Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
Parallel Translations
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Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
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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.
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And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying: 'God will surely remember you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.'
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to Genesis 50:25 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Exodus 13:19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the children of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones away from here with you.”
- Joshua 24:32 They buried the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver. They became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
- Acts 7:16 and they were brought back to Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.
- Genesis 47:29-31 The time came near that Israel must die, and he called his son Joseph, and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, please put your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me. Please don’t bury me in Egypt, but when I sleep with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place.” Joseph said, “I will do as you have said.” Israel said, “Swear to me,” and he swore to him. Then Israel bowed himself on the bed’s head.
- Hebrews 11:22 By faith, Joseph, when his end was near, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.
- Genesis 50:5 ‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying. Bury me in my grave which I have dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come again.’ ”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (12 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 25. God will surely visit you. By these words…
25. God will surely visit you. By these words he intimates that they would be buried as in oblivion, so long as they remained in Egypt: and truly that exile was as if God had turned his back on them for a season. Nevertheless, Joseph does not cease to fix the eyes of his mind on God; as it is written in the Prophet,
“I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob.” (Isaiah 8:17.)
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This passage also clearly teaches what was the design of this anxious choice of his sepulcher, namely, that it might be a seal of redemption: for after he has asserted that God was faithful, and would, in his own time, grant what he had promised, he immediately adjures his brethren to carry away his bones. These were useful relics, the sight of which plainly signified that, by the death of men, the eternal covenant in which Joseph commands his posterity safely to rest, had by no means become extinct; for he deems it sufficient to adduce the oath of God, to remove all their doubts respecting their deliverance.
End of the Commentaries on the first book of Moses called Genesis.
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 He speaketh this by the spirit of prophecy, exhorting…
He speaketh this by the spirit of prophecy, exhorting his brethren to have full trust in God’s promise for their deliverance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Joseph took an oath, for the same reason which…
Joseph took an oath, for the same reason which moved Jacob to require an oath from him, Gen 47:30,31,
of the children of Israel: he saith not, of his brethren, but of Israel’s children; under which his grandchildren are comprehended, and seem principally intended here; either because his brethren were most of them dead, or rather because he knew that they were not to go out of Egypt in his brethren’s time, but in their second or third generation.
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My bones, i.e. my dead body: but he mentions only his bones, because part of his body was corrupted, and the other part, though preserved from corruption by the embalming, yet was so changed and adulterated with the spices, and other materials which they used, that it looked like another thing: only his bones remained entire and unchanged.
Quest. Why did he not desire to be presently carried thither, and buried there, as his father did?
Answ. 1. Lest he should disoblige the Egyptians, and provoke them against his brethren and children. The removal of his father thither was necessary, and forced from him by an oath, but the order for the removal of himself would have been voluntary and designed, and therefore could not have escaped the censure of an ungrateful contempt of the land of Egypt, which as it was thought good enough for him and his to live in, should have been judged so too for his burial.
2. That by these his remains his memory might be the longer and better preserved, both with the Egyptians, who for his sake might show kindness to his near relations; and with the Israelites, to whom this was a visible pledge of their deliverance, and a help to their faith, and all obligation to them to persist in the true religion.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years…
So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old,.... The exact age assigned him by Polyhistor (x), from Demetrius an Heathen. The Jewish writers (y) say, that he died the first of the twelve patriarchs, though he was the youngest of them; he died, according to Bishop Usher (z), in the year of the world 2369, and before Christ 1635:
and they embalmed him; his servants, the physicians, according to the manner of the Egyptians, and as his father Jacob had been embalmed; see Gill on Gen 50:2,
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and he was put into a coffin in Egypt; in an ark or chest, very probably into such an one in which the Egyptians had used to put dead bodies when embalmed; which Herodotus (a) calls a or chest, and which they set up against a wall: in what part of Egypt this coffin was put is not certain, it was most likely in Goshen, and in the care and custody of some of Joseph's posterity; so Leo Africanus says (b), that he was buried in Fioum, the same with the Heracleotic nome, supposed to be Goshen; See Gill on Gen 47:11, and was dug up by Moses, when the children of Israel departed. The Targum of Jonathan says, it was sunk in the midst of the Nile of Egypt; and an Arabic writer (c) says, the corpse of Joseph was put into a marble coffin, and cast into the Nile: the same thing is said in the Talmud (d), from whence the story seems to be taken, and where the coffin is said to be a molten one, either of iron or brass; which might arise, as Bishop Patrick observes, from a mistake of the place where such bodies were laid; which were let down into deep wells or vaults, and put into a cave at the bottom of those wells, some of which were not far from the river Nile; and such places have been searched for mummies in late times, where they have been found, and the coffins and clothes sound and incorrupt. And so some of the Jewish writers say (e) he was buried on the banks of the river Sihor, that is, the Nile; but others (f) say he was buried in the sepulchre of the kings, which is much more likely.
(x) Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 21. p. 425. (y) Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 4. 1. & T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 13. 2. (z) Annalea Vet. Test. A. M. 2369. (a) Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 86, 91. (b) Descriptio Africae, l. 8. p. 722. (c) Patricides, p. 24. apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. c. 8. p. 379. (d) T. Bab. Sotah, c. 1. fol. 13. 1. (e) Sepher Hajaschar, p. 118. apud Wagenseil Sotah, p. 300. (f) In T. Bab. Sotah, ut supra. (c. 1. fol. 13.1.)
Next: Exodus Introduction
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 And ye shall carry up my bones from hence…
And ye shall carry up my bones from hence - Herein he had an eye to the promise, chap. xv, 13, 14, and in God's name assures them of the performance of it. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably, and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a plain burial in Canaan, and that deferred almost two hundred 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. xi, 22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake, that God will surely visit Israel, and bring them to Canaan.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 25. Ye shall carry up my bones] That…
Verse 25. Ye shall carry up my bones] That I may finally rest with my ancestors in the land which God gave to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and which is a pledge as it is a type of the kingdom of Heaven. Thus says the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb 11:22: "By FAITH Joseph, when he died, (τελευτων, when dying,) made mention of the departure (εξοδου, of the EXODUS) of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. From this it is evident that Joseph considered all these things as typical, and by this very commandment expressed his faith in the immortality of the soul, and the general resurrection of the dead. This oath, by which Joseph then bound his brethren, their posterity considered as binding on themselves; and Moses took care, when he departed from Egypt, to carry up Joseph's body with him, Ex 13:19; which was afterwards buried in Shechem, Jos 24:32, the very portion which Jacob had purchased from the Amorites, and which he gave to his son Joseph, Gen 48:22; Ac 7:16. See the reason for this command as given by Chrysostom, vol. ii., p. 695, sec. D.E.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Gen 50:25. And ye shall carry up my bones…
Gen 50:25. And ye shall carry up my bones from hence — Herein he had an eye to the promise, (Gen 15:13-14,) and in God’s name assures them of the performance of it. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably, and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a plain burial in Canaan, and that deferred almost two hundred 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.
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 Embalmed, like the Egyptian momies, or mummies, which is…
Embalmed, like the Egyptian momies, or mummies, which is a Persian word, signifying a dried corpse. Some of them are very magnificent, adorned with golden letters and hieroglyphics, various bandages, &c. They are laid in coffins. Some pretend that Joseph was afterwards adored in Egypt, under the names of Serapis and Osiris: but the grounds of this supposition are only a few uncertain etymologies and emblems, which might agree with him as well as with those modern deities: (Calmet) at least it does not at all appear probable, that he was adored in Egypt before the departure of the Israelites, as the king who persecuted them did not know Joseph, Exodus i. 8. His greatest glory was, to have prefigured Jesus Christ in so wonderful a manner during the course of his life, and to have been replenished with all the graces which could form the character of a great man and a saint. Some think, that the history of Joseph has been imitated in the fable of Proteus, or Cetes, king of Egypt. See the True History of Fabulous Times, by Juerin du Roche, a virtuous and learned ecclesiastic, who ws put to death for his faith, at Paris, September 8, 1792. See also Rollin’s Abridgment. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 25. Joseph took an oath of the children of…
25. Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel — “He could have commanded them to carry his body immediately to Canaan, as he had already carried that of Israel there; but he commanded that it should stand swathed in its mummy bands, in the sepulchral chamber, waiting for the time of its burial in their true national home. The Egyptians were accustomed to keep the mummies of their friends standing for some time, before final burial, in a small room attached to the tomb, whence it was often brought forth to receive priestly benedictions. Wilkinson. Thus, after his death the body of Joseph constantly exhorted and inspirited Israel to remember God’s covenant with their fathers.” — 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 25. Joseph took an oath] The fulfilment of this…
25. Joseph took an oath] The fulfilment of this oath and Joseph’s burial at Shechem, in the land of Ephraim, are duly recorded in Exo_13:19; Jos_24:32. For these dying words of Joseph, cf. Heb_11:22, “by faith Joseph, when his end was nigh, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.” As Jacob, his father, had done, Joseph forewarns his kindred that the day of the Exodus would come.
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.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel,…
Gen_50:25
Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence
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Josephs faith in God
This is the one act of Josephs life which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews selects as the sign that he too lived by faith.
It was at once a proof of how entirely he believed Gods promise, and of how earnestly he longed for its fulfilment. It was a sign 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. This incident, with the New Testament commentary on it, leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of.
I. FAITH IS ALWAYS THE SAME, THOUGH KNOWLEDGE VARIES. There is a vast difference between a mans creed and a mans faith. The one may vary-does vary within very wide limits; the other remains the same. What makes a Christian is not theology in the head, but faith and love in the heart. The dry light of the understanding is of no use to anybody. Our creed must be turned into a faith before it has power to bless and save.
II. 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 Pharaohs 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 which he had been content to live. He too confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. Dying, he said, Carry my bones up from hence. Living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but upon its blessed soft. Faith will produce just such effects. 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? 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.
III. FAITH MAKES MEN ENERGETIC IN THE DUTIES OF THE PRESENT. Joseph was a true Hebrew all his days; but that did not make him run away from Pharaohs service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better worker in the passing moment. True Christian faith teaches us that this is the workshop where God makes men, and the next the palace where He shows them. The end makes the means important. 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. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Josephs instructions as to the disposal of his body:
To keep alive among them the truth that they were yet to go to Canaan, and to preserve in the midst of them the evidence of his faith that they should ultimately possess that land, he left his body, embalmed, yet unburied, among them, with the instruction that when they did go, they should take it along with them. They say that at the feasts of Egypt it was usual to bring a mummy to the table, that the guests might be reminded thereby of their mortality. But Joseph here left his coffined body to his people, that by its presence among them, and preservation by them, they might never forget that Egypt was not their final resting-place--their national home--and might be stimulated to hold themselves in constant readiness to arise and go to their own land. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The fulfilment of Josephs request as to his body:
How was this request of Josephs fulfilled? Read with me these two passages, and you will see: And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you (Exo_13:19). It was a terrible night. The destroying angel had passed through Egypt and laid low the first-born, in every household. The panic-stricken Pharaoh had ordered the Israelites away at once, and they started in great haste. Yet even in that crisis they did not forget the descending obligation of the oath which their fathers had sworn to Joseph, and they took time to carry with them his remains. Read again: And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver; and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph (Jos_24:32). Thus, between the death and burial of Joseph an interval of probably from three to four hundred years elapsed, during all of which his remains were kept by the children of Israel, a witness to the faith by which he was animated, and a prophecy of their ultimate possession of the land of Canaan, so that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had a right to say, By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones (Heb_11:22). (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Dying orders:
The narrative reminds us of the memorable orders given by Lord Nelson when dying. As his comrades raised him from the deck where he had fallen after receiving the fatal wound, he exclaimed, I die. On his way to the cabin, whither they immediately conveyed him, his observant eye perceived that the tiller ropes had been shot away. Still interested in circumstances from which he was soon to take a final departure, he instantly gave the order, Replace the ropes. Laid upon a cot, he said to the attendant surgeon, Leave me; render aid to those who can be profited by it. Entertaining the same twofold conviction he entertained when he issued the order for battle--victory for England, death for Nelson--he lay calmly awaiting the anticipated result. Thinking, apparently, of the signal which for the encouragement of his soldiers he had exhibited from the mast-head as the two fleets came within range--England expects every man to do his duty to-day he whispered, I have done my duty. As Hardy, the captain of the ship, reported, The victory is complete, he slowly raised himself upon his arm to give his last order: Bring the fleet to anchor to-night. When reminded that this duty would devolve upon another, he sternly exclaimed, Hardy, obey my order; anchor to-night. Obedience to that dying order might have saved many a dismantled ship and hundreds of lives. But when the winds which scattered and nearly wrecked Englands victorious navy were howling through the torn rigging and sinking one disabled ship after another, the voice which gave this needed order, and could have enforced it, was silent in death. Nelsons last energies were expended in giving a command in the interests of a nation whose honour he had died in defending: a command which he hoped would be obeyed after his death, though it might call for the surrender of present advantages in the anticipation of future security. Believing fully that a severe storm was pending, he gave an order which, though it could be of no value to him, might prove, if obeyed, an inestimable blessing to those who should survive him, and might save Englands victorious fleet. In this incident three facts are especially worthy of note, as having a parallel in the dying words of Joseph: the conviction that he stood by deaths river, that victory awaited his countrymen, that they needed an order which should be obeyed after his death. (J. S. Van Dyke.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
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.