Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today. Now therefore don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.” He comforted them, and spoke kindly to them.
Joseph lived in Egypt, he, and his father’s house. Joseph lived one hundred ten years. Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 19. Am I in the place of God? Some…
19. Am I in the place of God? Some think that, in these words, he was rejecting the honor paid him: as if he would say, that it was unjustly offered to him, because it was due to God alone. But this interpretation is destitute of probability, since he often permitted himself to be addressed in this manner, and knew that the minds of his brethren were utterly averse to transfer the worship of God to mortal man. And I equally disapprove another meaning given to the passage, which makes Joseph refuse to exact punishment, because he is not God: for he does not restrain himself from retaliating the injury, in the hope that God will prove his avenger. Others adduce a third signification; namely, that the whole affair was conducted by the counsel of God, and not by his own: which though I do not entirely reject, because it approaches the truth, yet I do not embrace the interpretation as true. For the word תחת(tachat) sometimes signifies instead of, sometimes it means subjection. Therefore if the note of interrogation were not in the way, it might well be rendered, “Because I am under God;” and then the sense would be, “Fear not, for I am under God;” so that Joseph would teach them, that because he is subject to the authority of God, it is not his business to lead the way, but to follow. But, whereas ה(he,) the note of interrogation, is prefixed to the word, it cannot be otherwise expounded than to mean that it would be wrong for him, a mortal man, to presume to thwart the counsel of God. But as to the sum of the matter, there is no ambiguity. For seeing that Joseph considers the design of divine providence, he restrains his feelings as with a bridle, lest they should carry him to excess. He was indeed of a mild and humane disposition; but nothing is better or more suitable to assuage his anger, than to submit himself to be governed by God. When, therefore, the desire of revenge urges us, let all our feelings be subjected to the same authority. Moreover, since he desires his brethren to be tranquil and secure, from the consideration, that he, ascribing due honor to God, willingly submits to obey the Divine command; let us learn, hence, that it is most to our advantage to deal with men of moderation, who set God before them as their leader, and who not only submit to his will, but also cheerfully obey him. For if any one is impotently carried away by the lust of the flesh, we must fear a thousand deaths from him, unless God should forcibly break his fury. Now as it is the one remedy for assuaging our anger, to acknowledge what we ourselves are, and what right God has over us; so, on the other hand, when this thought has taken full possession of our minds, there is no ardor, however furious, which it will not suffice to mitigate.
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 vv19, 21, 22, 25 Or, am I in God’s stead, meaning to take…
Or, am I in God’s stead, meaning to take vengeance.
Who by the good success seemeth to remit it, and therefore it ought not to be revenged by me.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv19–24 Gen 50:19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not:…
Gen 50:19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for [am] I in the place of God?
Ver. 19. Am I in the place of God?] q.d., Can I hurt you when God intends good to you? Is it for me to cross his decree?
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 vv19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25 It is God’s prerogative to take vengeance, which I…
It is God’s prerogative to take vengeance, which I dare not usurp. See Deu 32:35. Or, can I do what I please with you without God’s leave? Therefore fear him rather than me, and upon your experience of his wonderful care and kindness to you, believe that God will not, and therefore that I neither can nor will do you any hurt. But it is not unusual to put the Hebrew he for halo, as it is Gen 27:36; 1Sa 2:28; 2Sa 23:19; 1Ki 16:31, &c.; and so the words may be very well rendered, Am not I under God, i.e. subject to his will, a minister of his providence? Dare I destroy those whom God so eminently designed to save? Dare I punish those whom God hath pardoned.
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 v22 Here is, I. The prolonging of Joseph's life in…
Here is, I. The prolonging of Joseph's life in Egypt: he lived to be a hundred and ten years old, Gen 50:22. Having honoured his father, his days were long in the land which, for the present, God had given him; and it was a great mercy to his relations that God continued him so long, a support and comfort to them.
II. The building up of Joseph's family: he lived to see his great-grand-children by both his sons (Gen 50:23), and probably he saw his two sons solemnly owned as heads of distinct tribes, equal to any of his brethren. It contributes much to the comfort of aged parents if they see their posterity in a flourishing condition, especially if with it they see peace upon Israel, Psa 128:6.
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III. The last will and testament of Joseph published in the presence of his brethren, when he saw his death approaching. Those that were properly his brethren perhaps were some of them dead before him, as several of them were older than he; but to those of them who yet survived, and to the sons of those who were gone, who stood up in their fathers' stead, he said this. 1. He comforted them with the assurance of their return to Canaan in due time: I die, but God will surely visit you, Gen 50:24. To this purport Jacob had spoken to him, Gen 48:21. Thus must we comfort others with the same comforts with which we ourselves have been comforted of God, and encourage them to rest on those promises which have been our support. Joseph was, under God, both the protector and the benefactor of his brethren; and what would become of them now that he was dying? Why, let this be their comfort, God will surely visit you. Note, God's gracious visits will serve to make up the loss of our best friends. They die; but we may live, and live comfortably, if we have the favour and presence of God with us. He bids them be confident: God will bring you out of this land, and therefore, (1.) They must not hope to settle there, nor look upon it as their rest for ever; they must set their hearts upon the land of promise, and call that their home. (2.) They must not fear sinking, and being ruined there; probably he foresaw the ill usage they would meet with there after his death, and therefore gives them this word of encouragement: "God will bring you in triumph out of this land at last." Herein he has an eye to the promise, Gen 15:13, Gen 15:14, and, in God's name, assures them of the performance of it. 2. For a confession of his own faith, and a confirmation of theirs, he charges them to keep him unburied till that day, that glorious day, should come, when they should be settled in the land of promise, v. 25. He makes them promise him with an oath that they would bury him in Canaan. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a significant burial in Canaan, and that deferred too almost 200 years, before a magnificent one in Egypt. Thus Joseph, by faith in the doctrine of the resurrection and the promise of Canaan, gave commandment concerning his bones, Heb 11:22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake that God will surely visit Israel, and bring them to Canaan.
IV. The death of Joseph, and the reservation of his body for a burial in Canaan, Gen 50:26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt, but not buried till his children had received their inheritance in Canaan, Jos 24:32. Note, 1. If the separate soul, at death, do but return to its rest with God, the matter is not great though the deserted body find not at all, or not quickly, its rest in the grave. 2. Yet care ought to be taken of the dead bodies of the saints, in the belief of their resurrection; for there is a covenant with the dust, which shall be remembered, and a commandment is given concerning the bones.
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 vv19–25 But as for you, ye thought evil against me,....…
But as for you, ye thought evil against me,.... That must be said and owned, that their intentions were bad; they thought to have contradicted his dreams, and made them of none effect, to have token away his life, or however to have made him a slave all his days:
but God meant it unto good; he designed good should come by it, and he brought good out of it: this shows that this action, which was sinful in itself, fell under the decree of God, or was the object of it, and that there was a concourse of providence in it; not that God was the author of sin, which neither his decree about it, nor the concourse of providence with the action as such supposes; he leaving the sinner wholly to his own will in it, and having no concern in the ataxy or disorder of it, but in the issue, through his infinite wisdom, causes it to work for good, as follows:
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to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive; the nation of the Egyptians and the neighbouring nations, as the Canaanites and others, and particularly his father's family: thus the sin of the Jews in crucifying Christ, which, notwithstanding the determinate counsel of God, they most freely performed, was what wrought about the greatest good, the salvation of men.
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 vv19, 20, 21, 24, 25 Am I in the place of God? - He…
Am I in the place of God? - He in his great humility thought they shewed him too much respect, and faith to them in effect, as Peter to Cornelius, Stand up, I myself also am a man. Make your peace with God, and then you will find it an easy matter to make your peace with me.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv19, 22, 23, 24, 25 Verse 19. Am I in the place of God?]…
Verse 19. Am I in the place of God?] These words may be understood either as a question, or an affirmative proposition. How should I take any farther notice of your transgression? I have passed it by, the matter lies now between God and you. Or, in the order of Divine providence I am now in God's place; he has furnished me with means, and made me a distributor of his bounty; I will therefore not only nourish you, but also your little ones, Ge 50:21: and therefore he spake comfortably unto them, as in Ge 45:8, telling them that he attributed the whole business to the particular providence of God rather than to any ill will or malice in them, and that, in permitting him to be brought into Egypt, God had graciously saved their lives, the life of their father, the lives of the people of Canaan, and of the Egyptians: as therefore God had honoured him by making him vicegerent in the dispensations of his especial bounty towards so many people, it was impossible he should be displeased with the means by which this was brought about.
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 vv19, 20, 24, 25 Gen 50:19. Am I in the place of God?…
Gen 50:19. Am I in the place of God? — Dare I usurp the prerogative of God, to whom it belongs to take vengeance? Or, can I do what I please with you, without God’s leave? Fear him rather than me, and upon your experience of his wonderful care of and kindness to you, be persuaded he will still befriend you, and therefore I will. Or, perhaps, in his great humility, he thought they showed him too much respect, and saith to them, in effect, as Peter to Cornelius, “Stand up; I myself also am a man.” Make your peace with God, and then you will find it an easy matter to make your peace with me.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv19, 22, 24, 25 Resist, &c. Hebrew, "Am I not subject to God;…
Resist, &c. Hebrew, "Am I not subject to God; or, Am I a God," to oppose his will. Septuagint, "I belong to the Lord." You see that your designs against me have turned to our mutual advantage. Can I, therefore, think of punishing you? Repent, and obtain pardon of God: I certainly forgive you. (Haydock) --- Thus God drew good out of the evil, in which he had no share. (St. Augustine, City of God xiv. 27; St. Chrysostom, hom. 67.)
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 vv22, 24 Joseph dwelt in Egypt--He lived eighty years after his…
Joseph dwelt in Egypt--He lived eighty years after his elevation to the chief power [see on Gen 41:46] witnessing a great increase in the prosperity of the kingdom, and also of his own family and kindred--the infant Church of God.
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 vv19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 19. Am I in the place of God —…
19. Am I in the place of God — “It is true that you have sinned, but it is not mine to punish; God is your judge and mine.” — Newhall.
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 vv19–25 19. am I in the place of God] i.e.…
19. am I in the place of God] i.e. “am I the person to punish for wrongdoing? God alone knows the hearts.” LXX mistakes the meaning, τοῦ γὰρ θεοῦ ἐγὼ εἰμί = “for do I belong to God”; Lat. num Dei possumus resistere voluntati. Symmachus is correct, μὴ γὰρ ἀντὶ θεοῦ εἰμι ἐγώ. Cf. the occurrence of the same words in Gen_30:2 and 2Ki_5:7.
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 vv19, 20, 21, 23, 24 (19) Am I in the place of God?—That is,…
(19) Am I in the place of God?—That is, am I to act as judge, and punish? Judges are sometimes in Hebrew even called God (as in Exo_21:6; Exo_22:8-9; 1Sa_2:25), as exercising His authority.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv19–24 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am…
And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?i.e. either reading the words as a question, Should I arrogate to myself what obviously belongs to Elohim, viz., the power and right of vengeance (Calvin, Kalisch, Murphy, "Speaker"s Commentary"), or the power to interfere with the purposes of God? (Keil, Rosenm or, regarding them as an assertion, I am in God"s stead, i.e. a minister to you for good (Wordsworth).
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 vv20, 21, 22, 25 Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it…
Gen_50:20
Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good
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Good out of evil:
1.
God permits evil, but from the evil He unceasingly causes good to proceed. If good were not destined to conquer evil, God would be conquered, or rather God would cease to be.
2. Since the Scriptures call us to be imitators of God, like Him we must endeavour to draw good out of evil. For believing souls there is a Divine alchemy. Its aim is to transform evil into good. Evil, considered as a trial, comes from three different sources: it comes either from God, through the afflictions of life; from men, through their animosity; from ourselves, through our fault. We may learn Divine lessons from sorrow, and lessons of wisdom from our enemies; we may even gather instruction from our faults. (E. Bersier, D. D.)
Providence:
I. BY THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD I MEAN THAT PRESERVING AND CONTROLLING SUPERINTENDENCE WHICH HE EXERCISES OVER ALL THE OPERATIONS OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, AND ALL THE ACTIONS OF MORAL AGENTS; or, as the Shorter Catechism has succinctly expressed it, His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions. That there is such a thing is clearly taught in the Word of God, is matter of daily observation, and follows naturally and necessarily from the very fact of creation. That which could be produced alone by the will of the Omnipotent can be maintained and regulated only by the same volition.
II. Advancing now another step, it will follow from the reasoning which we have just concluded THAT THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IS UNIVERSAL, having respect to every atom of creation and every incident of life. Take any critical event, either in the history of a nation or the life of an individual, and you will discover that it has depended on the coming together and co-operation of many smaller things, which, humanly speaking, might very easily have been, and indeed almost were, different. Hence there can be no watchful superintendence over those things which are confessedly important unless there be also a care over those which to men seem trivial.
III. Advancing yet another step, we may observe that THIS UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE IS CARRIED ON IN HARMONY WITH, OR RATHER PERHAPS I OUGHT TO SAY BY MEANS OF, THOSE MODES OF OPERATION WHICH WE CALL NATURAL LAWS. This is, in fact, the great miracle of Providence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish its purposes.
IV. But taking yet another step, we may lay it down as a further principle THAT GODS PROVIDENCE IS CARRIED ON FOR MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ENDS. There is a retributive element in the workings of Providence. We see, we cannot but see, that idleness is followed by rags, intemperance by disease, dishonesty by suffering or dishonour, and deceit by cruelty. One cannot take up a newspaper without having that fact sternly confronting him from almost every column; and though the Nemesis may be long in overtaking the guilty, sooner or later the wrong-doer is brought low, and men are constrained to say, Verily He is a God that judgeth in the earth. Thus in the universe of God the moral and the physical go hand in hand, and still the law is vindicated in morals as in the fields of the agriculturist: Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
V. But if that be so, we are prepared now to put the copestone on the pyramid of our discourse by saying THAT THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD CONTEMPLATES THE HIGHEST GOOD OF THOSE WHO ARE ON THE SIDE OF HOLINESS AND TRUTH. All things work together for good to them who love God. God meant it unto good. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Difficulties in providence mitigated by revelation
The sound of the words is comforting. They were spoken by a brother to his brethren, in reference to events long past, yet still vivid and present to memory and to conscience. No sorrow, and no sin, ever quite dies. No lapse of time, no length of experience, no depth of repentance, can absolutely divide the one life into two, while the person is the same, or cut off the thing that was from the thing that is. But there may come a time when even suffering--in a certain sense, when even sin--may be regarded in a light subdued and softened; when the bitterest trial of the whole life, however mingled and entangled (as most of lifes bitterest trials are) with human unkindness and human sin, shall be seen to have had in it a kind as well as a cruel intention; when the old man, or the dying man, shall be able to distinguish in the retrospect between mans part in it and Gods; saying, with the noble-hearted and saintly man who speaks in the text, As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good. The mind is staggered and astounded by the sight of the prevalence of suffering amongst beings altogether or comparatively innocent of sin. The lower you descend in the scale of being, the more unaccountable does this suffering appear to you. That a wicked man should find misery in his wickedness; that, even as the vultures gather to the carcase, so sorrow and trouble should fasten upon the evil-doer--this is to be expected, if the rule is the rule of justice. It is more difficult to understand why this punishment should extend itself to persons not implicated in the particular ill-doing; why, for example, a profligate spendthrift son should be allowed to ruin his father, or why the sins of a drunken dissolute rather should be visited upon his children (as they often are seen to be) to the third and fourth generation. Still, in these cases, as none can plead absolute innocence, a perfectly upright nature and an entirely sinless life, it seems not wholly iniquitous that there should not be an exact discrimination, in effects and consequences, between the particular sin and the general. It is when we see the overflowing of that misery which is engendered of sin upon whole classes and departments of being which have never sinned and never fallen; when we see the animal world laid under the power, and subjected to the uncontrolled tyranny, of a race called rational, but employing reason, largely or chiefly, in ingenuity of sinning it is then that the heart revolts against the order of things established, and finds it most of all difficult to understand in what possible sense the text can have an application here, But God meant it unto good. Now, the difficulty, though it must ever press, and press heavily, upon thoughtful men, is evidently much lightened by the suggestions of revelation, as to a coming time of refreshing and restoration, when these innocent ones shall cease to suffer, and the whole creation, now groaning and travailing, shall be delivered, as St. Paul writes, evidently (to careful students of the passage) with reference not only or chiefly to the human creation, into the glorious liberty, into the liberty belonging to and accompanying the glory, of the children of God. There may be much that is unexplained--a dark fringe and border of mystery must ever lie around each revelation of the unseen--still, in so far as there is revelation, there is light and there is reconciliation. With it we can believe at least that all shall be well; we can wait, without credulity, for the key and for the lamp; we can expect, and not irrationally, a day, near or far off, when the text shall receive, in this connection, its warrant and its demonstration, But God meant it unto good. There are two thoughts, besides that of the glorious rest reserved for Gods people, which bring with them, wherever they are entertained, harmony and reconciliation at once.
1. One of these is the length of the Divine vision. A thousand years are with the Lord as one day. He sees, it is written again, the end from the beginning. God meant it unto good--yea, the loftiest good and the most durable of all--if He taught one soul, by the unroofing or the unbuilding of its home here, the comparative, the superlative importance of a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. If when He severed from you, by death or banishment or (sadder still) alienation, that friend who was your life, He thus made you look onward towards heaven, or upward towards Himself; if He strongly, sharply, roughly, rudely rebuked your tendency to make man your trust, and to hew out for yourself broken cisterns which can hold no living water--was it not unto good? Or if, by a more conspicuous visitation of one of His four sore judgments, He should at last teach a frivolous though gallant nation that by Him alone counsels are established, by Him alone republics, like kings, govern, and that without Him there is neither strength nor permanence, was not this too meant unto good? Learn of God the length of His vision; learn not to weigh with the light weights and false balances of time, but with that shekel of the sanctuary which is the recollection of eternity, and you will find no cause to impugn Gods wisdom or Gods justice in the arrangements of His providence, whether as concerning men or nations. You will say, He hath done all things well; and even when He seems to provoke the prophets question, Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? you will be able also to answer it in the end, out of a full heart and a firm conviction, But He meant it unto good.
2. The other thought which suggests itself as tending powerfully towards the justification of the ways of God is that of the largeness of the Divine view. It differs in some respects from the former, as the breadth differs from the length of the vision. It has special reference to those dealings in which sin is concerned. No reflection, because no revelation, reconciles the true heart to the existence of evil. That mystery lies still in its darkness. We fret and we struggle against it in vain. But that mystery is not one of Gods mysteries. Gods secrets are always secrets told. You will find no instance in Scripture of the term mystery applied to things incomprehensible. Gods mysteries, indicoverable to human search, are apprehensible, when revealed, to human faith. The existence of evil is no mystery, because it is a fact; the origin of evil is no mystery, in Gods sense, because it is not revealed. But, evil being recognized as a fact and unexplained as a secret, the question which remains is all-practical, and the text forces it upon our attention--Is there any sense in which God has to do with it? any sense in which God, in His mercy and compassion, deigns to use it as His instrument unto good? Does He merely threaten it with judgment present and to come? Or does He, as the text seems to say, coerce and even rule it for the welfare of His children? We would tread warily on this perilous ground; yet firmly too, under the guidance of the Holy One. We say that even sin is made, in some sense, to confess and to glorify God. The sin of these men addressed in the text was made to save life. The sin of the murderers of the great Antitype of this saint was made to save souls. Yes, we cannot evade the conclusion, As for you, ye thought evil, but God meant it unto good. And it gives a very magnificent, however incomplete, conception of the greatness and goodness of God, that He forces even this inexplicable, this adverse existence, this sin which He hates, into subserviency to the good of His redeemed. (Dean Vaughan.)
Gods providence
In the ancient city of Chester, which is one of the few links connecting the world of this nineteenth century with the age of the Roman rule in Great Britain, there is an old building, which some of you, perhaps, have seen, having these words engraved on the lintel of the door; Gods providence is mine exheritance. It is said that when the plague last visited the city that was the only house which escaped the visitation, and so its inmates sculptured these words upon it as a record of their gratitude. I trust that Gods providence was the heritage of many who died as really as of those who were preserved. But the Christian may always adopt that inscription as his own. Gods providence is his inheritance, and is so as much and as really when he is suffering calamity or enduring persecution as when he is prosperous and honoured. Friends, if we could but believe that, how much of the bitterness would be taken out of our trials! (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Gods providential care
In Palestine and Asia Minor the winter of 1873-4 was unusually severe. The snow lay at one time from two to five feet deep in the streets and on the flat roofs of the houses. Many roofs were crushed, and many houses fell in ruins under the unwonted burden. In Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, thirteen houses were thus prostrated. In Gaza, where of old the temple of Dagon fell and slew Samson and three thousand of the Philistines, the following remarkable incident occurred in connection with the great snowstorm of February 7th and 8th:--A robber during the night broke into the house. After having collected several articles on the lower floor, he entered the chamber where the master of the house was peacefully sleeping. His little child was also asleep in his cradle. The robber reflected that he might be betrayed by the child, so he took the cradle and set it outside of the house near the door. The child began to cry. The mother hastens to the cradle, but finds it gone. The child kept on crying. The father awoke and exclaimed, The child is crying out of doors. How can that be? They both hasten to the cradle, wondering who could have taken it out. While they are wondering and speculating on the strange circumstance, the roof, pressed under the burden, falls, and in a moment their house is in ruins. But they are all three unharmed. In the morning, when the stones and lumber were taken away, a man was found dead among the ruins. The things he had stolen were found partly sticking out of his pockets, partly tied up in a bundle on his back. Thus God and death had overtaken him. He carried out the child lest he should wake his father and mother by crying, and so, without meaning it, by the wonderful providence of God, he rescued the lives of all the family, while he himself died in his sin. How truly were the words of Joseph to his brothers fulfilled in him--Ye meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. Gods angel averted the evil which the enemy would have gladly done. It would be difficult to find a more striking instance illustrating Gods providential care--saving those whom He resolves to save, even by the agency of the wicked, whose sin He condemns; and while He employs the agency of the sinner as a means of life, visits upon him, according to his deserts, judgment and death.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v22 Gen_50:23. Of the third generation.] “Either sons belonging to,…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_50:23. Of the third generation.] “Either sons belonging to, or sons of, the third generation. If the former, then his (Joseph’s) great,—if the latter, his great-great-grandchildren.” (Alford.)—Were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.] The meaning is, that they were placed upon his knees, when new-born, for his recognition and blessing (Gen_30:3).
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Gen_50:25. Ye shall carry up my bones from hence.] The record of his burial is preserved (Exo_13:19; Jos_24:32). It was at Shechem.—
Gen_50:26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt] “The mummy of Joseph was put, as was the duty of the embalmers, in a chest of wood, such as may be seen in our museums to this day.” (Alford.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_50:22-26
DYING JOSEPH
I. Satisfied with the goodness of the Lord. He had his misfortunes, his days of evil; but they were the consequences of his integrity, not of his sin. The “evil report” carried to his father, though prompted by a sense of duty, was the occasion of his slavery. His invincible purity was the cause of his imprisonment. Yet his career was, on the whole marked by success. “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man.” For eighty years he lived as prime minister of Egypt, and died at the age of an hundred and ten years. “He saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.” He had seen the goodness of the Lord in a long life, an honoured old age, and a prosperous family. The morning of his life was clouded, but the clouds had passed away, and his evening sky is pure.
II. Full of faith. He was one of those heroes of faith commended in Hebrews 11. His faith made him,
1. Sure of God’s Covenant. “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.” (Gen_50:24.) But, how did Joseph know that his people would ever quit Egypt? We answer, by faith. He trusted in God. He had in his soul the sure conviction of things not seen. Faith looks to the future, but, at the same time, gives to that future a substantial existence; so that the soul is conscious of a higher and more perfect state of things than that which surrounds it here. Joseph was sure of that covenant which promised deliverance and the possession of the good land. Faith made him,
2. Superior to the world. Joseph was an illustration of St. Paul’s words, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” His dying words show that, after all, he was very little at home in Egypt, though, to all outward appearance, he was one of its people. He bore an Egyptian name—a high sounding title. He married an Egyptian woman of rank. But he was still an Israelite at heart, with all the convictions, aims, and hopes of his nation. The pomp and state in which he lived afforded him no true rest for his heart and soul. Prime Minister of Egypt as he was, his last words open a window in his soul, and declare how little he belonged to that state of things in which he had been content to live. He was content to feel and know, that like his fathers, he was but a stranger and a sojourner. Dying, he said, “Carry up my bones from hence.” His faith made him superior to the world in which he lived and moved. He passed the time of his sojourning there as an alien; for his true home and all his desire was the Promised Land. And faith ought to produce such effects in us. The believer is not of this world. His true home is on high. His “life is hid with Christ in God.” The centre of his interest is changed from earth to heaven. His faith also made him,
3. The possessor of immortality. His commandment concerning his bones may have been dictated by a natural instinct. We cherish a feeling that, somehow, after death, our bodies still remain part of ourselves. Our ideas of existence are all associated with material substance and form. Joseph may also have been influenced by a natural desire that his grave should not be among strangers, but among his own kindred. When old Barzillai was offered by the king to spend the remnant of his age in the palace at Jerusalem, he said—“Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and my mother.” (2Sa_19:37.) But whatever other motives Joseph had, this is certain, that he believed in God’s covenant promise and claimed his share in it. God had proclaimed Himself to the patriarchs as their God. His covenant relation to them implied a life beyond the grave. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Men who stand so with God can never really die. The soul that has once looked up, by faith, into the face of its unseen Father, cannot be left in the grave. The patriarchs still exist. They are before God, and beneath His eye. While they were living here they may have wandered far in sin, darkness, and error. They may have served other gods, as Abraham did before he was called to the life of faith; but the one true God, who is the Judge of all, is their God now. Joseph felt that within him which triumphed over death. All was failing him on earth, but his faith held on to God. When his brethren stood around his dying bed, they could not help fearing that when this powerful prince was gone, disaster must fall upon their people. But the dying man lays firm hold upon the promise, that word of God which cannot pass away. “I die,” he says, but “God will surely visit you.” He is not going to die. He lives on for ever to be the portion and strength of his people when their heart and flesh fail.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_50:22-23. If children’s children are the glory of old men, they were so in a very eminent degree to Joseph, who was assured that the blessings of Divine goodness should descend upon his head in the persons of his descendants.—(Bush.)
Gen_50:24. It is clear that when Joseph was dying, his thoughts were not engrossed by his own concerns, although he was on the borders of the everlasting world. His mind was at perfect ease concerning his own state; but he did what he could to console the hearts of his brethren, and of all his father’s house, whom his death was depriving of their last earthly friend. He does not refer them to any new discoveries made to himself, but to the well-known promise made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. When there was no written word of God, His afflicted people found a sufficient ground for their faith and hope in the sure promises handed down from father to son. How superior are our privileges, who enjoy that precious volume filled with promises as the heaven is with stars.—(Bush.)
That is the best thought of death, to remember the promise of God and His gracious redemption.—(Lange).
Gen_50:25. Joseph saw, by that creative faith, his family in prosperity, even in affluence; but he felt that this was not their rest. A higher life than that of affluence, a nobler destiny than that of stagnant rest, there must be for them in the future; else all the anticipations of a purer earth, and a holier world, which imagination bodied forth within his soul, were empty dreams, not the intuitions of God’s Spirit. It was this idea of perfection, which was “the substance of things hoped for,” that carried him far beyond the period of his own death, and made him feel himself a partaker of his nation’s blessed future. They who have lived as Joseph lived, just in proportion to their purity and unselfishness, must believe in immortality. They cannot but believe it. The eternal existence is already pulsing in their veins; the life of trust and high hope, and sublime longings after perfection, with which the decay of the frame has nothing at all to do. That is gone—yes—but it was not that life in which they lived; and when it finished, what had that ruin to do with the destruction of the immortal? Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. “Christ in you” is “the hope of glory.”—(Robertson).
Gen_50:26. We collect from this a hint of the resurrection of the body. The Egyptian mode of sepulture was by embalming; and the Hebrews, too, attached much importance to the body after death. Joseph commanded his countrymen to preserve his bones to take away with them. In this we detect that unmistakable human craving, not only for immortality, but immortality associated with a form. The Egyptians had a kind of feeling, that while the mummy lasted, the man had not yet perished from earth. Christianity does not disappoint, but rather meets that feeling. It grants to the materialist, by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that future life shall be associated with a material form. It grants to the spiritualist all he ought to wish, that the spirit shall be free from evil. For it is a mistake of ultra spiritualism to connect degradation with the thought of a risen body; or to suppose that a mind, unbound by the limitations of space, is a more spiritual idea of resurrection than the other. The opposite to spirituality is not materialism, but sin; the form of matter does not degrade.—(Robertson).
It all ends with the coffin, the mourning for the dead, the funeral procession, and the glance into the future life. The age of promise is over; there follows now a silent chasm of four hundred years, until out of the rushes of the Nile there is lifted up a weeping infant in a little reed-formed ark. The age of law begins, which endures for fifteen hundred years. Then in Bethlehem—Ephratah is there born another infant, and with him begins the happy time, the day of light, and quickening grace.—(Krummacher.)
The sacred writer here takes leave of the chosen family, and closes the Bible of the sons of Israel. It is truly a wonderful book. It lifts the veil of mystery that hangs over the present condition of the human race. It records the origin and fall of man, and thus explains the co-existence of moral evil and a moral sense, and the hereditary memory of God and judgment in the soul of man. It gradually unfolds the purpose and method of grace through a deliverer who is successively announced the seed of the woman, of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. So much of this plan of mercy is revealed from time to time to the human race as comports with the progress they have made in the education of the intellectual, moral, and active faculties. This only authentic epitome of primeval history is worthy of the constant study of intelligent and responsible man.—(Murphy.)
THE END.
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 On v25
Genesis
A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING
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JOSEPH’S FAITH
Gen 50:25.
This is the one act of Joseph’s life which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews selects as the sign that he too lived by faith. ‘By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.’
It was at once a proof of how entirely he believed God’s promise, and of how earnestly he longed for its fulfilment. It was a sign too of how little he felt himself at home in Egypt, though to outward appearance he had become completely one of its people. The ancestral spirit was in him true and strong though he was ‘separate from his brethren.’ He bore an Egyptian name, a swelling title, he married an Egyptian woman, he had an Egyptian priest for father-in-law, but he was an Israelite in heart; and in the midst of official cares and a surfeit of honours, his desires turned away from them all towards the land promised by God to his fathers.
And when he lay dying, he could not bear to think that his bones should moulder in the country where his life had been spent. ‘I know that this is not our land after all; swear to me that when the promise that has tarried so long comes at last, you will take me, all that is left of me, and carry it up, and lay it in some corner of the blessed soil, that I too may somehow share in the inheritance of His people. God shall surely visit you. Carry my bones up hence.’
Perhaps there is in this wish a trace of something besides faith in God’s promises. Of course, there is a natural sentiment which no clearness of knowledge of a future state wholly dispels. We all feel as if somehow our bodies remain a part of ourselves even after death, and we have wishes where they shall lie. But perhaps Joseph had a more definite belief on the matter than that. What theory of another life does an Egyptian mummy express? Why all that sedulous care to preserve the poor relics? Was it not a consequence of the belief that somehow or other there could be no life without a body, and that in some mysterious way the preservation of that contributed to the continuance of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and put into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the land of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry him thither. Be that as it may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation of flesh and spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too possess, that our graves may not be among strangers, but beside our father’s and our mother’ s-that is not the main thing in this fact. The main thing is that this dying man believed God’s promise, and claimed his share in it.
And on this the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was, fastens. Neglecting the differences in knowledge between Joseph and the Christians whom he addresses, and pointing back to the strong confidence in God and longing for participation in the promises which brightened the glazing eye and gave him ‘hope in his death,’ he declares that the principle of action which guided this man in the dim twilight of early revelation, is that same faith which ought to guide us who live in the full light of the unsetting sun.
Taking, then, this incident, with the New Testament commentary upon it, it leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of, but which is indispensable if we would understand the relations of the earlier and later days.
1. Faith is always the same, though knowledge varies.-There is a vast difference between a man’s creed and a man’s faith. The one may vary, does vary within very wide limits; the other remains the same. The things believed have been growing from the beginning-the attitude of mind and will by which they have been grasped has been the same from the beginning, and will be the same to the end. And not only so, but it will be substantially the same in heaven as it is on earth. For there is but one bond which unites men to God; and that emotion of loving trust is one and the same in the dim twilight of the world’s morning, and amid the blaze of the noonday of heaven. The contents of faith, that on which it relies, the treasure it grasps, changes; the essence of faith, the act of reliance, the grasp which holds the treasure, does not change.
It is difficult to decide how much Joseph’s gospel contained. From our point of view it was very imperfect. The spiritual life was nourished in him and in the rest of ‘the world’s grey fathers’ on what looks to us but like seven basketsful of fragments. They had promises, indeed, in which we, looking at them with the light of fulfilment blazing upon them, can see the broad outlines of the latest revelation, and can trace the future flower all folded together and pale in the swelling bud. But we shall err greatly if we suppose, as we are apt to do, that those promises were to them anything like what they are to us. It requires a very vigorous exercise of very rare gifts to throw ourselves back to their position, and to gain any vivid and approximately accurate notion of the theology of these ancient lovers of God.
This, at any rate, we may, perhaps, say: they had a sure and clear knowledge of the living God, who had talked with them as with a friend; they knew His inspiring, guiding presence; they knew the forgiveness of sins; they knew, though they very dimly understood, the promise, ‘In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ How far they looked across the gulf of death and beheld anything-even cloudland-on the other side, is a question very hard to answer, and about which confident dogmatism, either affirmative or negative, is unwarranted. But it is to be remembered that, whether they had any notion of a future state or no, they had a promise which fulfilled for them substantially the same office as that does for us. The promise of the land of Canaan gleaming before them through the mists, bare and ‘earthly’ as it seems to us when compared with our hope of an inheritance incorruptible in the heavens, is, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, identified with that hope of ours, for he expressly says that, whilst they were looking for an earthly Canaan, they were ‘desiring a better country, that is an heavenly.’ So that, whether they definitely expected a life after death or not, the anticipation of the land promised to them and to their fathers held the same place in their creed, and as a moral agent in their lives, which the rest that remains for the people of God ought to do in ours.
And it is to be taken into account also that fellowship with God has in it the germ of the assurance of immortality. It seems almost impossible to suppose a state of mind in which a man living in actual communion with God shall believe that death is to end it all. Christ’s proof that immortal life was revealed in the Pentateuch, was the fact that God there called Himself the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; by which our Lord meant us to learn that men who are brought into personal relations with God can never die, that it is impossible that a soul which has looked up to the face of the unseen Father with filial love should be left in the grave, or that those who are separated to be His, as He is theirs, should see corruption. The relation once established is eternal, and some more or less definite expectation of that eternity seems inseparable from the consciousness of the relation.
But be that as it may, and even taking the widest possible view of the contents of the patriarchal creed, what a rude outline it looks beside ours! Can there be anything in common between us? Can they be in any way a pattern for us? Yes; as I said, faith is one thing, creed is another. Joseph and his ancestors were joined to God by the very same bond which unites us to Him. There has never been but one path of life: ‘They trusted God and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ In that Old Covenant the one thing needful was trust in the living Jehovah. In the New, the one thing needful is the very same emotion, directed to the very same Lord, manifested now and incarnate in the divine Son, our Saviour. In this exercise of loving confidence, in which reason and will and affection blend in the highest energy and holiest action, Joseph and we are one. Across the gulf of centuries we clasp hands; and in despite of all superficial differences of culture and civilisation, and all deeper differences in knowledge of God and His loving will, Pharaoh’s prime minister, and the English workman, and the Hindoo ryot, may be alike in what is deepest-the faith which grasps God. How all that mysterious Egyptian life fades away as we think of the fundamental identity of religious emotion then and now! It disguises our brother from us, as it did from the wandering Arabs who came to buy corn, and could not recognise in the swarthy, imperious Egyptian, with strange head-dress and unknown emblems hanging by chains of gold about his neck, the fair boy whom they had sold to the merchants. But beneath it all is the brother’s heart, fed by the same life-blood which feeds ours. He trusts in God, he expects a future because God has promised it, and, therefore, he is separated from those among whom he dwells, and knit to us in this far-off island of the sea, who so many centuries after are partakers of like precious faith.
And incomplete as his creed was, Joseph may have been a better Christian than some of us, and was so, if what he knew nourished his spiritual life more than what we know nourishes ours, and if his heart and will twined more tenaciously round the fragments of revelation which he possessed, and drew from them more support and strength than we do from the complete Gospel which we have.
Brethren, what makes us Christians is not the theology we have in our heads, but the faith and love we have in our hearts. We must, indeed, have a clear statement of truth in orderly propositions-that is, a system of dogmas-to have anything to trust to at all. There can be no saving faith in an unseen Person, except through the medium of thoughts concerning Him, which thoughts put into words are a creed. The antithesis which is often eagerly urged upon us-not doctrines, but Christ-is a very incomplete and misleading one. ‘Christ’ is a mere name, empty of all significance till it is filled with definite statements of who and what Christ is. But whilst I, for my part, believe that we must have doctrines to make Christ a reality and an object of faith to grasp at all, I would urge all the more earnestly, because I thus believe, that, when we have these doctrines, it is not the creed that saves, but the faith. We are united to Christ, not by the doctrine of His nature and work, needful as that is, but by trusting in Him as that which the doctrine declares Him to be-Redeemer, Friend, Sacrifice, Divine Lover of our souls. Let us always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have got, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character. Most of us have in our creeds principles that have no influence upon our moral and active life; and, if so, it matters not one whit how pure, how accurate, how comprehensive, how consistent, how scriptural my conceptions of the Gospel may be. If they are not powers in my soul, they only increase my responsibility and my liability to condemnation. The dry light of the understanding is of no use to anybody. You must turn your creed into a faith before it has power to bless and save.
There are hosts of so-called Christians who get no more good out of the most solemn articles of their orthodox belief than if they were heathens. What in the use of your saying that you believe in God the Father Almighty, when there is no child’s love and happy confidence in your heart? What the better are you for believing in Jesus Christ, His divine nature, His death and glory, when you have no reliance on Him, nor any least flutter of trembling love towards Him? Is your belief in the Holy Ghost of the smallest consequence, if you do not yield to His hallowing power? What does it matter that you believe in the forgiveness of sins, so long as you do not care a rush whether yours are pardoned or no? And is it anything to you or to God that you believe in the life everlasting, if all your work, and hopes, and longings are confined to ‘this bank and shoal of time’? Are you any more a Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these solemn verities? Is not your life like some secularised monastic chamber, with holy texts carved on the walls, and saintly images looking down from glowing windows on revellers and hucksters who defile its floor? Your faith, not your creed, determines your religion. Many a ‘true believer’ is a real ‘infidel.’
Thank God that the soul may be wedded to Christ, even while a very partial conception of Christ is in the understanding. The more complete and adequate the creed, indeed, the mightier and more fruitful in blessing will the faith naturally be; and every portion of the full orb of the Sun of Righteousness which is eclipsed by the shadow of our intellectual misconceptions, will diminish the light and warmth which falls upon our souls. It is no part of our duty to pronounce what is the minimum of a creed which faith needs for its object. For myself, I confess that I do not understand how the spiritual life can be sustained in its freshness and fervour, in its fulness and reality, without a belief in the divinity and saving work of Jesus Christ. But with that belief for the centre which faith grasps, the rest may vary indefinitely. All who stand around that centre, some nearer, some further off, some mazed in errors which others have cast behind them, some of them seeing and understanding more, and some less of Him and of His work-are His. He loves them, and will save them all. Knowledge varies. The faith which unites to God remains the same.
2. We may gather from this incident another consideration, namely, that Faith has its noblest office in detaching from the present.
All his life long, from the day of his captivity, Joseph was an Egyptian in outward seeming. He filled his place at Pharaoh’s court, but his dying words open a window into his soul, and betray how little he had felt that he belonged to the order of things in the midst of which he had been content to live. This man, too, surrounded by an ancient civilisation, and dwelling among granite temples and solid pyramids and firm-based sphinxes, the very emblems of eternity, confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. As truly as his ancestors who dwelt in tabernacles, like Abraham journeying with his camels and herds, and pitching his tent outside the walls of Hebron, like Isaac in the grassy plains of the South country, like Jacob keeping himself apart from the families of the land, their descendant, an heir with them of the same promise, showed that he too regarded himself as a ‘stranger and a sojourner.’ Dying, he said, ‘Carry my bones up from hence. Therefore we may be sure that, living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but on its blessed soil.
And faith will always produce just such effects. In exact proportion to its strength, that living trust in God will direct our thoughts and desires to the ‘King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.’ In proportion as our thoughts and desires are thus directed, they will be averted from what is round about us; and the more longingly our eyes are fixed on the furthest horizon, the less shall we see the flowers at our feet. To behold God pales the otherwise dazzling lustre of created brightness. They whose souls are fed with heavenly manna, and who have learned that it is their necessary food, will scent no dainties in the fleshpots of Egypt, for all their rank garlic and leeks. It is simply a question as to which of two classes of ideas occupies the thoughts, and which of two sets of affections engages the heart. If vulgar brawling and rude merrymakers fill the inn, there will be no room for the pilgrim thoughts which bear the Christ in their bosom, and have angels for their guard; and if these holy wayfarers enter, their serene presence will drive forth the noisy crowd, and turn the place into a temple. Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the solidity and definiteness which it must have, if it is to be a breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must be through their thoughts. It must become intelligible, clear, real. It must be brought out of the flickering moonlight of fancy and surmises, into the sunlight of certitude and knowledge. Dreams, and hopes, and peradventures are too unsubstantial stuff to be a bulwark against the very real, undeniable present. And such certitude is given through faith which grasps the promises of God, and twines the soul round the risen Saviour so closely that it sits with Him in heavenly places. Such certitude is given by faith alone.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must become not only an object for certain knowledge, but also for ardent wishes. The vague sense of possible evils lurking in its mysteries must be taken out of the soul, and there must come somehow an assurance that all it wraps in its folds is joy and peace. It must cease to be doubtful, and must seem infinitely desirable. Does anything but Christian faith engage the heart to love, and all the longing wishes to set towards, the things that are unseen and eternal? Where besides, then, can there be found a counterpoise weighty enough to heave up the souls that are laden with the material, and cleaving to the dust? Nowhere. The only possible deliverance from the tyrannous pressure of the trifles amidst which we live is in having the thoughts familiarised with Christ in heaven, which will dwarf all that is on earth, and in having the affections fixed on Him, which will emancipate them from the pains and sorrows that ever wait upon love of the mutable and finite creatures.
Let us remember that such deliverance from the present is the condition of all noble, joyous, pure life. It needs Christianity to effect it indeed, but it does not need Christianity to see how desirable it is, and how closely connected with whatever is lovely and of good report is this detachment from the near and the visible. A man that is living for remote objects is, in so far, a better man than one who is living for the present. He will become thereby the subject of a mental and moral discipline that will do him good. And, on the other hand, a life which has no far-off light for its guiding star, has none of the unity, of the self-restraint, of the tension, of the conscious power which makes our days noble and strong. Whether he accomplish them or fail, whether they be high or low, the man who lets future objects rule present action is in advance of others. ‘To scorn delights and live laborious days,’ which is the prerogative of the man with a future, is always best. He is rather a beast than a man, who floats lazily on the warm, sunny wavelets as they lift him in their roll, and does not raise his head high enough above them to see and steer for the solid shore where they break. But only he has found the full, controlling, blessing, quickening power that lies in the thought of the future, and in life directed by it, to whom that future is all summed in the name of his Saviour. Whatever makes a man live in the past and in the future raises him; but high above all others stand those to whom the past is an apocalypse of God, with Calvary for its centre, and all the future is fellowship with Christ, and joy in the heavens. Having these hopes, it will be our own faults if we are not pure and gentle, calm in changes and sorrows, armed against frowning dangers, and proof against smiling temptations. They are our armour-’Put on the breastplate of faith . . .and for an helmet the hope of salvation.’
A very sharp test for us all lies in these thoughts. This change of the centre of interest from earth to heaven is the uniform effect of faith. What, then, of us? On Sundays we profess to seek for a city; but what about the week, from Monday morning to Saturday night? What difference does our faith make in the current of our lives? How far are they unlike-I do not mean externally and in occupations, but in principle-the lives of men who ‘have no hope’? Are you living for other objects than theirs? Are you nurturing other hopes in your hearts, as a man may guard a little spark of fire with both his hands, to light him amid the darkness and the howling storm? Do you care to detach yourself from the world? or are you really ‘men of this world, which have their portion in this life,’ even while Christians by profession? A question which I have no right to ask, and no power to answer but for myself; a question which it concerns your souls to ask and to answer very definitely for yourselves. There is no need to preach an exaggerated and impossible abstinence from work and enjoyment in the world where God has put us, or to set up a standard ‘too high for mortal life beneath the sky.’ Whatever call there may have sometimes been to protest against a false asceticism, and withdrawing from active life for the sake of one’s personal salvation, times are changed now. What we want to-day is: ‘Come ye out and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.’ In my conscience I believe that multitudes are having the very heart of the Christian life eaten out by absorption in earthly pursuits and loves, and by the effacing of all distinction in outward life, in occupation, in recreation, in tastes and habits, between people who call themselves Christians, and people who do not care at all whether there is another world or not. There can be but little strength in our faith if it does not compel us to separation. If it has any power to do anything at all, it will certainly do that. If we are naturalised as citizens there, we cannot help being aliens here. ‘Abraham,’ says the New Testament, ‘dwelt in tabernacles, for he looked for a city.’ Just so! The tent life will always be the natural one for those who feel that their mother-country is beyond the stars. We should be like the wandering Swiss, who hear in a strange land the rude, old melody that used to echo among the Alpine pastures. The sweet, sad tones kindle home-sickness that will not let them rest. No matter where they are, or what they are doing, no matter what honour they have carved out for themselves with their swords, they throw off the livery of the alien king which they have worn, and turning their backs upon pomp and courts, seek the free air of the mountains, and find home better than a place by a foreign throne. Let us esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, and go forth to Him without the camp, for here have we no continuing city.
3. Again, we have here an instance that Faith makes men energetic in the duties of the present.
The remarks which I have been making must be completed by that consideration, or they become hurtful and one-sided. You know that common sarcasm, that Christianity degrades this present life by making it merely the portal to a better, and teaches men to think of it as only evil, to be scrambled through anyhow. I confess that I wish the sneer were a less striking contrast to what Christian people really think. But it is almost as gross a caricature of the teaching of Christianity as it is of the practice of Christians.
Take this story of Joseph as giving us a truer view of the effect on present action of faith in, and longing for, God’s future. He was, as I said, a true Hebrew all his days. But that did not make him run away from Pharaoh’s service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better worker in the passing moment, and kept him tugging away all his life at the oar, administering the affairs of a kingdom.
Of course it is so. The one thing which saves this life from being contemptible is the thought of another. The more profoundly we feel the reality of the great eternity whither we are being drawn, the greater do all things here become. They are made less in their power to absorb or trouble, but they are made infinitely greater in importance as preparations for what is beyond. When they are first they are small, when they are second they are great. When the mist lifts, and shows the snowy summits of the ‘mountains of God,’ the nearer lower ranges, which we thought the highest, dwindle indeed, but gain in sublimity and meaning by the loftier peaks to which they lead up. Unless men and women live for eternity, they are ‘merely players,’ and all their busy days ‘like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ How absurd, how monotonous, how trivial it all is, all this fret and fume, all these dying joys and only less fleeting pains, all this mill-horse round of work which we pace, unless we are, mill-horse-like, driving a shaft that goes through the wall, and grinds something that falls into ‘bags that wax not old’ on the other side. The true Christian faith teaches us that this world is the workshop where God makes men, and the next, the palace where He shows them. All here is apprenticeship and training. It is of no more value than the attitudes into which gymnasts throw themselves, but as a discipline most precious. The end makes the means important; and if we believe that God is preparing us for immortal life with Him by all our work, then we shall do it with a will: otherwise we may well be languid as we go on for thirty or forty years, some of us, doing the same trivial things, and getting nothing out of them but food, occupation of time, and a mechanical aptitude for doing what is not worth doing.
It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground. A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree-tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love, the earthly shadows of the uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work.
Remember, too, that faith will energise us for any sort of work, seeing that it raises all to one level and brings all under one sanction, and shows all as cooperating to one end. Look at that muster-roll of heroes of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and mark the variety of grades of human life represented there-statesmen, soldiers, prophets, shepherds, widow women, martyrs-all fitted for their tasks and delivered from the snare that was in their calling, by that faith which raised them above the world, and therefore fitted them to come down on the world with stronger strokes of duty. This is the secret of doing with our might whatsoever our hand finds to do-to trust Christ, to live with Him, and by the hope of the inheritance.
Then, brethren, let us see that our clearer revelation bears fruit in a faith in the great divine promises as calm and firm as this dying patriarch had. Then the same power will work not only the same detachment and energy in life, but the same calmness and solemn light of hope in death. It is very beautiful to notice how Joseph dying almost overleaps the thought of death as a very small matter. His brethren who stood by his bedside might well fear what might be the consequences to their people when the powerful protector, the prime minister of the kingdom, was gone. But the dying man has firm hold of God’s promises, and he knows that these will be fulfilled, whether he live or no. ‘I die,’ says he, ‘but God shall surely visit you. He is not going to die; and though I stand no more before Pharaoh, you will be safe.’
Thus we may contemplate our own going away, or the departure of the dearest from our homes, and of the most powerful for good in human affairs, and in the faith of God’s true promises may feel that no one is indispensable to our well-being or to the world’s good. God’s chariot is self-moving. One after another, who lays his hand upon the ropes, and hauls for a little space, drops out of the ranks. But it will go on, and in His majesty He will ride prosperously.
And for himself, too, the dying man felt that death was a very small matter. ‘Whether I live or die I shall have a share in the promise. Living, perhaps my feet would stand upon its soil; dying, my bones will rest there.’ And we, who know a resurrection, have in it that which makes Joseph’s fond fancy a reality, and reduces the importance of that last enemy to nothing. Some will be alive and remain till the coming of the Lord, some will be laid in the grave till His voice calls them forth, and carries their bones up from hence to the land of the inheritance. But whether we be of generations that fell on sleep looking for the promise of His coming, or whether of the generation that go forth to meet Him when He comes, it matters not. All who have lived by faith will then be gathered at last. The brightest hopes of the present will be forgotten. Then, when we too shall stand in the latter day, wearing the likeness of His glory, and extricated wholly from the bondage of corruption and the dust of death, we, perfected in body, soul, and spirit, shall enter the calm home, where we shall change the solitude of the desert and the transitoriness of the tent and the dangers of the journey, for the society and the stability and the security of the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v22 The Death of Joseph
The Death of Joseph
v. 22. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his father’s house. And Joseph lived an hundred and ten years, thus enjoying the love and the reverence of the Egyptians for eighty years.
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v. 23. And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation; the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph’s knees. He lived to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren, thus experiencing what it means that God shows mercy to the third and fourth generation of them that love Him and keep His commandments.
v. 24. And 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. It was his dying message, prophetical in tone, breathing his faith in the fulfillment of the divine promise, Gen 46:4-5.
v. 25. 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. Like his father, he did not want his bones to rest in strange ground, but his very burial should express his faith in the patriarchal blessing and in the Messianic promise. He was sure that the Lord would visit His people with His grace and mercy. That is the final test, if a person retains his faith until the end,
v. 26. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt, in a chest of sycamore wood such as was used to keep a mummy until the time of burial. The children of Israel kept the oath which their fathers had sworn to Joseph. When they left Egypt, they carried the mummy of Joseph along with them, Exo 13:19, and when they arrived in Canaan, they buried him in the field of Jacob at Shechem, Jos 24:32. From Joseph we learn to set our hope forward to the great Land of Promise above and patiently to await the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls.
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 vv22, 24 one hundred ten years
one hundred ten years
"110 years" (See: Numbers)
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Ephraim's children to the third generation
"Ephraim's children and grandchildren"
Machir
This is the name of Joseph's grandson. (See: How to Translate Names)
who were placed on the knees of Joseph
This expression means that Joseph adopted these children of Machir as his own children. This means they would have special inheritance rights from Joseph. (See: Idiom)
translationWords
Egypt
year
Ephraim
generation
Manasseh
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 vv19, 22, 23, 24 50:19-21 Joseph reassured his brothers that God planned to…
50:19-21 Joseph reassured his brothers that God planned to fulfill the promised blessing (cp. 45:5, 7-9), and he promised kindness and provision (cp. 45:11).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.