Then Joseph couldn’t control himself before all those who stood before him, and he called out, “Cause everyone to go out from me!” No one else stood with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. He wept aloud. The Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Does my father still live?” His brothers couldn’t answer him; for they were terrified at his presence.
Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” They came near. He said, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.
Now don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are yet five years, in which there will be no plowing and no harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance. So now it wasn’t you who sent me here, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry, and go up to my father, and tell him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says, “God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me. Don’t wait. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you will be near to me, you, your children, your children’s children, your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you; for there are yet five years of famine; lest you come to poverty, you, and your household, and all that you have.” ’ Behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. You shall hurry and bring my father down here.” He fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed all his brothers, and wept on them. After that his brothers talked with him.
The report of it was heard in Pharaoh’s house, saying, “Joseph’s brothers have come.” It pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Tell your brothers, ‘Do this: Load your animals, and go, travel to the land of Canaan. Take your father and your households, and come to me, and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and you will eat the fat of the land.’ Now you are commanded to do this: Take wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. Also, don’t concern yourselves about your belongings, for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours.”
The sons of Israel did so. Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. He gave each one of them changes of clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of clothing. He sent the following to his father: ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and provision for his father by the way. So he sent his brothers away, and they departed. He said to them, “See that you don’t quarrel on the way.”
They went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan, to Jacob their father. They told him, saying, “Joseph is still alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt.” His heart fainted, for he didn’t believe them. They told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them. When he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob, their father, revived. Israel said, “It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 16, 22, 24, 26 1. Then Joseph could not refrain himself Moses relates…
1. Then Joseph could not refrain himself Moses relates in this chapter the manner in which Joseph made himself known to his brethren. In the first place, he declares, that Joseph had done violence to his feelings, as long as he presented to them an austere and harsh countenance. At length the strong fraternal affection, which he had suppressed during the time that he was breathing severe threatening, poured itself forth with more abundant force: whence it appears that nothing severe or cruel had before been harbored in his mind. And whereas it thus bursts forth in tears, this softness or tenderness is more deserving of praise than if he had maintained an equable temper. Therefore the stoics speak foolishly when they say, that it is an heroic virtue not to be touched with compassion. Had Joseph stood inflexible, who would not have pronounced him to be a stupid, or iron-hearted man? But now, by the vehemence of his feelings, he manifests a noble magnanimity, as well as a divine moderation; because he was so superior both to anger and to hatred, that he ardently loved those who had wickedly conspired to effect his ruin, though they had received no injury from him. He commands all men to depart, not because he was ashamed of his kindred, (for he does not afterwards dissemble the fact that they were his brethren, and he freely permits the report of it to be carried to the king’s palace,) but because he is considerate for their feelings, that he might not make known their detestable crime to many witnesses. And it was not the smallest part of his clemency, to desire that their disgrace should be wholly buried in oblivion. We see, therefore, that witnesses were removed, for no other reason than that he might more freely comfort his brethren; for he not only spared them, by not exposing their crime; but when shut up alone with them, he abstained from all bitterness of language, and gladly administered to them friendly consolation.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 8, 12, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 26 Not that he was ashamed of his kindred, but…
Not that he was ashamed of his kindred, but that he would cover his brethren’s fault.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–28 Gen 45:1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before…
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.
Read full note →
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} Aνθρωπε, μη κτεινε Cροισον. - Herodot.
{b} Mr Sanders. Act. and Mon., 1564.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28 Cause every man to go out from me; remove…
Cause every man to go out from me; remove all the Egyptians out of my presence and chamber. Which he did, partly that he might maintain the honour of his place, and not make himself cheap and contemptible to the Egyptians, by his excessive tears and passions, and by his free, and familiar, and affectionate converse with his brethren; and partly to preserve the reputation of his brethren, by concealing their fault from the Egyptians.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 16, 25 Judah and his brethren were waiting for an answer,…
Judah and his brethren were waiting for an answer, and could not but be amazed to discover, instead of the gravity of a judge, the natural affection of a father or brother.
I. Joseph ordered all his attendants to withdraw, Gen 45:1. The private conversations of friends are the most free. When Joseph would put on love he puts off state, and it was not fit his servants should be witnesses of this. Thus Christ graciously manifests himself and his loving-kindness to his people, out of the sight and hearing of the world.
Read full note →
II. Tears were the preface or introduction to his discourse, Gen 45:2. He had dammed up this stream a great while, and with much ado: but now it swelled so high that he could no longer contain, but he wept aloud, so that those whom he had forbidden to see him could not but hear him. These were tears of tenderness and strong affection, and with these he threw off that austerity with which he had hitherto carried himself towards his brethren; for he could bear it no longer. This represents the divine compassion towards returning penitents, as much as that of the father of the prodigal, Luk 15:20; Hos 14:8, Hos 14:9.
III. He very abruptly (as one uneasy till it was out) tells them who he was: I am Joseph. They knew him only by his Egyptian name, Zaphnath-paaneah, his Hebrew name being lost and forgotten in Egypt; but now he teaches them to call him by that: I am Joseph; nay, that they might not suspect it was another of the same name, he explains himself (Gen 45:4): I am Joseph, your brother. This would both humble them yet more for their sin in selling him, and would encourage them to hope for kind treatment. Thus when Christ would convince Paul he said, I am Jesus; and when he would comfort his disciples he said, It is I, be not afraid. This word, at first, startled Joseph's brethren; they started back through fear, or at least stood still astonished; but Joseph called kindly and familiarly to them: Come near, I pray you. Thus when Christ manifests himself to his people he encourages them to draw near to him with a true heart. Perhaps, being about to speak of their selling him, he would not speak aloud, lest the Egyptians should overhear, and it should make the Hebrews to be yet more an abomination to them; therefore he would have them come near, that he might whisper with them, which, now that the tide of his passion was a little over, he was able to do, whereas at first he could not but cry out.
IV. He endeavours to assuage their grief for the injuries they had done him, by showing them that whatever they designed God meant it for good, and had brought much good out of it (Gen 45:5): Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves. Sinners must grieve, and be angry with themselves, for their sins; yea, though God by his power brings good out of them, for no thanks are due to the sinner for this: but true penitents should be greatly affected when they see God thus bringing good out of evil, meat out of the eater. Though we must not with this consideration extenuate our own sins and so take off the edge of our repentance, yet it may be well thus to extenuate the sins of others and so take off the edge of our angry resentments. Thus Joseph does here; his brethren needed not to fear that he would avenge upon them an injury which God's providence had made to turn so much to his advantage and that of his family. Now he tells them how long the famine was likely to last - five years; yet (Gen 45:6) what a capacity he was in of being kind to his relations and friends, which is the greatest satisfaction that wealth and power can give to a good man, Gen 45:8. See what a favourable colour he puts upon the injury they had done him: God sent me before you, Gen 45:5, Gen 45:7. Note, 1. God's Israel is the particular care of God's providence. Joseph reckoned that his advancement was not so much designed to save a whole kingdom of Egyptians as to preserve a small family of Israelites: for the Lord's portion is his people; whatever becomes of theirs, they shall be secured. 2. Providence looks a great way forward, and has a long reach. Even long before the years of plenty, Providence was preparing for the supply of Jacob's house in the years of famine. The psalmist praises God for this (Psa 105:17): He sent a man before them, even Joseph. God sees his work from the beginning to the end, but we do not, Ecc 3:11. How admirable are the projects of providence! How remote its tendencies! What wheels are there within wheels, and yet all directed by the eyes in the wheels, and the spirit of the living creature! Let us therefore judge nothing before the time. 3. God often works by contraries. The envy and contention of brethren threaten the ruin of families, yet, in this instance, they prove the occasion of preserving Jacob's family. Joseph could never have been the shepherd and stone of Israel if his brethren had not shot at him, and hated him; even those that had wickedly sold Joseph into Egypt yet themselves reaped the benefit of the good God brought out of it; as those that put Christ to death were many of them saved by his death. 4. God must have all the glory of the seasonable preservations of his people, by what way soever they are effected. It was not you that sent me hither, but God, Gen 45:8. As, on the one hand, they must not fret at it, because it ended so well, so on the other hand they must not be proud of it, because it was God's doing, and not theirs. They designed, by selling him into Egypt, to defeat his dreams, but God thereby designed to accomplish them. Isa 10:7, Howbeit he meaneth not so.
V. He promises to take care of his father and all the family during the rest of the years of famine. 1. He desires that his father may speedily be made glad with the tidings of his life and dignity. His brethren must hasten to Canaan, and must inform Jacob that his son Joseph was lord of all Egypt; (Gen 45:9): they must tell him of all his glory there, Gen 45:13. He knew it would be a refreshing oil to his hoary head and a sovereign cordial to his spirits. If any thing would make him young again, this would. He desires them to give themselves, and take with them to their father, all possible satisfaction of the truth of these surprising tidings: Your eyes see that it is my mouth, Gen 45:12. If they would recollect themselves, they might remember something of his features, speech, etc., and be satisfied. 2. He is very earnest that his father and all his family should come to him to Egypt: Come down unto me, tarry not, Gen 45:9. He allots his dwelling in Goshen, that part of Egypt which lay towards Canaan, that they might be mindful of the country from which they were to come out, Gen 45:10. He promises to provide for him: I will nourish thee, Gen 45:11. Note, It is the duty of children, if the necessity of their parents do at any time require it, to support and supply them to the utmost of their ability; and Corban will never excuse them, Mar 7:11. This is showing piety at home, Ti1 5:4. Our Lord Jesus being, like Joseph, exalted to the highest honours and powers of the upper world, it is his will that all that are his should be with him where he is, Joh 17:24. This is his commandment, that we be with him now in faith and hope, and a heavenly conversation; and this is his promise, that we shall be for ever with him.
VI. Endearments were interchanged between him and his brethren. He began with the youngest, his own brother Benjamin, who was but about a year old when Joseph was separated from his brethren; they wept on each other's neck (Gen 45:14), perhaps to think of their mother Rachel, who died in travail of Benjamin. Rachel, in her husband, Jacob, had been lately weeping for her children, because, in his apprehension, they were not - Joseph gone, and Benjamin going; and now they were weeping for her, because she was not. After he had embraced Benjamin, he, in like manner, caressed them all (Gen 45:15); and then his brethren talked with him freely and familiarly of all the affairs of their father's house. After the tokens of true reconciliation follow the instances of a sweet communion.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–28 Then Joseph could not refrain himself,.... That he should…
Then Joseph could not refrain himself,.... That he should not weep, as the Targum of Jonathan adds; at least he could not much longer refrain from tears, such an effect Judah's speech had on his passions:
before all them that stood before him; his servants that attended him and waited upon him, the steward of his house, and others, upon whose account he put such a force upon himself, to keep in his passions from giving vent, that they might not discover the inward motions of his mind; but not being able to conceal them any longer:
Read full note →
and he cried; or called out with a loud voice, and an air of authority:
cause every man to go out from me; out of the room in which he and his brethren were; perhaps this order was given to the steward of the house to depart himself, and to remove every inferior officer and servant upon the spot; or other people that might be come in to hear the trial of those men, and to see how they would be dealt with:
and there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren; not that Joseph was ashamed of them, and of owning before them the relation he stood in to them; but that they might not see the confusion his brethren would be thrown into, and have knowledge of the sin they had been guilty of in selling him which could not fail of being mentioned by him, and confessed by them; and besides, it was not suitable to his grandeur and dignity to be seen in such an extreme passion he was now going into.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 24, 26, 27 Joseph let Judah go on without interruption, heard all…
Joseph let Judah go on without interruption, heard all he had to say, and then answered it all in one word, I am Joseph. Now he found his brethren humbled for their sins, mindful of himself (for Judah had mentioned him twice in his speech) respectful to their father, and very tender of their brother Benjamin: now they were ripe for the comfort he designed them, by making himself known to them. This was to Joseph's brethren as clear shining after rain; nay, it was to them as life from the dead. Here is,
I. Joseph's discovery of himself to his brethren, and his discourse with them upon that occasion, ver. 1-15.
Read full note →
II. The orders Pharaoh gave to fetch Jacob and his family down to Egypt, and Joseph's dispatch of his brethren back to his father with these orders, ver. 16-24.
III. The joyful tidings of this brought to Jacob, ver. 25-28.
Judah and his brethren were waiting for an answer, and could not but be amazed to discover, instead of the gravity of a judge, the natural affection of a father or brother. Cause every man to go out - The private conversations of friends are the most free. When Joseph would put on love, he puts off state, which it was not fit his servants should be witnesses of. Thus Christ graciously manifests himself and his loving kindness to his people, out of the sight and hearing of the world. See note at "ver. 2" for continuation to item
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 Joseph, deeply affected with the speech of Judah, could…
CHAPTER XLV
Joseph, deeply affected with the speech of Judah, could no
Read full note →
longer conceal himself, but discovers himself to his brethren, 1-4.
Excuses their conduct towards him, and attributes the whole to
the providence of God, 5-8.
Orders them to hasten to Canaan, and bring up their father and
their own families, cattle, c., because there were five years
of the famine yet to come, 9-13.
He embraces and converses with all his brethren, 14,15.
Pharaoh, hearing that Joseph's brethren were come to Egypt,
and that Joseph had desired them to return to Canaan and bring
back their families, not only confirms the order, but promises
them the best part of the land of Egypt to dwell in and
provides them carriages to transport themselves and their
households, 16-20.
Joseph provides them with wagons according to the commandment
of Pharaoh; and having given them various presents, sends them
away with suitable advice, 21-24.
They depart, arrive in Canaan, and announce the glad tidings to
their father, who for a time believes not, but being assured of
the truth of their relation, is greatly comforted, and resolves
to visit Egypt, 25-28.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLV
Verse 1. Joseph could not refrain himself] The word התאפק hithappek is very emphatic; it signifies to force one's self, to do something against nature, to do violence to one's self. Joseph could no longer constrain himself to act a feigned part-all the brother and the son rose up in him at once, and overpowered all his resolutions; he felt for his father, he realized his disappointment and agony; and he felt for his brethren, "now at his feet submissive in distress;" and, that he' might give free and full scope to his feelings, and the most ample play of the workings of his affectionate heart, he ordered all his attendants to go out, while he made himself known to his brethren. "The beauties of this chapter," says Dr. Dodd, "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 there is perhaps nothing in sacred or profane history more highly wrought up, more interesting or affecting."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 24, 26, 27 Gen 45:1. Then Joseph could not refrain himself —…
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 Judah’s 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!
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v1 - Joseph Made Himself Known to His Brethren
- Joseph Made Himself Known to His Brethren
10. גשׁן gôshen, Goshen, Gesem (Arabias related perhaps to גשׁם geshem “rain, shower”), a region on the borders of Egypt and Arabia, near the gulf of Suez.
Read full note →
The appeal of Judah is to Joseph irresistible. The repentance of his brothers, and their attachment to Benjamin, have been demonstrated in the most satisfactory manner. This is all that Joseph sought. It is evident, throughout the whole narrative, that he never aimed at exercising any supremacy over his brothers. As soon as he has obtained an affecting proof of the right disposition of his brothers, he conceals himself no longer. And the speech of Judah, in which, no doubt, his brothers concurred, does equal credit to his head and heart.
Gen 45:1-15
Joseph now reveals to his brothers the astonishing fact that he himself, their long-lost brother, stands before them. “He could not refrain himself.” Judah has painted the scene at home to the life; and Joseph can hold out no longer. “Have every man out from me.” Delicacy forbids the presence of strangers at this unrestrained outburst of tender emotion among the brothers. Besides, the workings of conscience, bringing up the recollections of the past, and the errors, to which some reference is now unavoidable, are not to be unveiled to the public eye. “He lifted up his voice in weeping.” The expression of the feelings is free and uncontrolled in a simple and primitive state of society. This prevails still in the East. And Mizraim heard. The Egyptians of Joseph’s house would hear, and report to others, this unusual utterance of deep feeling. “I am Joseph.” The natural voice, the native tongue, the long-remembered features, would, all at once, strike the apprehension of the brothers.
The remembrance of their crime, the absolute power of Joseph, and the justice of revenge, would rush upon their minds. No wonder they were silent and troubled at his presence. “Is my father yet alive?” This question shows where Joseph’s thoughts were. He had been repeatedly assured of his father’s welfare. But the long absence and the yearning of a fond heart bring the question up again. It was reassuring to the brethren, as it was far away from any thought of their fault or their punishment. “Come near unto me.” Joseph sees the trouble of his brothers, and discerns its cause. He addresses them a second time, and plainly refers to the fact of their having sold him. He points out that this was overruled of God to the saving of life; and, hence, that it was not they, but God who had mercifully sent him to Egypt to preserve all their lives. “For these two years.” Hence, we perceive that the sons of Jacob obtained a supply, on the first occasion, which was sufficient for a year. “To leave to you a remnant in the land.”
This is usually and most naturally referred to a surviving portion of their race. “Father to Pharaoh;” a second author of life to him. Having touched very slightly on their transgression, and endeavored to divert their thoughts to the wonderful providence of God displayed in the whole affair, he lastly preoccupies their minds with the duty and necessity of bringing down their father and all their families to dwell in Egypt. “In the land of Goshen.” This was a pasture land on the borders of Egypt and Arabia, perhaps at some distance from the Nile, and watered by the showers of heaven, like their own valleys. He then appeals to their recollections and senses, whether he was not their very brother Joseph. “My mouth that speaketh unto you;” not by an interpreter, but with his own lips, and in their native tongue. Having made this needful and reassuring explanation, he breaks through all distance, and falls upon Benjamin’s neck and kisses him, and all his other brothers; after which their hearts are soothed, and they speak freely with him.
Gen 45:16-20
The intelligence that Joseph’s brethren are come reaches the ears of Pharaoh, and calls forth a cordial invitation to come and settle in Egypt. “It was good in the eyes of Pharaoh.” They highly esteemed Joseph on his own account; and that he should prove to be a member of a respectable family, and have the pleasure of again meeting with his nearest relatives, were circumstances that afforded them a real gratification. “The good of the land of Mizraim.” The good which it produces. Wagons; two-wheeled cars, fit for driving over the rough country, where roads were not formed. “Let not your eye care for your stuff;” your houses, or pieces of furniture which must be left behind. The family of Jacob thus come to Egypt, not by conquest or purchase, but by hospitable invitation, as free, independent visitors or settlers. As they were free to come or not, so were they free to stay or leave.
Gen 45:21-24
The brothers joyfully accept the hospitable invitation of Pharaoh, and set about the necessary arrangements for their journey. “The sons of Israel;” including Joseph, who had his own part to perform in the proposed arrangement. “At the mouth of Pharaoh;” as he had authorized him to do. “Changes of raiment;” fine raiment for change on a high or happy day. To Benjamin he gives special marks of fraternal affection, which no longer excite any jealous feeling among the brothers, as the reasonableness of them is obvious. “Fall out.” The original word means to be stirred by any passion, whether fear or anger, and interpreters explain it as they conceive the circumstances and the context require. The English version corresponds with the Septuagint ὀργίζεσθε orgizesthe and with Onkelos. It refers, perhaps, to the little flashes of heat, impatience, and contention that are accustomed to disturb the harmony of companions in the East, who behave sometimes like overgrown children. Such ebullitions often lead to disastrous consequences. Joseph’s exile arose from petty jealousies among brethren.
Gen 45:25-28
The returning brothers inform their father of the existence and elevation of Joseph in Egypt. The aged patriarch is overcome for the moment, but at length awakens to a full apprehension of the joyful news. His heart fainted; ceased to beat for a time, fluttered, sank within him. The news was too good for him to venture all at once to believe it. But the words of Joseph, which they recite, and the wagons which he had sent, at length lead to the conviction that it must be indeed true. He is satisfied. His only thought is to go and see Joseph before he dies. A sorrow of twenty-two years’ standing has now been wiped away.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27 Weeping, with a loud cry, being unable to restrain…
Weeping, with a loud cry, being unable to restrain himself. The servants, who were in the adjoining apartments, heard this cry and declaration of Joseph, acknowledging one common father with these men; and they presently conveyed the intelligence to the king. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 6, 14, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24 he wept aloud--No doubt, from the fulness of highly…
he wept aloud--No doubt, from the fulness of highly excited feelings; but to indulge in vehement and long-continued transports of sobbing is the usual way in which the Orientals express their grief.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 1. Could not refrain himself — Could not control…
1. Could not refrain himself — Could not control his emotions any longer.
Cause every man to go out — The delicate and touching scene will be too sacred for public gaze. Besides, the embracing and the kissing (Gen_45:14-15) might too much offend the ideas of the Egyptians. See note on Gen_43:32.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28 1–15. Joseph makes himself known to his Brethren
1–15. Joseph makes himself known to his Brethren
1. refrain himself] As in Gen_43:31. The vehemence of Joseph’s emotion forms a trait in his character and a feature in the narrative. Cf. Gen_45:2; Gen_45:14-15; Gen_42:24; Gen_43:30; Gen_46:29.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28 (1) Joseph could not refrain himself.—The picture which Judah…
XLV.
JOSEPH IS RECONCILED TO HIS BRETHREN, AND ENCOURAGES THEM AND HIS FATHER TO MAKE EGYPT THEIR HOME.
Read full note →
(1) Joseph could not refrain himself.—The picture which Judah had drawn of his father’s love for Benjamin, the thought that by separating them he might have made his father die of grief, and the sight of his brethren, and especially of Judah offering to endure a life of slavery in order that Benjamin might go free, overpowered Joseph’s feelings, and he commanded all his attendants to quit the apartment in order that there might be no restraint upon himself or his brethren when he made known to them that he was the brother whom they had so cruelly years ago condemned to be a slave.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 37 - 50
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.
Read full note →
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?
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Vers. 1, 2. Then (literally, and) Joseph could not…
Vers. 1, 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).
HOMILETICS.
Read full note →
Vers. 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 R.A. REDFORD Vers. 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.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 24, 27, 28 Joseph made himself known unto his brethren
Gen_45:1-3
Joseph made himself known unto his brethren
Read full note →
Joseph and his brethren
I.
JUDAHS PATHETIC APPEAL FOR THE RELEASE OF BENJAMIN (Gen_44:30-34). In this appeal the following points are made:
1. Jacobs strong attachment to Benjamin.
2. That Benjamin was the mainstay of Jacob in his advanced age.
3. A strong sense of personal honour.
II. JOSEPHS DEEP EMOTION.
1. Manifested in the tears he shed.
2. Manifested in his eager inquiry concerning his dear father.
3. Manifested also in the desire to take in his brothers to his heart.
III. JOSEPHS DEVOUT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GODS GRACIOUS HAND IN ALL HE HAD SUFFERED AND ENJOYED. Lessons:
1. A very touching lesson is here taught the sons and daughters of aged parents concerning their greatest need in their declining years--not expensive clothing or luxurious living, but the manifestation of real, tender, loving sympathy.
2. Josephs readiness to forgive his brothers, and his deep emotion when he saw their sincere love for his father, contain timely lessons, not only for brothers and sisters according to the flesh, but also for brethren and sisters in Christ..
3. The deep insight into the purposes of the providence of God, and perfect acquiescence in them, and joy that they have wrought out good for others, even though at a cost of personal sacrifice, are fraught with instructive lessons.
(1) That special light is given to the obedient.
(2) That in this, as in so many other features, Joseph is an eminent type of Christ. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
The soul in silence
No one doubts that Joseph is a type of Christ; in nothing is he more so than in that significant record,. there stood no man with him while Joseph made himself known to his brethren. Egypt and its idols were shut out; Pharaoh and his pomp; officers of state; obsequious servants; men of business--he caused every man to go out from him; and then in the silence he spoke in his own Hebrew tongue, with no interpreter then, and made himself known to his brethren. What is this most plainly and evidently but a parable of God and the soul? What is prayer but a speaking to God in silence? Silence is the height of worship. Conversing is silencing the world, silencing the tumult of sin, silencing the clamour of the passions. Growth in grace and holiness is but silencing human interests, human love, human pleasures. What is Gods purpose in sickness but to create a silence in the soul in which He may make Himself known? So with sorrows, losses, deaths, calumny, persecution: they make a solitude round the soul; there stands no man with us, but God stands with us, and it is far better. And what are all these things but preparations for, rehearsals before that great last reality--death? At that hour the soul is alone, and a great silence reigns; one by one all persons and things have been severed from the soul; one by one the senses fail, and all communion with the world and with creatures is eat off; most familiar things, most necessary things, faces, sounds, acts, all are not; the soul lives, but lives in silence; the silence deepens and deepens till it becomes absolutely perfect, and then death has come, and the soul finds itself sensibly face to face with God. This is the end of all human life. (F. C. Woodhouse, M. A.)
Joseph discovers himself
I. A BROTHERS PARDON. Josephs.
1. Of a great injury.
(1) To Joseph.
(2) To Jacob. The beloved and trusted son taken from him. His heart well nigh broken by the story that was told him.
2. Of brothers. The crime therefore greater. More easy to forgive the offence of a stranger than of a friend (Psa_41:9; Psa_55:12-13; Psa_55:20).
3. The pardon magnanimously bestowed. Proved by deeds as well as words. Their sin extenuated. He dwells on the good that came out of it, not on the evil that was in it. Tried to soften down their harsh self-censure. The method of professing pardon may detract from its value, and suggest a doubt of its sincerity.
4. Marked by deep affection. He could not repress his emotions, nor conceal his joy. Judah, the darkest character, not excepted.
5. Practically demonstrated. He will henceforth care for them during the famine.
II. A KINGS GRATITUDE. Pharaohs.
1. It had been already proved. He had exalted Joseph.
2. He now cares for Josephs friends. Royally lays himself out for their present good. Strange contrast to the conduct of many kings towards their deliverers and helpers (Charles I. and Earl Stafford; Charles II., and his treatment of the faithful adherents of his house in its misfortunes; also David and Barzillai).
3. It was bountifully expressed. Will have all Josephs family invited to Egypt. Promises that they shall have the fat of the land. Sends with the invitation the means of conveyance. Enjoins the free use of means and subsistence. Regard not your stuff, &c. (Gen_45:20).
III. A FATHERS ZOO. Jacobs.
1. Imagine Jacobs home. The old man of 130 years, feeble, doubtful, fearful, apprehensive. Waiting for the return of his sons. Anxious concerning Benjamin.
2. Picture the arrival at home. They are all there. Benjamin amongst them. Simon also. Joyful greeting.
3. They tell their story. Good news. Joseph yet alive! governor of Egypt.
4. Jacobs doubts. He is suspicious of his sons.
5. The arrival of the waggons convinces him. His spirit revives. His great joy. New hopes. He will see Joseph again, and in such a robe of office as his affection could not have provided. What greater joy can a father know than that excited by good news of absent children. Those who leave home with good principles the most likely to create such joy. Religion supplies the only true basis of character. The Lord was with Joseph. He will be with us in our wanderings, if we begin them with Him. Learn: Let love be without dissimulation. Forgive injuries and prove the reality of forgiveness. (J. C. Gray.)
Josephs dealings with his brethren
Joseph recognized his brethren at once, though they failed, as they bowed before the mighty vicegerent of Egypt, to recognize 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 Cods, and this gives him confidence in hazarding all, as he does not 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 Gods 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. (Archbishop Trench.)
Joseph makes himself known
I. THE ENDURING STRENGTH AND WORTH OF FAMILY AFFECTION. Nothing more beautiful in man than this. Age does not congeal it, nor death destroy it. A holy, perennial fire. It begets gentleness, patience, long suffering, forgiveness of injury, oblivion of wrong.
II. THE CONSTANT FEAR WROUGHT BY CONSCIOUS GUILT. The tender emotion of Joseph was not shared by his brethren. His declaration, I am Joseph, drew from them no glad expressions of joy. They were silent from dismay. His brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. Conscious guilt filled them with alarm and anxious questioning. Could he ever forgive them? Since he had them now in his power, and he had become so great, would he not take vengeance upon them? Their sense of guilt had not perished or weakened with time. It was as enduring as Josephs love.
III. GOD CHOOSES THE WICKED TO ACCOMPLISH HIS DIVINE PURPOSES. Joseph had been sold, from malice, by his brethren into Egypt. And yet God had sent him there. It seems like an irreconcilable contradiction of facts, and yet the thing alleged was true. And our view of the worlds events is inadequate unless we believe that God in a similar way always takes a controlling part in the affairs of men. Did this fact lessen the guilt of the sons of Jacob? Did Joseph mean that they were excused on account of it? Certainly not. Their guilt was according to their intention.
IV. THE INVITED FIND GRACE BECAUSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE GOOD, For his fathers sake and for Benjamins sake, Joseph forgave them all they had done to him. What magnanimity of spirit! It was as if he had blotted out their sin and remembered it no more. And his efforts to allay and banish their fears assured them that from him they had nothing to dread. It was a beautiful fore-gleam of the grace of the Gospel. So Christ has sought to assuage our guilty fears by speaking to us of His Father and our Father, and by owning us as His brethren. Well is it for us that we are connected in this way by ties of relationship with the good of earth and sky. If we stood alone, unconnected with others whose prayers and merit move heavens favour in our behalf to give us further opportunity to repent, or which win for us undeserved consideration from our fellow-men--who show us kindness for the sake of a father, or a mother, or a sister,or some other--it would be far worse with us. But their merit, like charity, covers a multitude of sins in us. We are clad in a borrowed grace, derived from them, and our faults are excused and borne with, and our meagre virtues rated far above their real value.
V. THE GROUND OF PEACE FOR WRONG-DOERS. When Joseph had fallen upon Benjamins neck and wept, and had kissed all his brethren and wept upon them, after that his brethren talked with him. The speechless terror exhibited by them at first then vanished away. What cured their trouble of heart? It was the assurance they had that Joseph looked upon them graciously for their fathers and brothers sake, and that he entirely forgave their sin. This assurance had been wrought in them by the words and acts of Joseph. The kiss he had given them, and his tears of joy, formed an indubitable token of pardon and reconciliation. In his treatment of them we have, therefore, a hint of Gods treatment of men for their sin, and of the way a guilty soul may find peace. Two things are required:
1. A worthy Mediator to whom we are so related that His merit will procure us Divine favour.
2. Indubitable evidence of acceptance and pardon through Him. The Christ was such a Mediator. He was holy, harmless, undefiled,. . . higher than the heavens, and not ashamed to call us brethren. Through our relationship with Him as brethren, we are invested with His righteousness. (A. H.Currier.)
Joseph and his brethren
I. THE EXCELLENCE OF FORGIVENESS.
II. THE SACREDNESS OF FAMILY TIES. The relation of children to their parents, and of brothers and sisters to each other is peculiarly sacred. Other connections we may determine for ourselves; this is appointed by God. It brings great opportunities and great risks. There are no others we can hurt so sorely, or make so glad, as those in our own household.
III. THIS STORY ILLUSTRATES CHRISTS FORGIVENESS. The great Elder Brother suffers at our hands; yet loves us when we will not love Him, and waits for years till our need shall bring us to His feet. Even then He cannot take us at once to His bosom. The sense of guilt must be awakened, the tears of penitence flow. (P. B. Davis.)
I. THE RIPENESS OF THE TIME.
Joseph made known to his brethren
II. HIS DELICACY OF FEELING.
III. HIS ENTIRE FORGIVENESS.
1. He strives to prevent remorse.
2. He bids them see in their past history the plan of God. (T. H.Leale.)
Joseph reveals himself
I. JOSEPHS INTERVIEW WITH HIS BRETHREN,
1. Observe the delicacy of Josephs feelings in removing all the witnesses of his emotion. Feeling, to be true and deep, must be condensed by discipline.
2. Notice the entireness of Josephs forgiveness.
(1) This may be inferred from his desire to prevent remorse (Gen_45:5).
(2) A further proof of the entireness of Josephs forgiveness is, that he referred the past to Gods will (Gen_45:8). Upon this we have three remarks to make. First, that it is utterly impossible for us to judge of any event, whether it is a blessing or misfortune, from simply looking at the event itself; because we do not know the whole. Fancy the buying of a slave in a cave in Canaan; and straightway there springs up in your breast a feeling of indignation. Pass on a few years, and we find Joseph happy, honoured, and beloved; two nations at least are saved by him from famine. Secondly, we remark how God educes good from evil, and that man is only an instrument in His hands. A secular historian, treating of mighty events, always infers that there has been some plan steadily pursued; he would have traced step by step how it all came about, and referred it all to Joseph. But from the inspired history we find that Joseph knew not one step before him. Thirdly, we remark that there is a danger in the too easy acquiescence in the fact that good comes from evil; for we begin to say, Evil then is Gods agent, to do evil must be right; and so we are landed in confusion. Before this had taken place, had Josephs brethren said, Out of this, good will come, let us sell our brother, they would have been acting against their conscience; but after the event it was but faith to refer it to Gods intention. Had they done this before, it would have been presumption. But to feel that good has come through you, but not by your will, is humiliating. You feel that the evil is all yours, and the good is Gods.
II. THE SUMMONS OF JACOB BY PHARAOH.
1. Remark, Pharaoh rejoiced with Joseph (Gen_45:16). Love begets love. Joseph had been faithful, and Pharaoh honours and esteems him.
2. The advice given by Joseph to his brethren (Gen_45:24). We should do well to ponder on Josephs advice, for when that wondrous message was given to the world that God had pardoned man, men at once began to quarrel with each other. They began to throw the blame on the Jew alone for having caused His death; they began to quarrel respecting the terms of salvation.
3. Last]y, we remark the incredulity of Jacob, his heart fainted. There are two kinds of unbelief, that which disbelieves because it hates the truth, and that which disbelieves because the truth is apparently too glorious to be received. The latter was the unbelief of Jacob; it may be an evidence of weakness, but not necessarily an evidence of badness. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Recognition and reconciliation
I. DISCLOSURE. I am Joseph. Were ever the pathos of simplicity, and the simplicity of pathos, more nobly expressed than in these two words? (They 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 sons 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.
II. CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN SILENCE. 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 fathers 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.
III. ENCOURAGEMENT AND COMPLETE FORGIVENESS (Gen_45:4-8). 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 Brothers forgiving love and saving tenderness.
IV. MESSAGE TO JACOB.
1. It bespeaks a simple nature, unspoiled by prosperity, to delight thus in his fathers 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 sent him into 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 sons honour and power was none the less required to make the old Jacob willing to abandon so much, and go into such strange conditions.
2. We have another instance of the difference between mans purposes and Gods counsel in this message. Josephs 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 Gods 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.
V. THE KISS OF FULL RECONCILIATION AND FRANK COMMUNION. The history of Jacobs 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 mothers 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 only ended 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 Pharaohs 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. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Joseph discovering himself to his brethren
I am Joseph.
1. It is an expression of great humility. The governor of Egypt remembered that he was Joseph, a Hebrew--the son of an old pilgrim who now sojourned in Canaan, and the brother of these plain and vulgar strangers who depended on his goodness and solicited his clemency.
2. Here is soft and gentle reproof. He hints at their crime, but without menaces or reproaches. He alludes to it as if he only aimed to palliate it.
3. Here is the language of forgiveness.
(1) Proceeding not merely from a sudden flow of passion, but from settled goodness of heart.
(2) Permanent.
4. Here is a pious reference of his brethren to the wonderful works of Providence. Your Joseph, whom you had doomed to death or perpetual slavery, is employed of God to preserve you and your families from misery and ruin.
5. This is an expression of filial affection; for mark what immediately follows: Doth my father yet live? How tender, how affectionate, how dutiful the question.
6. Here is an expression of general benevolence. I am Joseph, whom ye sold in Egypt God did send me before you, to preserve life. He considered himself as promoted to power, not for his own sake, but for the public good; and to this end he applied the power which he possessed. (J. Lathrop, D. D.)
The reconciliation
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 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 the 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. There is always in Christ a greater love seeking the friendship of a sinner than there is in the sinner seeking for Christ.
2. 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. 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.
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. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Josephs disclosure of himself to his brethren
Why was it he so long, and by artifices so strange, delayed the disclosure which an affectionate heart must have been yearning to make? There is a question antecedent to this, which forces itself on the student of the narrative, and to which Scripture can scarcely be said to furnish a reply. How came it that Joseph had made no inquiries after his family; or had not attempted to have had intercourse with his father, during the many years that Jacob had been bewailing his loss?--for more than twenty years had elapsed from his having been sold to the Ishmaelites to his meeting his brethren; yet he does not seem to have sent a single message to Jacob, though there was free communication between Egypt and Canaan. Fourteen of those years he had, indeed, been in trouble, and it may not have been in his power to transmit any account of himself; but, for the last six years, he had been ruler over the land; and you might have expected the first use made of his authority would have been to obtain tidings of his father--to ascertain whether he survived--and, if he did, to minister to his comforts in his declining years. Yet it appears that Joseph did nothing of the kind; he attempted no intercourse with his family, though his circumstances were such that, if attempted, it would have been readily effected. It is evident that Joseph considered himself as finally separated from his father and brethren, for we read, as his reason for calling his first-born Manasseh, God hath made me forget all my toil, and all my fathers house. It might be inferred from this expression, that Joseph regarded it as an appointment of God that he should forget his fathers house. At all events, there is ground enough for concluding that it was through Divine direction that he abstained from making himself known; and, though strange would be the silence of Joseph, if you supposed it to have proceeded from his own will, yet there are reasons enough to vindicate it, if maintained at the bidding of God. We would have you remember that Jacob had to undergo the retribution of his grevious fault, in having deceived Isaac his father, and gained by fraud, the blessing. The retribution commenced when he himself was deceived by Laban, who gave him Leah for Rachel; but it did not reach its full measure till he in turn was imposed on by his own sons, who persuaded him that Joseph was slain. God alone could determine for how long a time it was just that Jacob should be a victim of this cruel opposition; yet, when we understand that his being deceived was in recompense of his having deceived Isaac, we may readily believe that Joseph was not sooner allowed to make himself known, because the punishment of Jacob was not sooner complete. It would not be difficult to suppose other reasons; for, by effecting in so circuitous a manner, and after so long a time, the reunion of Joseph with the house of his father, God afforded occasions for the display of His over-ruling power and providence, which hardly could have occurred on any supposition, and which could not have been wanting but with great loss to the Church in every age. But, admitting that Joseph acted under the direction of God, in remaining so many years without intercourse with his father, and that therefore his silence is no proof of want of good affection, what are we to say of his conduct when his brethren were brought actually before him--of his harsh language--of his binding Simeon--of his putting the cup in Benjamins sack? Joseph, it must be remembered, was an injured man, and the persons with whom he is called upon to deal are those from whose hands his injuries had come. Unto a man of less pious feeling, the temptation would have been strong of using his present superiority in avenging the wrongs which had been heaped upon his youth. While, however, Joseph had no thought of avenging himself on his brethren, he must still have borne in mind the evil of their characters; and knowing them, by sad experience, to have been men of deceit and cruelty, he would be naturally suspicious both of the uprightness of their actions, and the veracity of their words. Now, if we keep this in mind, it will serve as a clue to much that is intricate. It was Josephs ruling desire to obtain accurate tidings as to the existence and welfare of Jacob and Benjamin; many years had rolled away since treachery and violence had torn him from his father--he had been as one dead unto his kindred, and his kindred as the deadunto him; therefore when his brethren who hated him, and cast him out, suddenly stood before him, his first impulse must have been to ascertain whether his father and the brother of his affections were yet among the living. And why, then, you may say, did he not follow the impulse--make himself known, and propose the question? Ah! he knew his brethren to be cruel and deceitful; they might have hated and practised against Benjamin, as they had done in regard to himself: and it was clear that, if Benjamin also had been their victim, they, when they found themselves in the power of Joseph, would have invented some false account as a shield from the anger which the truth must have provoked. Hence the method of direct questioning was not open to Joseph; he therefore tried an indirect method; brings an accusation against his brethren--the accusation of being spies--which he knew could only be refuted by some appeal to their domesticor national circumstances. Thus he throws them off their guard, and by making it their interest to tell the truth, he diminishes in a measure the likelihood of falsehood. Thus far, we ask you, was not the conduct of Joseph intelligible and exceptionable? He wanted information which he could not procure by ordinary means, therefore he took extraordinary means; for, if the brethren never returned, he would know too well that Benjamin had perished; but, if they returned, and brought Benjamin with them, his happiness would be complete. Hence, then, the harshness--though, by taking care that his brethren should depart laden with corn, and every man with his money in his sack, did he but, after all, give sufficient proof that the harshness was but assumed, and that kindness, the warmest and truest, was uppermost in his breast. But what shall we say of Josephs conduct, when his brethren returned and brought Benjamin with them? It is somewhat more difficult to explain. Strange, that in place of at once falling upon Benjamins neck, Joseph should have used deceit to make him seem a robber! Though the long delay of his brethren in Canaan might have strengthened the suspicions of Joseph, yet his suspicions must all have disappeared when Benjamin stood actually before him; and we hardly see why he need have put upon himself the painful restraint so pathetically described. He 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. And yet still he did not make himself known to his brethren, but allowed them to depart, providing, by concealment of the cup, for the after interruption of their journey. We may suppose that through this strange artifice, Joseph sought to ascertain the disposition of the ten brothers towards Benjamin; there was no doubt but that he was planning the bringing of the whole family to settle in Egypt, and it was needful, before carrying out this plan, that he should know whether the whole family were well agreed, or whether they were still divided by factions and jealousies: thus, by putting Benjamin apparently in peril, convicting him of theft, and then declaring his intention of punishing by enslaving him, he was morally sure of discovering the real feelings of the rest. For if they had hated Benjamin as they had hated him, they would treat his fate with indifference; whereas, if he were in any measure dear to them, the fact would become evident by the manifested emotions. The artifice succeeded--the agony which the ten brothers displayed, when they heard that Benjamin must be kept as a bondsman, put out of question that the son of Jacobs old age was beloved by the children of Leah, and removed the natural apprehension that the feuds of early years remained to mar the plan with which Joseph was occupied. And further, may it not be possible that Joseph wished to assure himself that the children of Rachel were as dear to Jacob now as they had been in their youth. He might have thought that Jacobs affections had possibly been alienated from Benjamin and himself; this he would be naturally desirous to ascertain, before he discovered himself in the ruler of Egypt. If the ten were quite ready to leave Benjamin behind, it would be too evident that they were under no fear of the consequences of meeting their father unattended by their brother, and Joseph would have reason to conclude that Jacobs love had been estranged from the children of Rachel. On the contrary, if the ten showed by their conduct that to return without Benjamin would indeed be to bring down Jacobs gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, there would be no place for any suspicion: nothing would remain but for Joseph to throw aside his irksome disguise, and hasten to be enfolded in the arms of his parent. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
I am Joseph
I am Joseph! Joseph, and yet more than Joseph. We are not the same twenty years afterwards that we are to-day. The old name--yet may be a new nature. The old identity; yet there may be enlarged capacity, refined sensibilities, diviner tastes, holier tendencies. I am Joseph 1 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 in his right position. You have no right to treat the man of twenty years ago as if twenty years had not elapsed. I dont 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, hut 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 to-day as if he had never heard our name. But the point on which I wish to fasten your attention most particularly is this: That there are in human life 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 old maxim and wants to read a chapter out of what he calls the Holy Bible, will one day see him as you never saw him. 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 the manner we thought him rough and coarse, wanting in self-control, and delicacy, and pathos; but that one tone I Why, no man could have uttered it but one who has often been closeted with God, and who has drank deeply into Christs own cup of sorrow. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Joseph weeps
It was his third weeping, the great weeping, although one other had more pain in it. It was the flood of love pent up and pressed back for so many years by mans sin and Gods righteousness, now loosed by righteousness and greater love. It was noble, God-like weeping, which we need not fear to interpret by the tears of the Lord Jesus. It not only reminds us of the weeping of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus on the brow of Olivet; it helps us to understand these stranger tears. The spring-head of both was the same, the love of God--though here it appeared as but a little stream, there as the river of life. The immediate moving cause was the same, sympathy with the sorrowful, compassion for the erring--though here the objects of compassionate love were but some twelve persons, seventy at most, there a multitude whom no man can number. Even when He was about to reveal the fulness of His love at the grave of Lazarus, Jesus groaned in spirit and was troubled, because He felt how hard it was to bring men to believe and accept that love: Josephs soul now travailed with anguish keener than that of Dothan, in the effort to persuade his trembling brothers that he did indeed love them, and wished nothing but their love in return. (A. M. Symington, D. D.)
The value of circumlocution
There is an old English proverb that tells us that the longest way round is, or may be, the shortest way home. Sometimes there may be no other route at all but a roundabout or zigzag one. It would be impossible for the great lumbering Swiss diligence to climb the Simplon Pass and get over into Italy, were it not for that wonderful zigzag road that so patiently winds right and left, seeming to gain but a few feet in an hour, but at last emerging at the top of the Pass. Military engineers, too, know the value of zigzag. Except on this principle how could the besiegers of a fortress get their trenches up towards the walls? But a moral or spiritual path--that, surely, must never be tortuous: are we not to make straight paths for our feet, and look right on? And yet there is at least one branch of Christian duty in which a patient zigzag course is often the most effectual; and that is in laying siege to anothers soul. Nathans parable is a familiar instance: what success could he have expected if he had attacked David with a direct charge? Our Lords treatment of the lawyer in the tenth chapter of St. Luke--not answering directly his question as to who his neighbour was, but telling him a story first and making him apply it--is a case of yet higher authority; and so is His dealing with the Syro-Phoenician woman. And does not God deal so with us now? And what was the object of these strange dealings--of this zigzag course? It was twofold:
1. to test their character, to see whether they repented of their past life, whether they were now good sons to Jacob, and good brothers to Benjamin;
2. If their disposition was not changed, to change it. (E. Stock)
A sons affection
While Octavius was at Samos after the battle of Actium, which made him master of the universe, he held a council to examine the prisoners who had been engaged in Antonys party. Among the rest there was brought before him an old man, Metellus, oppressed with years and infirmities, disfigured with a long beard, a neglected head of hair, and tattered clothes. The son of this Metellus was one of the judges; but it was with great difficulty he knew his father in the deplorable condition in which he saw him. At last, however, having recollected his features, instead of being ashamed to own him, he ran to embrace him, and begged Caesar that they might be put to death together.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 45
THE RECONCILIATION
Genesis 45
Read full note →
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.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 16, 21, 25 Gen_45:6. Earring.] To ear in the Anglo-Saxon means to…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_45:6. Earring.] To ear in the Anglo-Saxon means to plough. The word is used in this sense in Exo_34:12; Deu_21:4.—
Read full note →
Gen_45:8. A father to Pharaoh.] “Second author of life to him.” (Murphy.) “Most confidential counsellor and friend.” (Keil.) So Haman is styled a second father to Artaxerxes. (Esther 13:6.) Also in 1Ma_11:32, King Demetrius writes to his father Lasthenes.—
Gen_45:10. The land of Goshen.] Otherwise called (Gen_47:11) “the land of Rameses.” “It was to the east of the Nile, as lying nearest to the immigrants from Canaan; and neither at this time, nor in the history of the exodus, do we hear of any crossing of the river. But it must have extended to the Nile—witness the hiding of the infant Moses, and the regrets for the fish which they used to eat in Egypt. (Num_11:5.) The LXX. render the word used here and in ch. Gen_37:35, by “Gesen of Arabia; and we know from Herodotus and Strabo that the ancients reckoned the Eastern cities of Egypt, Heliopolis and Herroopolis, as in Arabia. So that it was to the north-east of Egypt, where even now is the most fertile part, and in the neighbourhood of the capital, where Joseph dwelt.” (Alford.)—
Gen_45:12. My mouth that speaketh unto you.] He speaks no longer by an interpreter, but by his own lips and in their native tongue.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_45:1-15
JOSEPH MADE KNOWN TO HIS BRETHREN
Joseph’s brethren would be naturally anxious while Judah was so eloquently pleading. Powerful and tender as that speech was, they must have trembled as to the issue; for they could not help regarding all their calamities as a most righteous judgment of God upon them. Benjamin would feel most acutely for his afflicted father who is destined to suffer another bereavement, and for his brother who is about to give himself up for him. But how does their judge, all this time, stand affected? All depends upon the temper in which he listens to the appeal, upon the end which he has in view. But Joseph was now to be made known to his brethren. In this discovery, mark—
I. The ripeness of the time. The great object of Joseph, in all his dealings with his brethren had now been gained. They were brought to a bitter sense of their sin. Their sorrow for the past was deep and overwhelming. They were in the penitent state, and were now prepared for forgiveness and blessing. Now that the end had been gained, to lengthen out their trial any further would have been both a cruel and useless experiment. We are prepared for the grace of Christ by the sorrows and discipline of repentance. He will not prolong our trial further than is necessary for us, but will reveal His mercy at our worst moment, when we are ready to believe that all is lost. After our greatest trials, when we have toiled all night and caught nothing, even at the fourth watch, He will come walking on the wave and will stand on the shore and reveal Himself. (Joh_21:7.) We value God’s mercy most when we are made to see the awful depth of our sin.
II. His delicacy of feeling. “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.” (Gen_45:1.) The deepest and tenderest feelings of the heart are not to be exposed to strangers. Hence all such witnesses of his emotion were to be put away. There are some who love to expose their feelings to others, who express their various emotions without reserve. They feel a sense of luxury in the display of grief. But the greatest and most exalted minds shrink from thus vulgarizing their feelings. They respect the sacredness of human sorrow. Our Lord, who took our human nature upon Him, and who was the highest example of that nature, did not announce His deepest truths and feelings to the multitude, but reserved them for his disciples.
III. His entire forgiveness. Now that he is about to forgive he does not chide them for their past conduct. He will not spoil the gift by his manner of giving. It shall be like the gifts of God, “liberally and without “upbraiding.” (Jas_1:5.) The completeness and the gracefulness of Joseph’s forgiveness may be gathered from these two considerations:—
1. He strives to prevent remorse. He hastens to preserve them from sinking into the lowest possible deep of misery at the remembrance of the past. “Be not grieved,” he says “nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither.” (Gen_45:5.) He will not allow them to fall into that state of remorse in which true penitence is impossible. He will prevent despair by leading them away from themselves and from self-reproaches, so that they might see and enjoy the mercy which was prepared for them.
2. He bids them see in their past history the plan of God. “For God did send me before you to preserve life.” (Gen_45:5.) Throughout all the dark and evil things of their history the hand of God was manifest. Providence, even by such strange means, was working out redemption. God had a saving purpose in view. All those things of which they were most afraid had been allowed to happen to them to further this benevolent design—“to preserve life.” The end of the Lord is salvation, however strange the means by which that end is brought about. God brings good out of evil, and these men were but instruments in His hands. The actors in this history had no plan. They knew not whither all these strange things were tending. Even Joseph himself did not know one step before him. “There is a danger in the too easy acquiesence in the fact that good comes from evil; for we begin to say, evil is then God’s agent, to do evil must be right, and so we are landed in confusion. Before this had taken place, had Joseph’s brethren said, ‘out of this good will come, let us sell our brother,’ they would have been acting against their conscience; but after the event it was but faith to refer it to God’s intention. Had they done this before, it would have been presumption. But to feel that good has come through you, but not by your will, is humiliating. You feel that the evil is all yours, and the good is God’s.”—(Robertson.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_45:1. Now at length all the love, which during twenty-two long years had been pent up in Joseph’s breast, bursts forth with irrepressible might.—(De Sola.)
No more can Jesus refrain himself in the extreme afflictions of His brethren. (Isa_42:14.) For he is a very tender-hearted Joseph, 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.—(Trapp.)
He does not choose to have any spectators to the tender scene before him, except those who were to be the actors in it. The heart does not like to have its stronger emotions exposed to the view of many witnesses. Moreover, had hisservants been present, they must soon have learned what treatment Joseph oncereceived from his brethren; and it was not to be expected that they would so easily forgive the injuries done to their lord as their lord himself could do. Joseph, with his characteristic generosity, determines at once to spare the feelings of his brethren and consult their reputation by having all spectators removed.—(Bush.)
That religious feeling which is never at a loss for appropriate words is a religion and a sensibility which has in it no depth. With deep truth we are told this in the parable of the sower and the seed. He cast his seed on the stony ground, and the seed sprang up rapidly, simply because there was no depth of earth. Therefore we learn from this that feeling, to be true and deep, must be condensed by discipline.—(Robertson.)
Many passions do not well abide witnesses, because they are guilty to their own weakness. Joseph sends forth his servants, that he might freely weep. He knew he could not say, “I am Joseph,” without an unbeseeming vehemence.—(Bp. Hall).
Gen_45:2. It was the wicked brothers who should have filled the house with outcries and bitter groans of repentance. But it is Joseph who weeps in the presence of the transgressors. How our New Testament Joseph weeps at the grave of Lazarus to think of all the ravages which sin has made! Not your tears, sinner, but the tears and agonies of Jesus must avail for salvation.—(Jacobus).
Gen_45:3. He must now speak out in the plainest terms. I am Joseph. How this brief sentence goes to their heart, explains the mystery, fills them with awe and self-reproach, yet invites their confidence. How we are reminded of Saul of Tarsus when our New Testament Joseph reveals Himself to him. “Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” What shall Joseph now say? Shall he remind them of the pit, and the sale into slavery, to confound them utterly? No! He asks only, “Doth my father yet live?” This is to confess them as his brethren, by acknowledging their common father. So Jesus is not ashamed to call us brethren. (Heb_2:11). Only as a next step will Joseph refer to their wrong-doing, and then the rather to bid them not be grieved nor angry with themselves so as to keep them aloof from him with fear.—(Jacobus).
Those words, “I am Joseph,” seemed to sound thus much to their guilty thoughts:—You are murderers, and I am a prince in spite of you. My power, and this place, give me all opportunities of revenge: my glory is your shame, my life your danger—your sin lives together with me. But now the tears and gracious words of Joseph have soon assured them of pardon and love, and have bidden them turn their eyes from their sin against their brother, to their happiness in him, and have changed their doubts into hopes and joys, causing them to look upon him without fear, yet not without shame. Actions salved up with a free forgiveness are as not done: and as a bone once broken is stronger after well setting, so is love after reconcilements.—(Bp. Hall.)
They could not answer him. They were troubled at his presence. So the sense of sin makes us dread the presence of God. We are confounded before Him, and know not what we shall say. Adam hides himself among the trees of the garden. Only the clear revelation of God’s love to sinners can restore us to confidence and peace. That comfort which the Gospel brings is the only healing for our afflicted souls.
Wonder, doubt, reverence, fear, hope, guiltiness, joy, grief, struck them all at once. Shall it not be so with the Jews at their glorious conversion, when they shall hear, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom ye have persecuted and pierced?” (Zec_12:10; Rev_1:7.)—(Trapp.)
Gen_45:4. How disposed to forget and bury their sin. He invites them to his free favour. So our Joseph in the Gospel bids us come to Him. This is the Gospel message, Come unto Me. This is the entreaty of love. He will have them approach more closely and come boldly that he may more fully reveal himself. They felt the power of this gracious word and they came near.—(Jacobus.)
I am Joseph, your brother. Their great transgressions had not broken the bonds of nature. Christ is “not ashamed to call us brethren,” though we have rendered ourselves unworthy by our manifold sins. Even in all his wandering, the prodigal was still a son.
Gen_45:5. Here is a lively imago of Christ’s love towards His enemies, for whom he prayed and died. This Angel of the Covenant first troubles the waters, and then cures those cripples that step in. This sun of Righteousness first draws up vapours of godly grief, and then dispels them.—(Trapp.)
A less delicate mind would have talked of forgiving them; but he entreats them to forgive themselves, as though the other was out of the question. Nor did he mean that they should abuse the doctrine of Providence to the making light of sin; but merely that they should eye the hand of God in all, so as to be reconciled to the event, though they might weep in secret for the part which they had acted. Their viewing things in this light would not abate their godly sorrow, but rather increase it. It would tend only to expel the sorrow of the world which worketh death.—(Fuller.)
The cross of Christ is an example, and the highest, of that Power above us which brings good out of evil. The murderers of Jesus only intended evil, and yet God by their means wrought out salvation. They were the unconscious instruments of His gracious will.
We shall ever find abundant cause of thanksgiving that a gracious God has counteracted the tendency of sin to produce the most misirable effects in ourselves and others, and preserved us from the pain of seeing misery diffused around us as the fruit of our doings. Yet for our humiliation let us remember that the nature of sin is not altered by the use that God makes of it. Poison does not cease to be poison because it may enter into the composition of healing medicines.—(Bush).
The principles illustrated in Joseph’s statement are these,—
1. God’s absolute control over all creatures and events.
2. That while sinners are encouraged to hope in His mercy, they are left without excuse for their sin.
3. That God orders all human affairs with a view to the preservation of His sacred and gifted family,—the Church.
Gen_45:6-7.—Whatever might be the pressure of the famine, God designed not only to preserve the lives of those who then existed, but to preserve also a posterity in the earth for Abraham and Jacob. If Isaac had perished on Mount Moriah, what would have become of the promise to Abraham? If Jacob’s sons had died of hunger, what would have become of the promise to Jacob, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed? Let us learn from this to be thankful to God for those mercies to our fathers by which they were preserved from destruction. They were upheld for our sakes as well as their own.—(Bush).
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 God’s ways, as Joseph does here; and to trace His leading, like a golden thread drawn through all the follies and errors of men.—(Lange).
Gen_45:8. Had such words as these been spoken by Joseph’s brethren, we should justly have thought they were uttering a blasphemous lie by endeavouring to transfer their criminal conduct to God. Had thay said, “It was not we that sent you hither, but God,” we might justly have pronounced them guilty of daring impiety; but when Joseph is the speaker, we recognise the drift of the words at once. His object was to intimate that his coming to Egypt was more God’s work than theirs. Their intention was no doubt evil; but his thoughts were so much occupied with God’s intentions, that he forgot theirs.—(Bush.)
God hides Himself behind human history, where only the eye of faith can discern Him.
Joseph ascribes his exaltation and prosperity to God.
1. He looks, beyond all hindrances, to God. Beyond the persecutions of his brethren to that Providence which has a purpose of good, even in things evil.
2. He looks, beyond all human instruments, to God. Pharaoh had been the means of his exaltation, but it was from God that he derived that knowledge and wisdom which gave him favour in the eyes of Pharaoh.
3. He accepts the position which God has given him. He was a father to Pharaoh,—in very deed, the second author of life to him. It is not a sin against humility to accept what God appoints for us.
4. He maintains the right disposition through all the changes of Providence. He bears his affliction with meekness, and his elevation with humility.
Gen_45:9. Better than abundance of corn is it, to be assured that the lord of the granaries is his son Joseph. How blessed to know from the Gospel that the dispenser of universal providence and the proprietor of the universe is our God, for ever and ever—that our elder brother is exalted at the right hand of the Majesty or high. And then the message come down unto me—tarry not. (So John 14) Faith in the Father and the Son is the cure for heart trouble. “I will surely come again to take you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”—(Jacobus.)
Christ seems to send from heaven, and say unto us in like sort, God hath made me Lord of all; come up unto me, tarry not.—(Trapp.)
Gen_45:10-11.—He already has a place prepared for the covenant household. The land of Goshen was the most fertile part of the land best suited for shepherds. The covenant household is now to be transferred to Egypt, for their development from a family to a nation. (Gen_47:11)—(Jacobus.)
I will nourish thee. Joseph kept his word to the letter. (Gen_47:12.)
Gen_45:12. He appeals to their natural senses in proof of his identity. So our Joseph reveals Himself that we may not fail to recognise Him. It is I, be not afraid.
(1.) Filial piety is beautiful.
(2.) It is a shame to a son when he becomes exalted to despise and neglect his poor parents.—(Jacobus.)
The mercy of God to us, in Christ, is so great that we require the strongest evidence in order to believe it.
Gen_45:13. A lover of God takes pleasure in telling what God has done for him, that his friends may magnify the Lord with him. Joseph had, perhaps, another end in view in desiring his brethren to tell his father of his glory. This part of the message might give them the hope of finding forgiveness with their father. By hearing of Joseph’s glory, he could perceive that God had sent him into Egypt by their hands to accomplish his prophetical dreams. The grace of God, in giving such a favourable issue to Joseph’s afflictions, would reconcile Jacob to the men who had brought those afflictions upon him.—(Bush.)
Gen_45:14. God’s people are not senseless Stoics or flinty Nabals, but have natural affections in them.—(Trapp).
Gen_45:15. In the spirit of a fond brother, and not of an offended judge, he kisses all of them as well as Benjamin, and thus assures them of forgiveness more expressly than any laboured language could have done. They were emboldened to speak to him after this. After all our Joseph’s assurances to us by word and deed in the gospel, by His loving life, and His living love, we may come boldly to the throne, seeing it is the throne of grace. Our Elder Brother, our Kinsman Redeemer is such an one as we need. Our Joseph will have us emboldened to talk with Him in prayer and communion.—(Jacobus).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 The difficulties of Joseph’s history begin with his elevation.…
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?
Read full note →
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.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Gen 45:1 - Gen 45:15.
Genesis
RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION
Read full note →
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.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Joseph makes Himself known to his Brethren. Pharaoh invites…
Joseph makes Himself known to his Brethren. Pharaoh invites Jacob and his Family to Settle in Egypt
5-7. Joseph declares that the events of the past all witnessed to the providential care of God.
Read full note →
6. Earing] i.e. ploughing, cognate with Lat. aro, 'I plough.' The word is now obsolete.
8. A father to Pharaoh] a title of honour and respect: cp. Isa_22:21.
10. The land of Goshen] This was a fertile district of N. Egypt, lying to the E. of the Nile between Zagazig and Tel-el Kebir, 40m. NE. of Cairo. The railway from Alexandria to Suez now runs through it. There have been discovered in this neighbourhood the remains of a town, called on its monuments Gesem. The land of Goshen was probably the same as the 'field of Zoan' (Psa_78:12) and the 'land of Rameses' (Gen_47:11). 18, 19. The district of Goshen was well suited. to the pastoral habits of the Hebrews. There is a papyrus of the time of the Pharaoh Merenptah, some centuries later than the present events, which refers to permission given to some tribes of nomad Asiatics (Shasu) to 'pass the fortress Etham in the land of Succoth near the town Pithom to pasture their cattle in that territory.' All these places were in the land of Goshen.
19. Wagons] Those depicted on the monuments had two wheels and were drawn by oxen.
20. Regard not your stuff] Do not trouble to bring all your belongings with you.
24. See that ye fall not oat by the way] Joseph perhaps feared that his brothers might reproach one another for their treatment of him, and so quarrels might arise.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v7 preserve Heb. to make you a remnant. Isa 1:9;…
preserve Heb. to make you a remnant. Isa 1:9; Rom 11:5. (See Scofield "Rom 11:5").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER 45 Joseph Reveals Himself
CHAPTER 45 Joseph Reveals Himself
1. He reveals himself (Gen 45:1-3)
Read full note →
2. His address (Gen 45:4-13)
3. He kissed his brethren (Gen 45:14-15)
4. Pharaoh’s 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 Benjamin’s sack, was the needful and decisive test. Benjamin had become the object of Jacob’s 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).
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 16 Joseph Makes Himself Known
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.
Read full note →
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.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 24, 27 could not control himself
could not control himself
This means he could not control his emotions. It can be stated in positive form. AT: "was about to start crying"
Read full note →
by him
"near him"
house of Pharaoh
Here "house" stands for the people in the Pharaoh's palace. AT: "everyone in Pharaoh's palace" (See: Metonymy)
shocked in his presence
"terrified of him"
translationWords
Joseph (OT)
servant
Egypt
house
Pharaoh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 14, 16, 24, 26, 27 45:1-15 In one of the most dramatic scenes of…
45:1-15 In one of the most dramatic scenes of the book, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, bringing the process of reconciling with them to a climax (see also 50:14-21).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.