Joseph returned into Egypt—he, and his brothers, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
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Joseph returned into Egypt—he, and his brothers, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
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And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
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And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 14. And Joseph returned. Although Joseph and the rest…
14. And Joseph returned. Although Joseph and the rest had left so many pledges in Egypt, that it would be necessary for them to return; it is yet probable that they were rather drawn back thither by the oracle of God. For God never permitted them to choose an abode at their own will; but as he had before led Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in their journeying, so he held their sons shut up in the land of Goshen, as within barriers. And there is no doubt that the holy fathers left that oracle which we have in the fifteenth chapter and the thirteenth verse, Genesis 15:13 to their sons, to be kept in faithful custody as a precious treasure. They return, therefore, into Egypt, not only because they were compelled by present necessity, but because it was not lawful for them to shake off with the hand, the yoke which God had put upon their necks. But if the Lord does not hold all men bound by voluntary obedience to himself, he nevertheless holds their minds by his secret rein, that they may not withdraw themselves from his government; nor can we form any other conjecture than that they were restrained by his fear, so that even when admonished of the tyrannical oppression which was coming upon them, they did not attempt to make their escape. We know that their disposition was not so mild as to prevent them from rebelling against lighter burdens. Wherefore, on this point, a special sense of religious obligation subdued them, so that they prepared themselves quietly and silently to endure the hardest servitude.
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.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was…
And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead,.... And buried; for this and what follows were after their return to Egypt, from the burial of their father; though some think it was before, and as soon as they saw their father was dead, when they thought it a proper time, while Joseph's heart was tender and affected with his father's death, to compromise matters with him: but there is no reason to invert the order of the narration, for this "seeing" is not to be understood of their bodily sight, but of the contemplation of their minds; they considered with themselves that their father was now dead and buried, they had lost an affectionate parent, who was concerned for the welfare and peace of all his family, but what a turn things would now take they knew not:
they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him; their sin came fresh to their remembrance, guilt arose in their consciences and flew in their faces, and this caused fear and distrust where there was no reason for it, and led them to treat Joseph's character very ill; who was far from being of such a temper and disposition suggested by them, as if he retained hatred in his breast, and was of a revengeful spirit, only hid it during his father's life, because he would not grieve him.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And Joseph returnee into Egypt, he, and his brethren,…
And Joseph returnee into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Gen_50:15. Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_50:15. Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.] The literal rendering is—If Joseph should now punish us, and requite all the evil that we have done to him—The sentence breaks off unfinished, requiring some such filling up as, what then? or, that would be our ruin.
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Gen_50:16. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph.] From Goshen to Memphis.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_50:14-21
JOSEPH’S LAST FORGIVENESS OF HIS BRETHREN
I. Their need of forgiveness. Their father, who was the bond of love between the brothers, was now gone; and they naturally fear lest Joseph should punish them for the previous wrong they had done him. The old wound breaks out afresh. They begin to suspect that the kindness Joseph had shown them was only for their father’s sake, that Joseph never really forgave them in his heart, and that now, when the restraint of their father’s presence is removed, he will take vengeance. Sinners find it difficult to believe in human goodness. Conscious guilt is always alive to fear. Their fears were groundless, yet conscience taught them what was true, i.e., that sinners deserve to be requited according to their works. But to appreciate the majesty of goodness, to feel and know what is godlike in another, requires a spiritual mind. Wisdom can only be justified of her own children.
II. The plea on which they urge it.
1. The dying request of their father. (Gen_50:16-17.) They bring forward their father as a mediator. They request that his word shall be held sacred, shall still be a defence between them and the dreaded evil. They admit the justice of their punishment, but desire pardon for the sake of another.
2. Their own free confession of guilt. “The trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil.” (Gen_50:17.) This confession they allege was prepared for them by their father, and they adopt it with all its humiliating terms.
3. Their father’s influence with God. “Forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father.” (Gen_50:17.) They would strengthen the tie of nature with the tie of religion. They would say, as we have one father, so we have one God; forgive us for His sake, the God of our father. Guilty men as they were, they knew the highest principle to which they could make an appeal.
4. Their willingness to utterly abase themselves. They are ready to atone for their sin in kind. They had sold Joseph for a slave, and now they offer themselves as his servants. They make the utmost humiliation.
III. The completeness of their forgiveness. Joseph assures them of his entire forgiveness.
1. He speaks words of peace. “Fear not.” (Gen_50:19; Gen_50:21.) He hastens, at once, to relieve their minds, before he utters one word by way of reason or explanation. They are instantly assured of that love which casteth out fear. These words were like balm to their wounds, giving them immediate relief.
2. He will not presume to put himself judicially in the place of God.
(1.) As an instrument of vengeance. “Am I in the place of God?” (Gen_50:19.) “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” For one who himself needs forgiveness, to follow others with the last vengeance is presumption. Joseph had already judged them, and he had forgiven. He will not presume any further, and infringe the prerogatives of the Judge of all the earth.
(2.) As presuming to change God’s purposes. Joseph reminded them that God had brought good out of their evil, had turned the calamities resulting from their sinful deeds into the means of deliverance. (Gen_50:20.) He would not presume to change this manifest purpose of God, which facts had already revealed. “God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”
(3.) As presuming upon God’s prerogative of forgiveness. God had shown by events that He forgave their sin, and Joseph would not presume to reverse that act of forgiveness. He could not retain sins which God had remitted.
3. He assures them that their suspicions were unfounded. It seemed to them that with all his words of kindness and his gifts, Joseph was all along playing the hypocrite, and cherishing malignity in his heart. Therefore he shows, by implication, that their suspicions were unfounded. In Gen_50:20 he answers them in nearly the same words as he had used seventeen years before; as if he would say, “What I told you seventeen years ago, I meant, and mean still.” God’s purpose of good in things evil was a principle which Joseph had well mastered. It was the golden key of his life’s history; and, indeed, of all human history to those who believe that God works in it.
4. He was ready to prove his forgiveness by his actions. (Gen_50:21.) He would not have them be satisfied with mere words without deeds. He wished to see them happy, and he gave them the means of happiness. Joseph’s forgiveness brought comfort and peace, as God’s does to the sinner. And to show further how complete was his forgiveness, there was,—
5. The silent testimony of his tears. “And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.” (Gen_50:17.) To a pure mind, to one who sincerely means good, nothing can be more painful than suspicion. It was part of our Lord’s humiliation that he had to endure the suspicion of evil. “Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves?” (Luk_22:52.) The soul that cannot be injured with the substance of evil may be pained if touched with its shadow. Jesus had to endure the gainsayings of sinners against Himself. (Heb_12:3.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_50:14-21. The guilty conscience can never think itself safe: so many years’ experience of Joseph’s love could not secure his brethren of remission. Those that know they have deserved ill, are wont to misinterpret favours, and think they cannot be beloved. All that while, his goodness seemed but concealed and sleeping malice. It grieves Joseph to see their fear, and to hear them so passionately crave that which they had. “Forgive the tresspass of the servants of thy father’s God.” What a conjuration of pardon was this! They say not, the sons of thy father; but the servants of thy father’s God. How much stronger are the bonds of religion than of nature? if Joseph had been rancorous, this depreciation had charmed him; but now it resolves him into tears. They are not so ready to acknowledge their old offence as he to protest his love. Even late confession finds forgiveness. Joseph had long ago seen their sorrow; never but now heard he their humble acknowledgment. Mercy stays not for outward solemnities. How much more shall that infinite goodness pardon our sins, when He finds the truth of our repentance?—(Bp. Hall).
Behold we be thy servants. Oh that God might hear such words fall from us, prostrate at His feet! How soon would He take us up and embrace us!—(Trapp).
The spirit of Joseph’s inner life was forgiveness. Conversant as his experience was with human treachery, no expressions of bitterness escape from him. No sentimental wailing over the cruelty of relations, the falseness of friendship, or the ingratitude of the world. No rancorous outburst of misanthropy, no sarcastic scepticism of man’s integrity or woman’s honour. He meets all bravely, with calm, meek, and dignified forbearance. If ever man had cause for such doubts, he had; yet his heart was never soured. At last; after his father’s death, his brothers, apprehending his resentful recollections of their early cruelty, come to deprecate his revenge. Very touching in his reply. (Gen_50:19-21). This is the Christian spirit before the Christian times. The mind of Christ, the Spirit of the years yet future, blended itself with life before He came; for His words were the Eternal Verities of our humanity. In all ages love is the truth of life. Love transmutes all curses, and forces them to rain down in blessings.—(Robertson).
Joseph requited his enemies with a noble revenge. (Rom_12:20.)
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Gen 50:14 - Gen 50:26.
Genesis
A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING
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Gen 50:14 - Gen 50:26.
Joseph’s brothers were right in thinking that he loved Jacob better than he did them; and they knew only too well that he had reasons for doing so. But their fear that Jacob’s death would be followed by an outbreak of long-smothered revenge betrayed but too clearly their own base natures. They thought him like themselves, and they knew themselves capable of nursing wrath to keep it warm through long years of apparent kindliness. They had no room in their hearts for frank, full forgiveness. So they had lived on through numberless signs of their brother’s love and care, and still kept the old dread, and, probably, not a little of the old envy. How much happiness they had lost by their slowness to believe in Joseph’s love!
Is there nothing like this in our thoughts of God? Do men not live for years on His bounty, and all the while cherish suspicions of His heart? ‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.’ It is hard to believe in a love which has no faintest trace of desire for vengeance for all past slights. It is hard for hearts conscious of their own slowness to pardon, to realise undoubtingly God’s infinite placability.
The brothers’ procedure is marked by unwarrantable lack of trust in Joseph. Why did they not go to him at once, and appeal to his brotherly affection? Their roundabout way of going to work by sending a messenger was an insult to their brother, though it may have been meant as honour to the viceroy. The craft which was their father’s by nature seems to have been amply transmitted. The story of Jacob’s dying wish looks very apocryphal. If he had been afraid of Joseph’s behaviour when he was gone, he was much more likely to have spoken to Joseph about it before he went, than to have left the gun loaded and bid them fire it after his death. Jacob knew his son better, and trusted him more than his brothers did.
We note, too, the ingenious way of slipping in motives for forgiving, first in putting the mention of their relationship into Jacob’s mouth, and then claiming to be worshippers of ‘thy {not our} father’s God.’ They had proved how truly they were both, when they sold him to the Midianites!
Joseph’s tears were a good answer. No doubt they were partly drawn out by the shock of finding that he had been so misunderstood, but they were omens of his pardon. So, when they were reported to the brothers, they came themselves, and fulfilled the old dream by falling down before him in abjectness. They do not call themselves his brethren, but his slaves, as if grovelling was the way to win love or to show it. A little affection would have gone farther than much submission. If their attitude truly expressed their feelings, their hearts were as untouched by Joseph’s years of magnanimous kindness as a rock by falling rain. If it was a theatrical display of feigned subjection, it was still worse. Our Brother, against whom we have sinned, wants love, not cowering; and if we believe in His forgiveness, we shall give Him the hearts which He desires, and after that shall render the unconditional submission which only trust and love can yield.
Joseph’s answer is but the reiteration of his words at his first making himself known. He soothes unworthy fears, says not a word of reproach for their misunderstanding of him, waives all pretension to deal out that retribution which God alone sends, and shows that he has lost all bitterness in thinking of the past, since he sees in it, not the working of their malice, but of God’s providence, and is ready to thank, if not them, at any rate Him, for having, by even so painful a way, made him the instrument of widespread good. A man who sees God’s hand in his past, and thinks lightly of his sorrows and nobly of the opportunities of service which they have brought him, will waste no feeling on the men who were God’s tools. If we want to live high above low hatreds and revenges, let us cultivate the habit of looking behind men to God. So we shall be saved from many fruitless pangs over irrevocable losses and from many disturbing feelings about other people.
The sweet little picture of the great minister’s last days is very tenderly touched. Surrounded by his kindred, probably finding in a younger generation the reverence and affection which the elder had failed to give, he wears away the calm evening of the life which had opened so stormily. It ‘came in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb.’ The strong domestic instincts so characteristic of the Hebrew race had full gratification. Honours and power at court and kingdom probably continued, but these did not make the genial warmth which cheered the closing years. It was that he saw his children’s children’s children, and that they gathered round his knees in confidence, and received from him his benediction.
But it is in his death that the flame shoots up most brightly at the last. ‘By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.’ He had been an Egyptian to all appearance all his life from the day of his captivity, filling his place at court, marrying an Egyptian woman, and bearing an Egyptian name, but his dying words show how he had been a stranger in the midst of it all. As truly as his fathers who dwelt in tents, he too felt that he here had no continuing city. He lived by faith in God’s promises, and therefore his heart was in the unseen future far more than in the present.
He died with the ancestral assurance on his lips. Jacob, dying, had said to him, ‘Behold, I die; but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers’ {Gen 48:21}. Joseph hands on the hope to his descendants. It is a grand instance of indomitable confidence in God’s word, not nonplussed, bewildered, or weakened, though the man who cherishes it dies without seeing even a beginning of fulfilment. Such a faith bridges the gulf of death as a very small matter. In the strength of it we may drop our unfinished tasks, and, needful as we may seem to wider or narrower circles, may be sure that God and His word live, though we die. No man is necessary. Israel was safe in Egypt, and sure to come out of it, though Joseph’s powerful protection was withdrawn.
His career may teach another lesson; namely, that true faith does not detach us from strenuous interest and toil in the present. Though the great hope burned in his heart, he did all his work as prime minister all the better because of it. It should always be so. Life here is not worth living if there is not another. The distance dignifies the foreground. The highest importance and nobleness of the life that now is, lie in its being preparation or apprenticeship for the greater future. The Egyptian vizier, with Canaan written on his heart, and Egypt administered by his hands, is a type of what every Christian should be.
Possibly Joseph’s ‘commandment concerning his bones may have been somewhat influenced by the Egyptian belief which underlies their practice of embalming the body. He, too, may have thought that, in some mysterious way, he would share in the possession of the land in which his bones were to be laid. Or he may simply have been yielding to natural sentiment. It is noteworthy that Jacob desired to be laid beside his ancestors, and Joseph to be kept in Egypt for a time. Both had the same assurance as to future possession of Canaan, but it led to different wishes as to burial. Perhaps Joseph felt that his position in Egypt required that his embalmed body should for a while remain there. Perhaps he wished to leave with his people a silent witness of his own hope, and a preacher, eloquent in its dumbness, of the duty of their keeping alive that hope, whatever might come upon them.
‘In a coffin in Egypt’-so the book ends. It might seem that that mummy-case proclaimed rather the futility of the hope of restoration to the land, and, as centuries rolled away, and the bondage became heavier, no doubt many a wondering and doubting look was turned to it. But there it lay, perhaps neglected, for more than three hundred years, the visible embodiment of a hope which smiled at death and counted centuries as nothing. At last the day came which vindicated the long-deferred confidence; and, as the fugitives in their haste shouldered the heavy sarcophagus, and set out with it for the Land of Promise, surely some thrill of trust would pass through their ranks, and in some hearts would sound the exhortation, ‘If the vision tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.’
We have not a dead Joseph to bid us wait with patience and never lose our firm grip of God’s promises, but we have a living Jesus. Our march to the land of rest is headed, not by the bones of a departed leader, but by the Forerunner, ‘who is for us entered’ whither He will bring all who trust in Him. Therefore we should live, as Joseph lived, with desires and trust reaching out beyond things seen to the land assured to us by God’s promise, doing our day’s task all the more vigorously because we do not belong to the order of things in the midst of which we live; and then, when we lie down at the end of our life’s work, we shall not be saddened by disappointed hopes, nor reluctantly close our eyes on good to come, when we shall not be there to share it, but be sure that we shall ‘see the good of Thy chosen,’ and ‘rejoice in the gladness of Thy nation.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.