. There seem voices calling us back, assuring us we must yet retrace our steps, that there are passages in our past with which we are not done, that there is an inevitable humiliation and penitence awaiting us. It is through that we can alone get back to the good we once saw and hoped for; there were right desires and resolves in us once, views of a well-spent life which have been forgotten and pressed out of remembrance, but all these rise again in the presence of Christ. Reconciled to Him and claimed by Him, all hope is renewed within us. If He makes Himself known to us, if He claims connection with us, have we not here the promise of all good? If He, after careful scrutiny, after full consideration of all the circumstances, bids us claim as our brother Him to whom all power and glory are given, ought not this to quicken within us everything that is hopeful, and ought it not to strengthen us for all frank acknowledgment of the past and true humiliation on account of it?

3. A third suggestion is made by this narrative. Joseph commanded from his presence all who might be merely curious spectators of his burst of feeling, and might, themselves unmoved, criticise this new feature of the governors character. In all love there is a similar reserve. The true friend of Christ, the man who is profoundly conscious that between himself and Christ there is a bond unique and eternal, longs for a time when he may enjoy greater liberty in uttering what he feels towards his Lord and Redeemer, and when, too, Christ Himself shall by telling and sufficient signs put it for ever beyond doubt that this love is more than responded to. Words sufficiently impassioned have indeed been put into our lips by men of profound spiritual feeling, but the feeling continually weighs upon us that some more palpable mutual recognition is desirable between persons so vitally and peculiarly knit together as Christ and the Christian are. Such recognition, indubitable and reciprocal, must one day take place. And when Christ Himself shall have taken the initiative, and shall have caused us to understand that we are verily the objects of His love, and shall have given such expression to His knowledge of us as we cannot now receive, we on our part shall be able to reciprocate, or at least to accept, this greatest of possessions, the brotherly love of the Son of God. Meanwhile this passage in Josephs history may remind us that behind all sternness of expression there may pulsate a tenderness that needs thus to disguise itself; and that to those who have not yet recognised Christ, He is better than He seems. Those brethren no doubt wonder now that even twenty years alienation should have so blinded them. The relaxation of the expression from the sternness of an Egyptian governor to the fondness of family love, the voice heard now in the familiar mother tongue. reveal the brother; and they who have shrunk from Christ as if He were a cold official, and who have never lifted their eyes to scrutinise His face, are reminded that He can so make Himself known to them that not all the wealth of Egypt would purchase from them one of the assurances they have received from Him.

The same warm tide of feeling which carried away all that separated Joseph from his brethren bore him on also to the decision to invite his fathers entire household into Egypt. We are reminded that the history of Joseph in Egypt is an episode, and that Jacob is still the head of the house, maintaining its dignity and guiding its movements. The notices we get of him in this latter part of his history are very characteristic. The indomitable toughness of his youth remained with him in his old age. He was one of those old men who maintain their vigour to the end, the energy of whose age seems to shame and overtax the prime of common men; whose minds are still the clearest, their advice the safest, their word waited for, their perception of the actual state of affairs always in advance of their juniors, more modern and fully abreast of the times in their ideas than the latest born of their children. Such an old age we recognise in Jacobs half-scornful chiding of the helplessness of his sons, even after they had heard that there was corn in Egypt. “Why look ye one upon another? Behold! I have heard that there is corn in Egypt; get ye down thither and buy for us from thence.” Jacob, the man who had wrestled through life and bent all things to his will, cannot put up with the helpless dejection of this troop of strong men, who have no wit to devise an escape for themselves, and no resolution to enforce upon the others any device that may occur to them. Waiting still like children for some one else to help them, having strength to endure but no strength to undertake the responsibility of advising in an emergency, they are roused by their father, who has been eyeing this condition of theirs with some curiosity and with some contempt, and now breaks in upon it with his “Why look ye one upon another?” It is the old Jacob, full of resources, prompt and imperturbable, equal to every turn of fortune, and never knowing how to yield..

Even more clearly do we see the vigour of Jacobs old age when he comes in contact with Joseph. For many years Joseph had been accustomed to command: he had unusual natural sagacity and a special gift of insight from God, but he seems a child in comparison with Jacob. When he brings his two sons to get their grandfathers blessing, Jacob sees what Joseph has no inkling of, and peremptorily declines to follow the advice of his wise son. With all Josephs sagacity there were points in which his blind father saw more clearly than he. Joseph, who could teach the Egyptian senators wisdom, standing thus at a loss even to understand his father, and suggesting in his ignorance futile corrections, is a picture of the incapacity of natural affection to rise to the wisdom of Gods love, and of the finest natural discernment to anticipate Gods purposes or supply the place of a lifelong experience.

Jacobs warm-heartedness has also survived the chills and shocks of a long lifetime. He clings now to Benjamin as once he clung to Joseph. And as he had wrought for Rachel fourteen years, and the love he bare to her made them seem but a few days, so for twenty years now had he remembered Joseph who had inherited this love, and he shows by his frequent reference to him that he was keeping his word and going down to the grave mourning for his son. To such a man it must have been a severe trial indeed to be left alone in his tents, deprived of all his twelve sons; and we hear his old faith in God steadying the voice that yet trembles with emotion as he says, “If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” It was a trial not, indeed, so painful as that of Abraham when he lifted the knife over the life of his only son; but it was so similar to it as inevitably to suggest it to the mind. Jacob also had to yield up all his children, and to feel, as he sat solitary in his tent, how utterly dependent upon God he was for their restoration; that it was not he but God alone who could build the house of Israel.

The anxiety with which he gazed evening after evening towards the setting sun, to descry the returning caravan, was at last relieved. But his joy was not altogether unalloyed. His sons brought with them a summons to shift the patriarchal encampment into Egypt-a summons which evidently nothing would have induced Jacob to respond to had it not come from his long-lost Joseph, and had it not thus received what he felt to be a divine sanction. The extreme reluctance which Jacob showed to the journey, we must be careful to refer to its true source. The Asiatics, and especially shepherd tribes, move easily. One who thoroughly knows the East says: “The Oriental is not afraid to go far, if he has not to cross the sea; for, once uprooted, distance makes little difference to him. He has no furniture to carry, for, except a carpet. and a few brass pans, he uses none. He has no trouble about meals, for he is content with parched grain, which his wife can cook anywhere, or dried dates, or dried flesh, or anything obtainable which will keep. He is, on a march, careless where he sleeps, provided his family are around him-in a stable, under a porch, in the open air. He never changes his clothes at night, and he is profoundly indifferent to everything that the Western man understands by comfort.” But there was in Jacobs case a peculiarity. He was called upon to abandon, for an indefinite period, the land which God had given him as the heir of His promise. With very great toil and not a little danger had Jacob won his way back to Canaan from Mesopotamia; on his return he had spent the best years of his life, and now he was resting there in his old age, having seen his childrens children, and expecting nothing but a peaceful departure to his fathers. But suddenly the wagons of Pharaoh stand at his tent-door, and while the parched and bare pastures bid him go to the plenty of Egypt, to which the voice of his long-lost son invites him, he hears a summons which, however trying, he cannot disregard.

Such an experience is perpetually reproduced. Many are they who having at length received from God some long-expected good are quickly summoned to relinquish it again. And while the waiting for what seems indispensable to us is trying, it is tenfold more so to have to part with it when at last obtained, and obtained at the cost of much besides. That particular arrangement of our worldly circumstances which we have long sought, we are almost immediately thrown out of. That position in life, or that object of desire, which God Himself seems in many ways to have encouraged us to seek, is taken from us almost as soon as we have tasted its sweetness. The cup is dashed from our lips at the very moment when our thirst was to be fully slaked. In such distressing circumstances we cannot see the end God is aiming at; but of this we may be certain, that He does not want only annoy, or relish our discomfiture, and that when we are compelled to resign what is partial, it is that we may one day enjoy what is complete, and that if for the present we have to forego much comfort and delight, this is only an absolutely necessary step towards our permanent establishment in all that can bless and prosper us.

It is this state of feeling which explains the words of Jacob when introduced to Pharaoh. A recent writer, who spent some years on the banks of the Nile and on its waters, and who mixed freely with the inhabitants of Egypt, says: “Old Jacobs speech to Pharaoh really made me laugh, because it is so exactly like what a Fellah says to a Pacha, Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, Jacob being a most prosperous man, but it is manners to say all that.” But Eastern manners need scarcely be called in to explain a sentiment which we find repeated by one who is generally esteemed the most self-sufficing of Europeans. “I have ever been esteemed,” Goethe says, “one of Fortunes chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that, in all my seventy-five years, I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise anew.” Jacobs life had been almost ceaseless disquiet and disappointment. A man who had fled his country. who had been cheated into a marriage, who had been compelled by his own relative to live like a slave, who was only by flight able to save himself from a perpetual injustice, whose sons made his life bitter, -one of them by the foulest outrage a father could suffer, two of them by making him, as he himself said, to stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants of the land he was trying to settle in, and all of them by conspiring to deprive him of the child he most dearly loved-a man who at last, when he seemed to have had experience of every form of human calamity, was compelled by famine to relinquish the land for the sake of which he had endured all and spent all, might surely be forgiven a little plaintiveness in looking back upon his past. The wonder is to find Jacob to the end unbroken, dignified, and clear-seeing, capable and commanding, loving and full of faith.

Cordial as the reconciliation between Joseph and his brethren seemed, it was not as thorough as might have been desired. So long, indeed, as Jacob lived, all went well; but “when Josephs brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.” No wonder Joseph wept when he received their message. He wept because he saw that he was still misunderstood and distrusted by his brethren; because he felt, too, that had they been more generous men themselves, they would more easily have believed in his forgiveness; and because his pity was stirred for these men, who recognised that they were so completely in the power of their younger brother. Joseph had passed through severe conflicts of feeling about them, had been at great expense both of emotion and of outward good on their account, had risked his position in order to be able to serve them, and here is his reward! They supposed he had been but biding his time; that his apparent forgetfulness of their injury had been the crafty restraint of a deep-seated resentment; or, at best, that he had been unconsciously influenced by regard for his father, and now, when that influence was removed, the helpless condition of his brethren might tempt him to retaliate. This exhibition of a craven and suspicious spirit is unexpected, and must have been profoundly saddening to Joseph. Yet here, as elsewhere, he is magnanimous. Pity for them turns his thoughts from the injustice done to himself. He comforts them, and speaks kindly to them, saying, Fear ye not; I will nourish you and your little ones.

Many painful thoughts must have been suggested to Joseph by this conduct. If, after all he had done for his brethren, they had not yet learned to love him, but met his kindness with suspicion, was it not probable that underneath his apparent popularity with the Egyptians there might lie envy, or the cold acknowledgment that falls far short of love? This sudden disclosure of the real feeling of his brethren towards him must necessarily have made him uneasy about his other friendships. Did every one merely make use of him, and did no one give him pure love for his own sake? The people he had saved from famine, was there one of them that regarded him with anything resembling personal affection? Distrust seemed to pursue Joseph. from first to last. First his own family misunderstood and persecuted him. Then his Egyptian master had returned his devoted service with suspicion and imprisonment. And now again, after sufficient time for testing his character might seem to have elapsed, he was still looked upon with distrust by those who of all others had best reason to believe in him. But though Joseph had through all his life been thus conversant with suspicion, cruelty, falsehood, ingratitude, and blindness, though he seemed doomed to be always misread, and to have his best deeds made the ground of accusation against him, he remained not merely unsoured, but equally ready as ever to be of service to all. The finest natures may be disconcerted and deadened by universal distrust; characters not naturally unamiable are sometimes embittered by suspicion; and persons who are in the main high-minded do stoop, when stung by such treatment, to rail at the world, or to question all generous emotion, steadfast friendship, or unimpeachable integrity. In Joseph there is nothing of this. If ever man had a right to complain of being unappreciated, it was he; if ever man was tempted to give up making sacrifices for his relatives, it was he. But through all this he bore himself with manly generosity, with simple and persistent faith, with a dignified respect for himself and for other men. In the ingratitude and injustice he had to endure, he only found opportunity for a deeper unselfishness, a more God-like forbearance. And that such may be the outcome of the sorest parts of human experience we have one day or other need to remember. When our good is evil spoken of, our motives suspected, our most sincere sacrifices scrutinised by an ignorant and malicious spirit, our most substantial and well-judged acts of kindness received with suspicion, and the love that is in them quite rejected, it is then we have opportunity to show that to us belongs the Christian temper that can pardon till seventy times seven, and that can persist in loving where love meets no response, and benefits provoke no gratitude.

How Joseph spent the years which succeeded the famine we have no means of knowing; but the closing act of his life seemed to the narrator so significant as to be worthy of record. “Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.” The Egyptians must have chiefly been struck by the simplicity of character which this request betokened. To the great benefactors of our country, the highest award is reserved to be given after death. So long as a man lives, some rude stroke of fortune or some disastrous error of his own may blast his fame; but when his bones are laid with those who have served their country best, a seal is set on his life, and a sentence pronounced which the revision of posterity rarely revokes. Such honours were customary among the Egyptians; it is from their tombs that their history can now be written. And to none were such honours more accessible than to Joseph. But after a life in the service of the state he retains the simplicity of the Hebrew lad. With the magnanimity of a great and pure soul, he passed uncontaminated through the flatteries and temptations of court-life; and, like Moses, “esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” He has not indulged in any affectation of simplicity, nor has he, in the pride that apes humility, declined the ordinary honours due to a man in his position. He wears the badges of office, the robe and the gold necklace, but these things do not reach his spirit. He has lived in a region in which such honours make no deep impression; and in his death he shows where his heart has been. The small voice of God, spoken centuries ago to his forefathers, deafens him to the loud acclaim with which the people do him homage.

By later generations this dying request of Josephs was looked upon as one of the most remarkable instances of faith. For many years there had been no new revelation. The rising generations, that had seen no man with whom God had spoken, were little interested in the land which was said to be theirs, but which they very well knew was infested by fierce tribes who, on at least one occasion during this period, inflicted disastrous defeat on one of the boldest of their own tribes. They were, besides, extremely attached to the country of their adoption; they luxuriated in its fertile meadows and teeming gardens, which kept them supplied at little cost of labour with delicacies unknown on the hills of Canaan. This oath, therefore, which Joseph made them swear, may have revived the drooping hopes of the small remnant who had any of his own spirit. They saw that he, their most sagacious man, lived and died in full assurance that God would visit His people. And through all the terrible bondage they were destined to suffer, the bones of Joseph, or rather his embalmed body, stood as the most eloquent advocate of Gods faithfulness, ceaselessly reminding the despondent generations of the oath which God would yet enable them to fulfil. As often as they felt inclined to give up all hope and the last surviving Israelitish peculiarity, there was the unburied coffin remonstrating; Joseph still, even when dead, refusing to let his dust mingle with Egyptian earth.

And thus, as Joseph had been their pioneer who broke out a way for them into Egypt, so did he continue to hold open the gate and point the way back to Canaan. The brethren had sold him into this foreign land, meaning to bury him for ever; he retaliated by requiring that the tribes should restore him to the land from which he had been expelled. Few men have opportunity of showing so noble a revenge; fewer still, having the opportunity, would so have used it. Jacob had been carried up to Canaan as soon as he was dead: Joseph declines this exceptional treatment, and prefers to share the fortunes of his brethren, and will then only enter on the promised land when all his people can go with him. As in life, so in death, he took a large view of things, and had no feeling that the world ended in him. His career had taught him to consider national interests; and now, on his death-bed, it is from the point of view of his people that he looks at the future.

Several passages in the life of Joseph have shown us that where the Spirit of Christ is present, many parts of the conduct will suggest, if they do not actually resemble, acts in the life of Christ. The attitude towards the future in which Joseph sets his people as he leaves them, can scarcely fail to suggest the attitude which Christians are called to assume. The prospect which the Hebrews had of fulfilling their oath grew increasingly faint, but the difficulties in the way of its performance must only have made them more clearly see that they depended on God for entrance on the promised inheritance. And so may the difficulty of our duties as Christs followers measure for us the amount of grace God has provided for us. The commands that make you sensible of your weakness, and bring to light more clearly than ever how unfit for good you are, are witnesses to you that God will visit you and enable you to fulfil the oath He has required you to take. The children of Israel could not suppose that a man so wise as Joseph had ended his life with a childish folly, when he made them swear this oath, and could not. but renew their hope that the day would come when his wisdom would be justified by their ability to discharge it. Neither ought it to be beyond our belief that, in requiring from us such and such conduct, our Lord has kept in view our actual condition and its possibilities, and that His commands are our best guide towards a state of permanent felicity. He that aims always at the performance of the oath he has taken, will assuredly find that God will not stultify Himself by failing to support him.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary