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Genesis Chapter
Thirty-seven
Genesis 37
Chapter Contents
Joseph is loved of Jacob, but hated by his brethren.
(1-4) Joseph's dreams. (5-11) Jacob sends Joseph to visit his brethren, They
conspire his death. (12-22) Joseph's brethren sell him. (23-10) Jacob deceived,
Joseph sold to Potiphar. (31-36)
Commentary on Genesis 37:1-4
In Joseph's history we see something of Christ, who was
first humbled and then exalted. It also shows the lot of Christians, who must
through many tribulations enter into the kingdom. It is a history that has none
like it, for displaying the various workings of the human mind, both good and
bad, and the singular providence of God in making use of them for fulfilling
his purposes. Though Joseph was his father's darling, yet he was not bred up in
idleness. Those do not truly love their children, who do not use them to
business, and labour, and hardships. The fondling of children is with good
reason called the spoiling of them. Those who are trained up to do nothing, are
likely to be good for nothing. But Jacob made known his love, by dressing
Joseph finer than the rest of his children. It is wrong for parents to make a
difference between one child and another, unless there is great cause for it,
by the children's dutifulness, or undutifulness. When parents make a
difference, children soon notice it, and it leads to quarrels in families.
Jacob's sons did that, when they were from under his eye, which they durst not
have done at home with him; but Joseph gave his father an account of their ill
conduct, that he might restrain them. Not as a tale-bearer, to sow discord, but
as a faithful brother.
Commentary on Genesis 37:5-11
God gave Joseph betimes the prospect of his advancement,
to support and comfort him under his long and grievous troubles. Observe,
Joseph dreamed of his preferment, but he did not dream of his imprisonment.
Thus many young people, when setting out in the world, think of nothing but
prosperity and pleasure, and never dream of trouble. His brethren rightly
interpreted the dream, though they abhorred the interpretation of it. While
they committed crimes in order to defeat it, they were themselves the
instruments of accomplishing it. Thus the Jews understood what Christ said of
his kingdom. Determined that he should not reign over them, they consulted to
put him to death; and by his crucifixion, made way for the exaltation they
designed to prevent.
Commentary on Genesis 37:12-22
How readily does Joseph wait his father's orders! Those
children who are best beloved by their parents, should be the most ready to
obey them. See how deliberate Joseph's brethren were against him. They thought
to slay him from malice aforethought, and in cold blood. Whosoever hateth his
brother is a murderer, 1 John 3:15. The sons of Jacob hated their
brother because their father loved him. New occasions, as his dreams and the
like, drew them on further; but this laid rankling in their hearts, till they
resolved on his death. God has all hearts in his hands. Reuben had most reason
to be jealous of Joseph, for he was the first-born; yet he proves his best
friend. God overruled all to serve his own purpose, of making Joseph an
instrument to save much people alive. Joseph was a type of Christ; for though
he was the beloved Son of his Father, and hated by a wicked world, yet the
Father sent him out of his bosom to visit us in great humility and love. He
came from heaven to earth to seek and save us; yet then malicious plots were
laid against him. His own not only received him not, but crucified him. This he
submitted to, as a part of his design to redeem and save us.
Commentary on Genesis 37:23-30
They threw Joseph into a pit, to perish there with hunger
and cold; so cruel were their tender mercies. They slighted him when he was in
distress, and were not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, see Amos 6:6; for when he was pining in the pit,
they sat down to eat bread. They felt no remorse of conscience for the sin. But
the wrath of man shall praise God, and the remainder of wrath he will restrain,
Psalm 76:10. Joseph's brethren were wonderfully
restrained from murdering him, and their selling him as wonderfully turned to
God's praise.
Commentary on Genesis 37:31-36
When Satan has taught men to commit one sin, he teaches
them to try to conceal it with another; to hide theft and murder, with lying
and false oaths: but he that covers his sin shall not prosper long. Joseph's
brethren kept their own and one another's counsel for some time; but their
villany came to light at last, and it is here published to the world. To grieve
their father, they sent him Joseph's coat of colours; and he hastily thought,
on seeing the bloody coat, that Joseph was rent in pieces. Let those that know
the heart of a parent, suppose the agony of poor Jacob. His sons basely
pretended to comfort him, but miserable, hypocritical comforters were they all.
Had they really desired to comfort him, they might at once have done it, by
telling the truth. The heart is strangely hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Jacob refused to be comforted. Great affection to any creature prepares for so
much the greater affliction, when it is taken from us, or made bitter to us:
undue love commonly ends in undue grief. It is the wisdom of parents not to
bring up children delicately, they know not to what hardships they may be
brought before they die. From the whole of this chapter we see with wonder the
ways of Providence. The malignant brothers seem to have gotten their ends; the
merchants, who care not what they deal in so that they gain, have also obtained
theirs; and Potiphar, having got a fine young slave, has obtained his! But
God's designs are, by these means, in train for execution. This event shall end
in Israel's going down to Egypt; that ends in their deliverance by Moses; that
in setting up the true religion in the world; and that in the spread of it
among all nations by the gospel. Thus the wrath of man shall praise the Lord,
and the remainder thereof will he restrain.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Genesis》
Genesis 37
Verse 2
[2]
These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was
feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah,
and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his
father their evil report.
These are the generations of Jacob — It is not a barren genealogy, as those of Esau, but a memorable useful
history.
Joseph brought to his father their evil
report — Jacob's sons did that when they were from
under his eye, which they durst not have done if they had been at home with
him; but Joseph gave his father an account of their ill carriage, that he might
reprove and restrain them.
Verse 3
[3] Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son
of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
He made him a coat of divers colours - Which
probably was significant of farther honours intended him.
Verse 5
[5] And
Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the
more.
Though he was now very young, about seventeen
years old, yet he was pious and devout, and this fitted him for God's gracious
discoveries to him. Joseph had a great deal of trouble before him, and
therefore God gave him betimes this prospect of his advancement, to support and
comfort him.
Verse 8
[8] And
his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed
have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for
his words.
Shalt thou indeed reign over us? — See here, 1. How truly they interpreted his dream? The event exactly
answered this interpretation, Genesis 42:6, etc. 2. How scornfully they
resented it, Shalt thou that art but one, reign over us that are many? Thou
that art the youngest, over us that are elder? The reign of Jesus Christ, our
Joseph, is despised and striven against by an unbelieving world, who cannot
endure to think that this man should reign over them. The dominion also of the
upright in the morning of the resurrection is thought of with the utmost
disdain.
Verse 10
[10] And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked
him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and
thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the
earth?
His father rebuked him — Probably to lessen the offence which his brethren would take at it; yet
he took notice of it more than he seemed to do.
Verse 18
[18] And
when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired
against him to slay him.
And when they saw him afar off they conspired
against him — It was not in a heat, or upon a sudden
provocation, that they thought to slay him, but from malice propense, and in
cold blood.
Verse 21
[21] And
Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not
kill him.
And Reuben heard it —
God can raise up friends for his people, even among their enemies. Reuben of
all the brothers had most reason to be jealous of Joseph, for he was the
first-born, and so entitled to those distinguishing favours which Jacob was
conferring on Joseph, yet he proves his best friend. Reuben's temper seems to
have been soft and effeminate, which had betrayed him to the sin of
uncleanness, while the temper of the two next brothers, Simeon and Levi, was
fierce, which betrayed them to the sin of murder, a sin which Reuben startled
at the thought of. He made a proposal which they thought would effectually
destroy Joseph, and yet which he designed should answer his intention of
rescuing Joseph out of their hands, probably hoping thereby to recover his
father's favour which he had lately lost; but God over-ruled all to serve his
own purpose of making Joseph an instrument to save much people alive. Joseph
was here a type of Christ. Though he was the beloved Son of his Father, and
hated by a wicked world; yet the Father sent him out of his bosom to visit us;
he came from heaven to earth to seek and save us; yet then malicious plots were
laid against him; he came to his own, and his own not only received him not,
but consulted, This is the heir, come let us kill him. This he submitted to, in
pursuance of his design to save us.
Verse 24
[24] And
they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no
water in it.
They call him into a pit — To perish there with hunger and cold; so cruel were their tender
mercies.
Verse 25
[25] And
they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and,
behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing
spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.
They sat down to eat bread — They felt no remorse of conscience, which if they had, would have
spoiled their stomach to their meat. A great force put upon conscience commonly
stupifies it, and for the time deprives it both of sense and speech.
Verse 26
[26] And
Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and
conceal his blood?
What profit is it if we slay our brother? — It will be less guilt and more gain to sell him. They all agreed to
this. And as Joseph was sold by the contrivance of Judah for twenty pieces of
silver, so was our Lord Jesus for thirty, and by one of the same name too,
Judas. Reuben it seems, was gone away from his brethren when they sold Joseph,
intending to come round some other way to the pit, and to help Joseph out of
it. But had this taken effect, what had become of God's purpose concerning his
preferment, in Egypt? There are many devices of the enemies of God's people to
destroy them, and of their friends to help them, which perhaps are both
disappointed, as these here; but the counsel of the Lord that shall stand.
Reuben thought himself undone because the child was sold; I, whither shall I
go? He being the eldest, his father would expect from him an account of him;
but it proved they had all been undone, if he had not been sold.
Verse 35
[35] And
all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be
comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning.
Thus his father wept for him.
He refused to be comforted — He resolved to go down to the grave mourning; Great affection to any
creature doth but prepare for so much the greater affliction, when it is either
removed from us, or embittered to us: inordinate love commonly ends in
immoderate grief.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on
Genesis》
JOSEPH SOLD INTO EGYPT.
Genesis
37:28-36.
We
look at Joseph as a type of Christ, and as an illustration of the believer.
There is one point to which we draw attention, namely, the sufferings of
Joseph.
Foseph
being ill-treated by his brethren is a type of the ill-treatment that Christ
received at the hands of His brethren, and is an illustration of what we must
expect from those who are not the Lord’s.
There
are seven things that Joseph’s brethren did to him. They hated him (verse
4,5,8), they envied him (verse 11), they conspired against him (verse 18), they
were going to kill him (verse 20), they stripped him (verse 23), they cast cast
him into a pit (verse 24), and they sold him to the Ishmaelites (verse 28). All
this is typical of the treatment that Christ received from His brethren
according to the flesh.
Ⅰ.
As Joseph was hated by his brethren, so
was Christ, as He Himself says, “ They hated Me without a cause” (John
15:25). Joseph was hated because he was the special object of regard to his
father (verse 4), because of his words (verse 8), and because of his dreams,
which predicted his future glory. In like manner the Jews hated Christ. They
hated Him because of Him (John 10:30,33). They hated him because of the
faithful words He uttered, and would have cast Him down headlong ( Luke
4:28,29); and they hated Him because He spoke of His coming glory, and spit in
His face, smote Him with their hands, and condemned Him to death
(Matt.26:64-67). We must not be surprised, therefore, if the world should hate
us, for the Lord Himself has told us that this will be so (John 15:18,19), but
this is our comfort that He telleth His Father and our Father about it (John
17:14).
Ⅱ.
As Joseph was envied by his brethren (
Gen.37:11), even so was Christ. The
Roman ruler, Pilate, saw very plainly that the motive power which was actuating
the chief priests and elders when they brought Christ before him was envy
(Matt. 27:18; Mark 15:10; John 11:47,48), even as Joseph was envied by his
brethren, to which envy reference is made by the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:9). Beware
of envy, it is self-destructive. As Dr. Thomas once remarked, “ I remember
reading somewhere in a Grecian story of a man who killed himself through envy.
His fellow-citizens had reared a statue to one of their number who was a
celebrated victor in the public games. So strong was the feeling of envy which
this incited in the breast of one of the hero’s rivals that he went forth every
night in order, if possible, to destroy that monument. After repeated efforts
he moved it from its pedestal, and it fell, and in its fall crushed him. An
unintentional symbolic act was this, showing the suicidal action of envy on the
soul. It is ever an element of misery, a burning coal which comes hissing hot
from hell.”
Ⅲ.
As Joseph was conspired against (Gen.37:18),
even so was Christ. The chief
priests were continually plotting against the Lord Jesus. His teaching was a
bright light, which revealed the hollowness of their utterances, and the
unreality of their pretences, hence the reason of their ire against the Lord’s
Anointed (Matt.21:38; Mark 11:18; 12:12; Luke 19:47; 20:19). Judas was also
used as a cat’s-paw by the priests and scribes, that they might get Christ into
their power (Matt.26:16; Mark 14:11); and they cared not what means they
adopted to accomplish their diabolical purpose, for they even went the length
of bribing false witnesses against the Son of God (Matt.26:59; Mark 1:55). The
servant is not above his Lord. As Christ was conspired against, even so was the
Apostle Paul, as we read in the 23rd of the Acts. The same spirit is
also manifested against God’s people, although in a less malignant form, by the
world, but the same fire of hate lies smouldering, although it does not burst
forth into flame.
Ⅳ.
As Joseph’s brethren sought to kill him (Gen.37:20),
even so the Jews repeatedly sought the
life or Christ. The evil purpose of the Jews to murder Christ, runs through
the Gospel of John, like the black line that is often seen running across the
face of a piece of white marble. (See John 5:16,18; 7:1,11,19,25,30; 8:37,40;
10:39; 11:8,57). The pure, white, noble, holy life of Christ was in such
striking contrast to the lives of the scribes and Pharisees that they hated Him
in consequence. Thus also will the world hate the child of God who is true to
the truth of Christ with that hatred which is murder in the bud (1. John 3:15;
Matt. 5:21,22).
Ⅴ.
As Joseph was stripped of his clothes (
Gen.17:23), even so was Christ. In
the Judgment Hall He was stripped to have the scarlet robe put on Him in
mockery, and at the Cross the soldiers parted His raiment among them
(Matt.27:28,35). Verily, like the man in the parable of the Good Samaritan, He
fell among thieves, and they stripped Him of His clothes. Oh! What a sight for
angels to look upon, their Maker to be stripped, naked, bleeding, and dying
upon a cross! Many a child of God has been stripped by the bloody Inquisition
and put upon the rack, or else stripped by wild beasts in the arena at Rome.
Ⅵ.
As Joseph was made a prisoner by being
cast into the pit ( Gen.37:24), so
Christ was bound and kept in durance vile (Mark 15:1). Wonder of wonders
that Christ should condescend to be bound by man! That the creature should
imprison the Creator! The Prophet Isaiah, in speaking in general terms of the
sufferings of Christ, says “ He was taken from prison and judgment” (Isaiah
53:8). Many a servant of Christ has been cast into prison for the Gospel’s
sake, as Paul and Silas were at Philippi (Acts 16.), and as John Bunyan at
Bedford.
Ⅶ.
As Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of
silver (Gen.37:28),even so was
Christ for thirty pieces of silver sold by Judas who betrayed Him (Matt.
27:3). No one can prayerfully ponder the sufferings of Christ without being
influenced. His patience under provocation, and His whole attitude while in the
hands of wicken men are most majestic, and remind us of a noble lighthouse
around which the angry waves beat and hiss in vain. He is truly an Example for
His sake (1. Peter 2:20-22). We must not forget that we are called to suffer
for Christ, and with Him( Phil.1:29; 3:10), as well as to reign with Him; yea,
the place of glory is only reached by the path of suffering (Rom.8:17).
── F.E. Marsh《Five Hundred Bible Readings》
37 Chapter 37
Verse 1-2
Joseph
The history of Joseph
Joseph’s is one of the most interesting histories in the world.
He has the strange power of uniting our hearts to him, as to a well-beloved
friend. He had “the genius to be loved greatly,” because he had the genius to
love greatly, and his genius still lives in these Bible pages.
I. JOSEPH WAS A
HATED BROTHER. The boy was his father’s pet. Very likely he was the perfect
picture of Rachel who was gone, and so Jacob saw and loved in him his sainted
wife. In token of love his father foolishly gave him a coat of many colours, to
which, alas! the colour of blood was soon added. It was for no good reason that
his brothers hated him. Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Not
that he was a sneaking tell-tale; but he would not do as they did, nor would he
hide from his father their evil doings. God means the children of a family to
feel bound together by bands that grapple the heart, and to stand true to one
another to life’s end. Reverence the mighty ties of kindred which God has
fashioned. Joseph also teaches you never to make any one your foe without a
very good reason. The weakest whom you wrong may one day be your master.
II. JOSEPH WAS A
BLAMELESS YOUTH. Though terribly tempted, he never yielded. He was shamefully
wronged, yet he was not hardened or soured. His soul was like the oak which is
nursed into strength by storms. In his heart, not on it, he wore a talisman
that destroyed sin’s charms. The heavently plan of his piety disclosed all its
beauty, and gave out its sweet odours in the wicked palaces of Potiphar and
Pharaoh.
III. JOSEPH WAS A
FAMOUS RULER. He entered Egypt as a Hebrew slave, and became its prime
minister. He was the hero of his age, the saviour of his country, the most
successful man of his day. He became so great because he was so good; he was a
noble man because he was a thorough man of God.
IV. JOSEPH WAS A
TYPE OF CHRIST. Joseph, like Jesus, was his father’s well-beloved son, the best
of brothers, yet hated and rejected by his own; was sold from envy for a few
pieces of silver, endured a great temptation, yet without sin; was brought into
a low estate and falsely condemned; was the greatest of forgivers, the forgiver
of his own murderers; and was in all things the son and hope of Israel. (J.
Wells.)
The commencement of Joseph’s history
I. As
DISTINGUISHED BY HIS EARLY PIETY. His conduct was not back-biting, but a filial
confidential report to his father.
1. It showed his love of truth and right. He would not suffer his
father to be deceived by a false estimate of the conduct of his sons. He must
be made acquainted with the truth, however painful, or be the consequences what
they might to all concerned.
2. It showed his unwillingness to be a partaker of other men’s sins.
3. It showed a spirit of ready obedience. He knew that a faithful
report of the conduct of his brethren was a duty he owed to his father.
II. As MARKED OUT
FOR A GREAT DESTINY. III. AS THE OBJECT OF ENVY AND HATRED.
1. Because of his faithful testimony.
2. Because of his father’s partiality.
3. Because of the distinction for which God had destined him. (T.
H.Leale.)
Jacob and Joseph
I. THE DIVISION
FOUND IN JACOB’S FAMILY. Four reasons for this.
1. Jacob’s favouritism for Joseph.
2. The scandal-bearing of Joseph.
3. The polygamy of Jacob.
4. The envy of the brothers.
II. JOSEPH’S
MISSION TO SHECHEM. Observe here the bloodguiltiness of these brothers; they
did not take Joseph’s life, but they intended to take it; they were therefore
murderers. Let us make a distinction; for when we are told that the thought is
as bad as the crime, sometimes we are tempted to argue thus: I have indulged
the thought, I will therefore do the deed, it will be no worse. This sophistry
can scarcely deceive the heart that uses it; yet, merely to put the thing
verbally right, let us strip it of its casuistry. The thought is as bad as the
act, because the act would be committed if it could. But if these brethren of
Joseph had mourned over and repented of their sin, would we dare to say that
the thought would have been as bad as the act? But we do say that the thought
in this case was as bad as the act, because it was not restrained or prevented
by any regret or repentant feeling; it was merely prevented by the coming in of
another passion, it was the triumph of avarice over malice. But all these
brothers were not equally guilty. Simeon and Levi and others wished to slay
Joseph; Judah proposed his being sold into captivity; while Reuben tried to
save him secretly, although he had not courage to save him openly. He proposed
that he should be put into the pit, intending to take him out when the others
were not by. His conduct in this instance was just in accordance with his
character, which seems to have been remarkable for a certain softness. He did
not dare to shed his brother’s blood, neither did he dare manfully to save him.
He was not cruel, simply because he was guilty of a different class of sin. It
is well for us, before we take credit to ourselves for being free from that or
this sin, to inquire whether it be banished by grace or only by another sin. (F.
W. Robertson, M. A.)
The father’s favourite, and the brothers’ censor
1. We are taught here the evil of favouritism in the family. The
balance, as between the different children in the same household, must be held
evenly by the parents. No one ought to be the “pet” of either father or mother,
for the “pet” is apt to become petted, haughty, and arrogant towards the
others; while the showing of constant favour to him alienates the affections of
the rest, both from him and from the parents. “Is that you, Pet?” said a father
from his bedroom to a little one who stood at the door in the early morning
knocking for admission. “No, it isn’t Pet, it’s only me,” replied a sorrowful
little voice; and that was the last of “pet” in that family. See what mischief
it occasioned here in Jacob’s household!
2. We may learn from this narrative how bitter is the antagonism of
the wicked to the righteous in the world. The real root of the hatred of
Joseph’s brethren is to be traced to the fact that he would not consent to be
one of them, and join in the doing of things which they knew that their father
would condemn. His conscience was tender, his heart was pure, his will was
firm. He was a Puritan and they were regardless, and they chose to set down his
non-conformity to pride rather than to principle, and persecuted him
accordingly. There is an immense amount of petty persecution of this sort going
on in all our colleges, commercial establishments, and factories, of which the
principals and the great world seldom hear, but which shows us that the human
nature of to-day is in its great features identical with that which existed
many centuries ago in the family of Jacob. What then? Are the upright to yield?
are they to abate their protest? are they to become even as the others? No; for
that would be to take the leaven out of the mass; that would be to let evil
become triumphant, and so that must never be thought of. Let the persecuted in
these ways hold out. Let them neither retaliate, nor recriminate, nor carry
evil reports, but let them simply hold on, believing that “he that endureth
overcometh.”
3. The case of Joseph here brings up the whole question of our
responsibility in regard to what we see and hear that is evil in other people.
I have come to the conclusion that Joseph was by his father placed in formal
charge of his brokers, and that it was is duty to give a truthful report
concerning them, even as to-day an overseer is bound in justice to his employer
to state precisely the kind of service which those under him are rendering.
That is no tale-bearing; that is simple duty. But now, suppose we are invested
with no such charge over another, and yet we see him do something that is
deplorably wrong, what is our duty in such a case? Are we bound to carry the
report to his father or to his employer, or must we leave things alone and let
them take their course? The question so put is a delicate one and very
difficult to handle. But I think I see two or three things that cast some
little light upon it.
Joseph at home
I. THE OCCUPATION
OF HIS EARLY YEARS. Trained from youth to healthy labour and useful employment.
Idleness, like pride, was never made for man.
II. THE ACCOUNT
WHICH HE GAVE TO HIS FATHER OF WHAT HE HAD SEEN WHILE WITH HIS BRETHREN. When
open and undisguised sin has actually been committed before our eyes, we are on
no account to wink at it. It is a time to speak when, by reporting what is
amiss to those who have power to restrain and correct it, we may either put an
end to that evil, or bring those to repentance who have committed it. This,
however, is both a difficult and painful duty, and it requires much wisdom and
grace to perform it aright.
III. ISRAEL’S
SPECIAL LOVE FOR JOSEPH.
IV. THE MANNER IN
WHICH HE SHOWED HIS PARTIALITY. Various ways may be found of showing our
approbation of those that are good, without displaying those outward marks of
distinction, which are almost certain to provoke the envy of others.
V. THE IMPROPER
FEELINGS AWAKENED IN THE BREASTS OF HIS OTHER CHILDREN.
VI. JOSEPH’S
REMARKABLE DREAMS. He dreamt of preferment, but not of imprisonment. (C.
Overton.)
Joseph the favourite son
1. Joseph, though the object of his father’s tenderest love, was not
brought up to idleness. The young man who is desirous of rising in the world,
should not forget that the world’s prizes are for those who win them on the
field of toil.
2. It is impossible to determine whether it was Jacob’s partiality
and Joseph’s superior merit which secured for him the office of superintendent
of his brethren. Whatever may have secured him the situation, he seems to have
proved himself equal to it.
3. Jacob’s ill-disguised partiality for the son of endeared Rachel
prompted him to an act injurious at once to himself, to Joseph, and to his
other children. (J. S. Van Dyke.)
Joseph’s first experience of life
I. This young man
was taught to work.
II. He was placed
in favourable circumstances.
III. He saw the
iniquity of society.
IV. He remained
uncontaminated in the midst of evil.
V. He sought to
better society: (Homilist.)
Lessons
1. The Church’s line is drawn by God’s Spirit eminently opposite to
the wicked.
2. The Church’s generations are best made out from the best of her
children.
3. Youth is eminently memorable, when it is sanctified, and
gracious.
4. Gracious parents are careful, though never so rich, to bring up
their children in honest callings. So Jacob did Joseph, &c.
5. God can preserve some pure, though conversing with wicked
brethren, and relations.
6. Gracious dispositions cannot bear or favour the sins of nearest
relations.
7. Souls grieved with sins of other relations bring the discovery to
such as can amend them (Genesis 37:2.) (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Joseph
In Joseph we meet a type of character rare in any race, and which,
though occasionally reproduced in Jewish history, we Should certainly not have
expected to meet with at so early a period. For what chiefly strikes one in
Joseph is a combination of grace and power, which is commonly looked upon as
the peculiar result of civilising influences, knowledge of history, familiarity
with foreign races, and hereditary dignity. In David we find a similar
flexibility and grace of character, and a similar personal superiority. We find
the same bright and humorous disposition helping him to play the man in adverse
circumstances; but we miss in David Joseph’s self-control and incorruptible
purity, as we also miss something of his capacity for difficult affairs of
state. In Daniel this latter capacity is abundantly present, and a facility
equal to Joseph’s in dealing with foreigners, and there is also a certain grace
of nobility in the Jewish Vizier; but Joseph had a surplus of power which
enabled him to be cheerful and alert in doleful circumstances, which Daniel
would certainly have borne manfully but probably in a sterner and more passive
mode. Joseph, indeed, seemed to inherit and happily combine the highest
qualities of his ancestors. He had Abraham’s dignity and capacity, Isaac’s
purity and power of self-devotion, Jacob’s cleverness and buoyancy and
tenacity. From his mother’s family he had personal beauty, humour, and
management. A young man of such capabilities could not long remain insensible
to his own destiny. Indeed, the conduct of his father and brothers towards him
must have made him self-conscious, even though he had been wholly innocent of
introspection. The force of the impression he produced on his family may be
measured by the circumstance that the princely dress given him by his father
did not excite his brothers’ ridicule but their envy and hatred. In this dress
there was a manifest suitableness to his person, and this excited them to a
keen resentment of distinction. So too they felt that his dreams were not the
mere whimsicalities of a lively fancy, but were possessed of a verisimilitude
which gave them importance. In short, the dress and the dreams were
insufferably exasperating to the brothers, because they proclaimed and marked
in a definite way the feeling of Joseph’s superiority which had already been
vaguely rankling in their consciousness. And it is creditable to Joseph that
this superiority should first have emerged in connection with a point of
conduct. It was in moral stature that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah felt that
they were outgrown by the stripling whom they carried with them as their
drudge. Either are we obliged to suppose that Joseph was a gratuitous
talebearer, or that when he carried their evil report to his father he was
actuated by a prudish, censorious, or in any way unworthy spirit. That he very
well knew how to hold his tongue no man ever gave more adequate proof; but he
that understands that there is a time to keep silence necessarily sees also
that there is a time to speak. And no one can tell what torture that pure young
soul may have endured in the remote pastures, when left alone to withstand day
after day the outrage of these coarse and unscrupulous men. An elder brother,
if he will, can more effectually guard the innocence of a younger brother than
any other relative can, but he can also inflict a more exquisite torture. (M.
Dods, D. D.)
Feeding the flock
Joseph feeding his father’s flock
We have in the text various statements respecting Joseph.
I. His feeding
his father’s flock.
II. His father’s
great love for him.
III. His brethren’s
hatred of him.
IV. His keeping
company more especially with the humbler children of Israel, the sons of Bilhah
and the sons of Zilpah, the two handmaids.
1. The description of the youthful Joseph, as feeding his father’s
flock, may well remind us of the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, who as
the good Shepherd laid down His life for the flock of God, and leads His own
sheep forth by the still waters of salvation, and makes them to lie down in the
wholesome pastures of His Word (Psalms 80:1-19; Psalms 95:6-7; Isaiah 40:11; Ezekiel 34:22-31; Zechariah 13:7).
2. We are now to consider Joseph as the dearest of his father’s sons,
as a type of Jesus, the beloved Son of His Eternal Father. Joseph as he grew up
was still more endeared to his father. The death of his mother would naturally
lead Jacob to centre his affections still more absorbingly upon him. And it
appears, that Joseph repaid the old man’s warm affections by filial obedience
and love. And parents value a dutiful and heavenly-minded child the more, when,
like Joseph, he is preserved unpolluted by the bad example of his ungodly
brothers. We have in the inspired narrative very early proofs of this
partiality of the patriarch. “And he put the two handmaids and their children
foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost” (Genesis 33:1-2). But it is time we
directed our attention to One greater than Joseph. The love of the Father to
the Lord Jesus immeasurably exceeds every love of which we have any experience
in our own breasts. It passeth knowledge. Of all the sons of God, Jesus is
certainly the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely in the
sight of His eternal Father. Jesus is indeed “the only-begotten of the Father,”
His only-begotten Son. The obedience and love and filial sympathy of the Lord
Jesus was, to use the language of men, the solace of Jehovah’s heart when
grieved with the ingratitude and vileness of the whole human family. He was a
perfect Son, and the only perfect Son the world ever beheld. The zeal of His
Father’s house consumed Him. Throughout His whole life He was, like Joseph,
separate from His sinful brethren, and mourned with His Father over their
wickedness. The obedience of Christ to His Father was well pleasing to Him, and
we are again and again informed throughout the Gospels that the Father
delighteth to honour the Son, and viewed every step of His work on earth with
the highest satisfaction.
3. His keeping company with the humbler children of his father, the
sons of Bilhah, and the sons of Zilpah, the two handmaids. In how much higher a
sense must it have been indeed painful in the extreme for the meek and lowly
Saviour to live in the polluted atmosphere of our guilty world. What wonderful
condescension what humility, that He should stoop from heaven to mingle with
vile stoners here! Learn a lesson of forbearance and patience with sinners from
our dear Redeemer.
4. And now let us briefly consider the last particular respecting
Joseph, mentioned in my text; viz., the envy with which his brethren regarded
him. As this envy will come again under our notice as we proceed further into
the life of Joseph, we will now simply consider the result of it mentioned in
the text: “They could not speak peaceably unto him.” The higher a man rises in
the estimation and friendship of some, the more he is hated and abhorred by
others. The nearer a man lives and the closer a man walks with his heavenly
Father, the more will he experience of this world’s envy and the anger of the
old serpent’s seed. If Joseph drinks most fully of the sweets of his father’s
love, he must also drink most deeply of the bitters of his brethren’s hate. If
anything could disarm opposition and rob envy of his fang, surely it was the
mild meekness and humility of that Man of Sorrows. (E. Dalton)
.
Verse 3
Israel loved Joseph more than all his children
Partiality in the family
I.
IT
WAS NATURAL.
1. On account of a kindred spirit.
2. On account of pleasant associations.
II. UNCONCEALED.
1. It was revealed for the comfort of Joseph.
2. It was manifested in such a manner that the other children could
take offence.
III. IT PRODUCED
HATRED.
1. Their hatred took a wrong direction.
2. Their hatred overcame their humanity. (Homilist.)
Evils of partiality in the family
I. PARTIALITY
SHOWS WEAKNESS IN THOSE EXERCISING IT.
II. PARTIALITY
OFFENDS THOSE OVERLOOKED.
II. PARTIALITY
INJURES THE ONE IT IS INTENDED TO BENEFIT.
IV. PARTIALITY
LEADS TO ESTRANGEMENT IN THE FAMILY.
V. PARTIALITY
RESULTS IN MANY SINS AND MANY SORROWS. (J. Henry Burn, B. D.)
Jacob’s affection for Joseph not misplaced
Enabled to study characters, alike by long experience and natural
shrewdness, he was eminently fit to discover the spirit of Joseph’s accounts;
and had he detected a vile motive, his heart would have turned from the
slanderer; for he had himself thoroughly completed his moral purification.
Further, the general conduct of the brothers were such as to let unfavourable
statements appear at least as no deceitful fabrications. And, lastly, depravity
and meanness are totally at variance with those noble qualities of Joseph’s
mind, which we shall soon have opportunities to unfold, and which alone could
make him the worthy medium of the great plans of Providence. Too young to
listen to prudence, and too generous to regard expediency, his pure and
susceptible mind repeated in harmless innocence what passed among his brothers;
and open and communicative, he knew no artificial reserve. He, therefore, is
not even liable to the reproach of carelessness; for he would have seen no
wrong in his conduct, even had his attention been directed to it; following the
unrestricted impulses of his nature, he had not yet commenced to reflect upon
his feelings, or to control and direct his emotions. But was it not blamable on
the part of Jacob, so decidedly to prefer one son to all the others? Ought not
a father to bestow an equal share of affection upon all his children? This
question is but partially to be answered in the affirmative. Certainly, the
natural love of a father, which is the result of the close relationship, is
very generally equally ardent towards all his children; he will, with the
greatest sacrifices, support, educate, and protect all his offspring. But
another affection, based upon esteem or internal affinity of characters, may be
superadded to the natural love, as will frequently be the case with parents of
strongly-marked mental or moral organization; and thus that love is produced
which is the emancipation from the blind rule of instinct, and consists in the
prevalence of reason and moral liberty. And if it is not reprehensible in a
father to feel more strongly for the children in whom he finds his own
existence more distinctly renewed, or who are more susceptible of culture and
refinement, it can, at the utmost, only be deemed an imprudence if the
predeliction is manifested before the less beloved children. But though it is
no moral offence, it may become a source of envy, strife and domestic discord.
This truth was neglected by Jacob when he made for his favoured son Joseph a
long and costly robe. The ample and folding garments of persons of wealth and
distinction were not seldom composed of, or covered with, pieces of various
costly stuffs, tastefully arranged--ambitious vestments, well calculated to
account for the feelings of animosity on the part of Joseph’s brothers. (M.
M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
Parental fidelity
It is interesting to read the testimony of men at once great and
good, to parental fidelity and affection. Said Lamartine, the celebrated French
author: “The future state of the child depends in a great measure upon the home
in which he is born. His soul is nourished and grows, above all, by the
impressions which are there left upon his memory. My father gave me the example
of a sincerity carried even to scrupulousness; my mother, of a goodness rising
to devotion the most heroic . . . I drank deep from my mother’s mind; I read
through her eyes; I felt through her impressions; I lived through her life.”
Further on, he says: “I know that my mother wished to make me a happy child,
with a healthy mind and a loving soul, a creature of God, not a puppet of men.”
Again, he adds: “Our mother’s knee was always our familiar altar in infancy and
in boyhood. She elevated our thoughts to God as naturally as the plant
stretches upward to the air and light. When she prayed along with us and over
us, her lovely countenance became even sweeter and gentler than before, and
when we left her side to battle with the world, we never forgot her precepts.”
The child of the wisest and best may go wrong, for there are seeds of evil in
every heart. But the rule is that God’s blessing on affectionate fidelity
secures a happy and useful life here, with the assurance of heavenly awards in
the hereafter. (Henry M. Grout, D. D.)
Family training
Another manifest principle observed by Mrs. Wesley in the
education and training of her family, was that of thorough impartiality. There
was no pet lamb in her deeply interesting flock; no Joseph among her children to
be decked out in a coat of many colours, to the envy of his less loved
brethren. It was supposed by some of her sisters that Martha was a greater
favourite with Mrs. Wesley than the rest of her children, and Charles expressed
his “wonder that so wise a woman as his mother could give way to such a
partiality or did not better conceal it.” This, however, was an evident
mistake. Many years afterwards, when the saying of her brother was mentioned to
Martha, she replied, “What my sisters call partiality was what they might all
have enjoyed if they had wished it, which was permission to sit in my mother’s
chamber when disengaged, to listen to her conversation with others, and to hear
her remarks on things and books out of school-hours.” There is certainly no evidence
of partiality here. All her children stood before her on a common level, with
equal claims, and all were treated in the same way. (J. Kirk.)
A coat of many colours
Joseph’s coat of many colours
It may remind us--
I. OF THE DRESS
WHICH EARTHLY PARENTS PREPARE FOR THEIR CHILDREN. Respecting which consider--
1. They toil to procure it, working hard and long.
2. They exercise thought in selecting. Have to consider size,
season, material, appearance.
3. They have to inspect it often. How it has been used; how it
wears; does it need repair.
4. They have to renew it often. The best will wear out or be
out-grown 1 Samuel 2:19).
II. OF THE ROBE
WHICH OUR HEAVENLY FATHER PREPARES FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.
1. We need clothing for the soul, as well as for the body (1 Peter 3:3-4; 1 Peter 5:5). God knows what things
we have need of, even if we are unconscious of our need (Revelation 3:17).
2. We cannot make, or purchase, soul-clothing. We must receive it as
a free gift. Only God can give it (Revelation 3:18).
3. For earnest, persevering, asking--accompanied by watching--we may
obtain the robe of righteousness, the garment of salvation. This robe Jesus
wrought for us.
4. This robe will fit well, look well, wear for ever. It is a white
robe. White includes all the colours (explain). Hence it is a coat of many
colours.
5. It is a court dress (explain) in which to enter the great King’s
presence. Learn:
Joseph
I. THE
MANY-COLOURED COAT, The margin says many “pieces.” May have been “many colours”
as well. Such coats are not uncommon for young people in the East at this day
(“Ranwolf’s Travels,” pt. I., p. 89), in Syria, Persia, and India. Made
probably of strips of variously-coloured cloth. This Jacob gave to Joseph
because he was a “ son of his old age; “ a phrase understood by most to mean
that Jacob was an old man when Joseph was born; but which Dr. Jamieson says
means that Joseph had--to use a familiar phrase--an old head on young
shoulders. This coat maybe regarded--
1. As a gift of affection. It may be questioned how far it was wise
to show special love in so marked a manner. Jacob, knowing his other sons, must
have been sure that their envy would be excited.
2. As a reward of merit. Some reward less noticeable would have been
better. Joseph was made overseer, or chief shepherd, for such is the meaning of
Genesis 37:2, and hence it might be
also--
3. A badge of office.
II. THE EVIL
EFFORT. If Joseph were a mere tale-bearer he would be blamable. But as chief
shepherd he was bound to state what was the conduct of his brothers, if they
were under-shepherds.
III. THE WONDERFUL
DREAMS. Dreams in that age more influential than with us. No sure word of
prophecy. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had had wonderful dreams, or rather
visions. Such had, doubtless, been often related. Hence these sons of Jacob
were prepared to consider dreams with much reverence and awe. But believing
them to be Divine messages, they should not have been angry. It is clear that
their hearts were not right with God, or they would not have opposed His will.
Learn:
1. To guard against the appearance of partiality in our families.
2. God is no respector of persons.
3. To abstain from the appearance of evil, that there be no evil
report concerning us. (J. C. Gray.)
Joseph’s coat of many colours
It was customary in those times for princes to give to their
subjects, and parents to their children, valuable garments as tokens of esteem.
These garments were of different texture and material, and were more or less
valuable according to their quality. The art of manufacturing cloths is of very
great antiquity. Wool, cotton, and flax were all used in these fabrications
both by the Hebrews and the Egyptians. The colours generally used were white,
purple, scarlet, and black; but party coloured cloths, or plaids, were also
much esteemed. Such garments are represented on some of the monuments of Egypt.
At Beni-Hassan, for example, there is a magnificent excavation, forming the
tomb of Pihrai, a military officer of Osartasen I., in which a train of foreign
captives appears, who are supposed to be Jebusites, an inscription over one
person in the group reading, “The Chief of the land of the Jebusites.” The
whole of the captives are clad in party-coloured garments, and the tunic of
this individual in particular may be called “a coat of many colours.” “A coat
of many colours” Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Some, however, are of opinion
that it was not a plaid, but a garment of patch-work, the word rendered
“colours” being in the margin “pieces.” In reference to the narrative, Mr.
Roberts, in his “ Oriental Illustrations of the Sacred Scriptures,” observes:
“For beautiful or favoured children precisely the same thing is done at this
day. Crimson, and purple, and other colours are often tastefully sewed
together. Sometimes the children of Mahometans have their jackets embroidered
with gold and silk of various colours.” (Thornley Smith.)
Imprudent testimonies of regard
Parents ought to love most affectionately those children who best
deserve their love; but they ought not to hurt, instead of benefiting, the
children whom they love, by imprudent testimonies of their regard. Joseph might
have lived happily in his father’s house without a garment of divers colours;
but he could not wear it without encountering the hatred of all his brethren. (G.
Lawson, D. D.)
Verse 4
They hated him
Lessons
1.
Choice
respects to any, from parents, above all others, usually make such favourites
to be envied.
2. Flesh and blood usually hate that which grace affects and loves.
3. Sin, and envy specially, put men out of a capacity of doing duty
to relations.
4. Where hearts are full of hatred, mouths speak not peace but
bitterness and scorning. (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Causes of envy
Notice now what are the three things for which we are prone to envy
others.
1. Their privileges. Joseph was envied because his father favoured
him. Asaph was “envious at the foolish,” when he “saw the prosperity of the
wicked” (Psalms 73:3). Against this David warns
us--“Fret not thyself because of evil doers”--“Fret not thyself because of him
who prospereth in his way” (Psalms 37:1-7).
2. Their prospects. Joseph was envied because of the destiny
foreshadowed by his dreams. Walter Scott envied his school-fellow the prize he
seemed certain to win. This again, how common I Many a boy stands aloof from
his comrades, and joins little and without heart in their sports, because he has
fixed his hopes--his ambition if you will--on some object to be gained. Now the
others will not envy him in the sense of wishing to be as he is; but they
resent his presuming to have objects higher than theirs.
3. Their piety. Joseph was envied because he held aloof from his
brothers’ sins. It is not so now? (E. Stock.)
Envy
The happiness of other men is poison to the envious man. The
odious passion of envy torments and destroys one’s self, while it seeks the
ruin of its object. Beware of envy; you know not to what it tends. Beware of
all its fruits; you will find them to be deadly, when they have time and
opportunity to ripen. Joseph’s brethren did not proceed to extremes of cruelty
when they were first seized with this baleful passion. They “could not speak
peaceably to him,” but they entertained no thoughts of killing him, till their
envy had by indulgence acquired a greater degree of strength. Their “lust
conceived and brought forth sin; and when their sin was finished, it brought
forth death” to Joseph in their intentions. They contracted the guilt of his
blood, although they did not shed it. They were chargeable with intended murder
in the sight of men, when they cast Joseph into the pit; but in the
sight of God they were chargeable with this crime as soon as they began to hate
Joseph; for “he that hateth his brother in his heart is a murderer.” (G.
Lawson, D. D.)
The baleful nature of envy
“Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand
before envy?” (Proverbs 27:4). Even a brother is
sometimes exposed to its influence. Like the wild tornado which, as it sweeps
along, destroys the loveliest flowers, and leaves the garden desolate as the
wilderness, it has cut down many a youth of promise, and turned many a peaceful
home into a scene of sadness and distress. We may say of it as Seneca says of
anger, to which it is intimately allied: that it is a vice decidedly against
nature; for it divides instead of joining, and in some measure frustrates the
end of Providence in human society. “One man was born to help another; envy
makes us destroy one another. Nature unites, envy separates; the one is
beneficial, the other mischievous; the one succours even strangers, the other
destroys the most intimate friends; the one ventures all to save another, the
other ruins himself to undo another.” (Thornley Smith)
Envy hateful
When Sir Walter Scott was a boy at school, his efforts to gain a
prize seemed all to no purpose, on account of the superior memory of one of his
companions, who never failed to say his lessons perfectly. Walter did well, but
now and then he would make a slip. In vain he strove to be first; he was always
second, but could not oust his schoolfellow from the top place. One day,
watching his rival repeating a long task without mistake or hesitation, Walter
noticed that his fingers were perpetually fidgeting a particular button on his
waistcoat. A thought struck the envious lad. Could it be? He would see. An
opportunity soon occurred, and he cut off that button from that waistcoat while
its owner was asleep. Next day the class stood up. Number one began, and as the
first words left his lips, his fingers might be seen feeling for the familiar
button. They felt for it in vain; and the hapless boy stopped, then stammered,
then stopped again, and broke down altogether. Utterly unconscious of the
cause, he racked his memory in despairing amazement, but he could not remember
a line, and Walter stepped to the top of the class. Not a very serious trick,
many boys will say. I choose it on this very account, as an illustration of
what envy will lead to. Our object in this lesson should be to show envy at
work in ordinary daily life, working all manner of mischief, just because its
wickedness is not appreciated. An illustration of some murderer, whose crime
was instigated by envy, would not answer our purpose. Our Sunday scholars would
condemn the sin with horror, utterly failing to see the less glaring, but in
God’s sight not less hateful, fault of their own hearts and tongues and lives.
Our illustrations should be such as will enable us effectively to say, like
Nathan, “Thou art the man!” “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.” But it is
not enough to show the hideousness of envy. We must show the beauty of the “
charity” which “envieth not.” Thus: What should Walter Scott have done? Let the
button alone? Yes; hut more than that. He should have honoured his companion,
and rejoiced in his success. Ah, that is hard! (E. Stock.)
Envy soon finds an opportunity
When envy has fully formed its purpose of cruelty, it very
speedily sees and seizes an opportunity for carrying it through. The great
dramatist, indeed, has represented one of the most unscrupulous of his
characters as excusing himself after this fashion: “How oft the sight of means
to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done”; but then it is only the envious and
malicious man who is on the outlook for means to do ill deeds, and therefore it
is to him only that the perception of them offers a temptation. If King John
had not been wishing to make away with Arthur, the presence of Hubert would not
have suggested to him that he had found a fit instrument to do what he desired.
Just as love keens the vision to such a degree that it sees ways of service
that are invisible to others, so hate quickens the perception, and finds an
occasion for its gratification in things that would have passed unnoticed by
others. The brothers of Joseph, therefore, being filled with envy towards him,
soon had an opportunity of working their will upon him, and they seized it with
an eagerness which showed how intensely they hated him. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Verses 5-11
Joseph dreamed a dream
The dreams of Joseph
Destined superiority to brethren and parents is the one grand idea
that comes out in the strange visions of the night recorded here.
1. This idea was evidently a Divine communication.
2. This idea was expressed at different periods and in different
symbols.
3. This idea was felt by all to have a Divine significance.
I. THE VISIONS OF
YOUTH. The young generally create bright visions of the future. This tendency
serves--
II. THE JEALOUSIES
OF SOCIETY. Jealousy is a passion that springs from the fear of a rival
enjoying advantages which we desire for ourselves.
1. It is very general.
2. It is an unhappy feeling.
3. It is unchristian.
III. THE DESTINY OF
VIRTUE.
1. There is much in a virtuous life itself to ensure advancement.
2. Advancement is pledged by God Himself to a virtuous life.
Learn:
1. The fate of eminence. To encounter jealousy. Heed it not. March
on.
2. The path of glory. Virtue. The beginning may be difficult, but
the end will be everlasting life. (Homilist.)
The favourite son
I. JOSEPH’S
DREAMS.
II. JOSEPH’S
DISTRESS.
III. JOSEPH’S
DISAPPEARANCE.
1. He was separate by a superior destiny, of which his youthful
dreams were permitted to give a dim, indefinite glimpse.
2. He was separate by reason of the fondness of his father for aim,
on the one side, and by the envy and enmity of his brethren, on the other.
3. He was separate by the banishment from his home in Canaan to the
land of Egypt, where the Midianites sold him to an officer high in the service
of the Egyptian king.
4. And over all the chances and changes of his life God ruled.
Joseph’s history remarkably illustrates Paul’s saying in Romans 8:28. Let us remember this, and try
from our earliest youth to serve God faithfully, and to suffer our trials
patiently, as Joseph did. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
Lessons
1. Good souls whom men hate for their goodness, God chooseth to
reveal His mind more graciously to them.
2. God hath by dreams, in time past, revealed His future providences
about His Church unto men.
3. Young years, addicted to godliness, are made capable of great and
sweet discoveries from God (Genesis 37:5).
4. It is duty to declare God’s will revealed concerning His purposes
to His Church, though it please not men (Genesis 37:6).
5. Dark, but certain, have been the revelations of God in times
past, concerning His providence to His Church (Genesis 37:7; Genesis 37:9).
6. God in bringing about the salvation of His Church, makes parents
and brethren stoop to His instruments. Superiors to inferiors.
7. God maketh persons in themselves adverse to His providences, yet
to be interpreters of His revelations (Genesis 37:8).
8. The Lord hath usually foretold the salvation and advancement of
His Church, but not the way; Joseph dreams not of prisons.
9. Carnal relations are apt to hate and envy their very brother,
when God sets him up above them.
10. The way and means of comfort which man despiseth, God useth yet
to do them good who hate it. So here.
11. Gracious souls that wait for the Church’s delivery may yet have
regret against the means discovered (Genesis 37:10).
12. Grace in those souls checks their regret, and makes them observe,
and keep God’s discoveries to them (Genesis 37:11). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
How to judge of a dream
When a person told his dream in relating religious experience,
Rowland Hill said, “we do not despise a good man’s dreams, but we will judge of
the dream after we have seen how you act when you are awake.”
Ambition’s brilliant dreams
A youth of rare promise was Joseph. From his aptitude in creating
and divining dreams, we may infer his fondness for quiet contemplation. His
mind was active; he lived much in the future; he loved to roam amid unseen
realities. Yet Joseph was not a perfect man. As every rose has its attendant
thorn, so blemishes appear on his young soul. A sense of superiority and
self-importance was fast springing up, under the unwise partiality of his
father It was a tiny rift which would soon spoil the music of his life; a
little cloud that would soon cover the whole horizon.
I. OBSERVE THE
RAW MATERIAL OF THESE DREAMS. Every part of the history proceeds in a manner
the most natural. It was the season of summer, and Joseph had been sharing with
his brethren the labours of the harvest-field; for in Syria corn comes to
maturity much earlier than in England. Overwearied with the excitements of the
harvest, what more natural than that a busy imagination would weave into his
dreams the stirring scenes in which he had just played a part? Touching the
second dream, we must remember that, in the East the vocation of shepherds
require their presence, in turn, during the hours of night, when wild beasts
seek their prey. In that translucent atmosphere, and amid those cloudless
skies, the lamps of heaven gleam with a brilliance unknown in Western climes.
Again, by the natural processes of human thought, such a scene would furnish
fit elements for the young man’s dreams. Even nature moulds a man.
II. OBSERVE THE
ARTIFICER OF THESE DREAMS. Not only does mystery appertain to heavenly things,
there is mystery unfathomed within ourselves. Who can expound to us the
philosophy of our dreams, yet these are full of significance. Aspirations,
ambitions, projects, which during the day were kept in reserve, locked in
secret by the monarch Will, now freely disport themselves, and the man’s real
self is seen in the mirror of his dreams. The prospect of eminence and rule
rose before his eye, awake or asleep, like a glittering imperial crown, until
that which at first was a vague possibility grew into a mental certainty. The
conviction was rooting itself that he was to be a king.
III. OBSERVE THE
OVER-RULING PURPOSE OF GOD. Although Joseph was conscious that he was free to
choose his own course in life, free to frame ambitions, yet he was free only
within certain limits, within a fitting circle: choice and will could act.
Nevertheless the will of God encompassed and controlled the whole. There is no
such thing as fatalism. We are moulding our own destiny, both temporal and
eternal. We can catch at times a whispering of God’s voice even in our dreams.
(J. D. Davies, M. A.)
Joseph has clear intimations of his future greatness
We are told in these verses that Joseph had intimations given him
of his future greatness; that God revealed to him by dreams that,
notwithstanding his brethren’s present hatred and envy, they should one day
come and bow themselves down before him. The happy end of all his troubles was
thus mercifully made known to him, that he might be supported under them, and
be strengthened to endure the depths of affliction into which his brethren were
soon to plunge him. These dreams would doubtless often recur to his memory as
he lay in the Egyptian prison, and cheer and comfort him as he felt the iron
enter into his soul. And Joseph, in thus having his high destiny revealed to
him at the commencement of his career, was a type of our dear Saviour. In all
his sufferings on earth he was sustained and cheered by the joy that was set
before him. The Father gave him this for the same reason that He gave Joseph
early intimations of his future dignity, to cheer and solace his depressed
spirit while rudely buffeted and tossed to and fro on the billows of earthly
sorrow. We have thus seen, that the Father made known to Jesus as He did to
Joseph the greatness that awaited Him, in order to sustain Him as He passed
through the dreary waste of trouble that stretched far away between Him and the
promised glory. We have seen also that Jesus, as well as Joseph, made mention
of His coming dignity to His brethren. We shall now see that the result was the
same in both cases. They hated him yet the more for his words, and said to him,
Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? So
far from receiving Jesus as the Saviour when He clearly intimated to them that
He was the Messiah, and proved it most convincingly by a thousand miracles,
they despised and rejected Him. (E. Dalton)
The sanguine temperament of youth
It is worthy of remark, that Joseph’s visions were such as
predicted only advancement and honour; his perils and imprisonment formed no
part of his dreams. At this stage of the history, we are reminded of the
sanguine hopes and lively anticipations which usually animate the minds of the
young. (T. Gibson.)
Verses 12-17
His brethren went to feed their father’s flock
Joseph leaves his father to seek his brethren
Do you discover in this any type of the Redeemer?
Does it remind you of one who left a far better home, and descended from the
bosom of a far more illustrious father, to travel through this wilderness world
in quest of his wicked and wandering brethren? Brethren, there is a closer
analogy between the two cases than appears at first sight. It was at his
father’s command that Joseph abandoned the comforts of his father’s home and
became a wanderer in search of his brethren; and it was equally at the command
of His Father that Jesus came down from His eternal home in the bosom of the
Father, to seek and to save our fallen race. We sadly overlook this in our
theology. The Lord Jesus, then, did not come into our world unsent. He was “the
Messenger of the Covenant,” the Sent of the Father. He did not come to do His
own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. The obedience of Jesus to His
Father, however, infinitely surpasses the obedience of Joseph. Joseph might
have anticipated danger, but he could not certainly know that his brethren
would treat him roughly and cruelly. Jesus came into the world, having a
perfect knowledge of every indignity that awaited Him. Imagine yourselves each
a beloved Joseph sent forth by a fond father to your brethren with a message of
peace and love; speak to your fellow sinners in this way--talk to them of the
glories of your Father’s home--point them to an everlasting resting-place in a
Saviour’s arms--entreat them no longer to wander in the wilderness. (E.
Dalton.)
Verse 18-19
They conspired against him to slay him
The conspiracy to murder Joseph
I.
AN
EXAMPLE OF THE RAPIDLY DOWNWARD COURSE OF EVIL.
II. AN EXAMPLE. OF
THE BOLD DARING OF SINNERS.
III. AN EXAMPLE OF
GUILT INCURRED EVEN WHERE PURPOSE HAS NOT RIPENED INTO ACT.
IV. AN EXAMPLE OF
DEGREES OF GUILTINESS EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO HAVE LENT THEMSELVES TO ONE DESIGN.
(T. H. Leale)
Joseph with his brethren
I. MAN UNDER THE
INFLUENCE OF JEALOUSY.
1. Jealousy leads a man to slander.
2. Jealousy leads to falsehood.
3. Jealousy hardens the heart.
4. Jealousy leads to crime.
II. MAN UNDER THE
INFLUENCE OF MERCY.
1. The merciful are in the minority.
2. The merciful lose sight of self.
3. The merciful are always ready to assist others. (Homilist)
Lessons
1. The sight of the righteous, whom the wicked hate, is an occasion
of working mischief and evil to them.
2. The looks of the wicked is for the mischief of those good souls,
who look and seek for their peace.
3. Subtlety and conspiracy for death is the wicked’s practice
against innocent gracious souls (Genesis 37:18).
4. The wicked encourage each other in evil matters to committing
them.
5. Vile persons jeer and scorn the revelations of God under terms of
contempt. Dreamer (Genesis 37:19).
6. Sinners persecute the saints for God’s revelations to them.
7. Providence suffers sinners to breathe death and destruction to
saints, when they effect it not.
8. Murderers themselves are ashamed to own blood-guiltiness,
therefore seek to hide it.
9. Brother’s blood is not pitied with men of sin.
10. Evil men design to frustrate the counsels and revelation of God
by their crafty and cruel practices (Genesis 37:20). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Lessons
1. In evil counsels against the saints, God overpowers the heart of
some to frustrate bloody designs of others.
2. God makes evil projected against His servants to come to the
cognizance of those that shall defeat it.
3. Deliverance is effected sometimes for the saints by such as hate
them enough.
4. Providence causeth the counsel of one evil man to prevail against
others, for His saint’s good (Genesis 37:21).
5. God puts an awe upon some to counsel others not to shed blood.
6. Pretence of a worse death providence ordereth to be made by men
to save His from death wholly.
7. Fratricide is made horried to evil men by God for saving His own.
8. Respect to paternal honour may sway with men of bad resolutions,
to abstain from evil and offering violence to a brother (Genesis 37:21-22). (G. Hughes, B. D)
Lessons
1. Under Providence innocent souls come in their integrity into the
hands of spoilers.
2. Simple, honest hearts, may think of coming to brethren when it is
to cruel destroyers.
3. Unnatural treacherous dealers stick not to take a garment from a
brother.
4. Garments of pleasure may expose men to envy and spoil by wicked
hands (Genesis 37:23).
5. Violent hands are soon layed even upon an innocent brother by
envious and enraged spirits.
6. Brethren degenerate into spoilers, stick not at it to bury an
innocent brother alive.
7. God emptieth the pits of water where He will not have His
innocents perish.
8. Dry pits of trouble are in God’s Use, tokens of deliverance.
Joseph shall come out (Genesis 37:24). (G. Hughes, B.
D)
Reuben’s attempt to save Joseph
He boarded the train which he could not arrest, but he boarded it
with the purpose of ultimately controlling it and so preventing a catastrophe.
The motive was good, but I am not quite so sure about the policy. It savours a
little too much of worldly wisdom for me, and little good came out of it in the
end. We have seen it tried here often enough in politics, and almost always
with this result: that the well-meaning men who have gone into a questionable
movement under the idea that they could thereby guide it into something that
would be at least harmless, have been themselves outwitted and befooled. It
would have been just about as easy for Reuben to have stood out against the
persecution of Joseph altogether as it was for him to protest against the
shedding of his blood, and it might have been equally efficacious. At any rate
it would have exonerated him from the guilt which they all alike ultimately
incurred. His plan was to deliver Joseph, but in a way that was itself
deceptive, for he seemed to be doing one thing while he was really seeking
another. His proposal was that they should put Joseph into a pit. That to them
looked to be a refinement on their cruelty, for it left him to starve to death,
while they had meant that he should be slain out of hand. As such, therefore,
it commended itself to their acceptance. But his secret intention was to come
back by himself when the others should be out of the way, and then take him out
and return with him to his father. It was well meant, and not very badly
planned either; but then it required that a very careful watch should be
maintained, and just there the instability of Reuben’s character came in to mar
it all; for, thinking that now the crisis was past, he wont away and took no
further oversight of the matter, and in his absence it was all upset. For the
moment, however, it looked as if he had succeeded, for the others accepted his
suggestion, and after stripping Joseph of his hated coat, they put him into one
of those cisterns which were so common in Palestine, and which, when dry, were
sometimes, as in the case of Jeremiah, used as a prison. Lieutenant Anderson,
of the Palestine Exploration Enterprise, thus writes regarding them: “The
numerous rock-hewn cisterns that are found everywhere would furnish a suitable
pit in which they might have thrust him; and as these cisterns are shaped like
a bottle, with a narrow mouth, it would be impossible for any one imprisoned
within it to extricate himself without assistance. These cisterns are now
all cracked and useless; they are, however, the most undoubted evidences that
exist of handiwork of the inhabitants in ancient times.” (W. M. Taylor, D.
D.)
Evil for good
Joseph put himself to so much trouble to find out his brethren that
he might inform himself and his father of their welfare; but they took
advantage from his love to wreak their hatred upon him, as if they had been
devils in flesh and blood, rather than patriarchs in the Church. It is too
common with discontented men to say that none were even so ill-used as
themselves. But let us consider how Joseph was used, how David was used, how
Christ Himself was used, by those men from whom they had most reason to expect
kindness. (G. Lawson.)
Joseph’s brethren conspire against him
I. The Scriptures
expressly prohibit envy (Proverbs 3:31; Proverbs 23:17). God prohibits envy,
then, because it is rebellion against His just authority, an insult to His
honour, and a denial of His attributes of wisdom and justice and truth. It is
also a passion which is infinitely removed from His own pure nature. God
prohibits it also because it cannot exist with peace and happiness. Where envy
enters happiness departs. Like the buckets of a well, they cannot both descend
into the depths of the human heart together. The absence of envy is spoken of
in Scripture as a mark of a renewed mind, the characteristic of a soul born of
God (Titus 3:3).
II. The Lord has,
however, given us something more than precepts against envy in His word. To
prohibit it ought to be enough, and it will be enough with the child of God to
make him loathe and abhor a thing so detestable in the sight of his heavenly
Father. The Lord has added to these precepts many most instructive
illustrations of the pernicious effects of this base passion. He points us to
the fugitive Cain, as he rushes from His presence, his brow stamped with the
brand of infamy, and his hand steeped in the life-blood of his righteous
brother, and He says, “Behold the effects of envy.” He points us to the
distracted family of Jacob in their rival tents, Rachel envying Leah her
children, and Leah envying Rachel the first place in their husband’s
affections, and He says, “Behold the misery and torment produced by envy.” To
what a fiend does envy reduce the man! These unnatural children appear to have had
no more compassion for their father than for Joseph; perhaps they even secretly
enjoyed the thought of disappointing and grieving him by dashing to the ground
all his hopes of his favorite son’s advancement. “Let us kill him,” say they,
“and then he cannot rule over us.” And is there nothing, in this conspiracy of
his brethren against Joseph, to remind us of a similar conspiracy against God’s
beloved Son? Joseph was here in the strictest sense a type of Christ. Envy
endangered His life at its first commencement, and the slaughter of the
innocents at Bethlehem may teach us how a man may become envious at the
predicted royalties of an infant, as well as at the actual prosperity of those
of riper years. His own brethren after the flesh in his after life conspired
against Him, and why? Envy was at the root of all their conspiracies. They
treated His claim to the Messiahship as a dream. And in their treatment of
Jesus they discovered as strong a hatred of His Father, whom they also called
their Father, as did Joseph’s brethren towards their father. So evident was
this that Jesus Himself says of them,” Now have they both seen and hated both
Me and My Father (John 15:24). There is one more point
which makes the type perfect. The steps the brethren of Joseph took to prevent
his exaltation over them, actually helped forward the very thing they wished to
prevent; so inscrutable are the ways of God in His providence, “He maketh the
wrath of man to praise Him.” The same was the ease with Jesus. God permitted
His enemies to go just far enough to accomplish His purposes and to defeat
their own. By crucifying Jesus the Jews effectually fulfilled His most ardent
wishes, and promoted the benefit and advancement of believers which they meant
to hinder. (E. Dalton.)
This dreamer
The world’s treatment of dreamers
To-day we do not like the dreamers who have seen visions which
involve us more or less in decay and inferiority. It is not easy to forgive a
man who has dreamed an unpleasant dream concerning us. We cannot easily forgive
a man who has founded an obnoxious institution. If a man has written a book
which is distasteful to us, it is no matter, though he should do ten thousand
acts which ought to excite our admiration and confirm our confidence, we will
go back and back upon the obnoxious publication, and whensoever that man’s name
is mentioned, that book will always come up in association with it. Is this
right? Ought we to be confined in our view of human character to single points,
and those points always of a kind to excite unpleasant, indignant, perhaps
vindictive feelings? The world’s dreamers have never had an easy lot of it.
Don’t let us imagine that Joseph was called to a very easy and comfortable position
when he was called to see the visions of Providence in the time of his slumber.
God speaks to man by dream and by vision, by strange scene and unexpected
sight; and we who are prosaic groundlings are apt to imagine that those men who
live in transcendental regions, who are privileged occasionally to see the
invisible, have all the good fortune of life, and we ourselves are but servants
of dust and hirelings of an-ill-paid day. No; the poets have their own pains,
and the dreamers have their own peculiar sorrows. Men of double sight often
have double difficulties in life. Don’t let us suppose that we are all true of
inspiration. It is not because a man has had a dream that he is to be hearkened
unto. It is because the dream is a parable of heaven that we ought to ask him
to speak freely and fully to us concerning his wondrous vision, that we may see
further into the truth and beauty of God’s way concerning man. (J. Parker,
D. D.)
God in dreams
They insulted the Sovereign of the world, while they persecuted
their poor brother. They intended to frustrate the Word of the Lord, and hoped
they would bring to nothing the counsels of the Most High. Presumptuous
creatures! did they think they were stronger than the Almighty? If they had cut
Joseph into a thousand pieces, the Word of the Lord would have stood firm and
sure. It would be far easier to arrest the sun in his course, than to hinder
the performance of any promise that God has made to His people. “His counsel
shall stand for ever; the thoughts of His heart to all generations.” They
might, no doubt, imagine that they were fighting, not against God, but against
a presumptuous boy, who fondly dreamed of rising into honours above his equals
or superiors, and that Joseph’s arrogance well deserved to be humbled. They did
not perhaps think that Joseph’s dreams were from God; but why, then, were they
so much piqued with his dreams? Might they not have suffered them to pass from
their memories like other vanities, which pass away the moment in which they
make their appearance? Must a man be hunted day after day, till he is chased
out of the world, for a silly dream? But if their spirits had not been blinded
by envy, they might have either seen that there was something more than
ordinary in Joseph’s dream, or at least have seen good reason to suspend their
judgment. It was not a good excuse that they did not know the dreams to be from
God. They ought to have known with certainty that they did not come from God,
before they ventured to turn them into derision. (G. Lawson, D. D.)
A remarkable dream
In “a sketch of my life-work,” which appears in the Christmas
number of the Methodist, Gee. Smith, of Coalville, says:--“One night, in
the summer of 1868, I had a remarkable dream, which, strange to say, was
repeated three nights in succession. Thousands of poor little children
clustered round me, with looks and cries which pierced my soul. I was toiling
to drag them to the top of a mountain. Just as I was giving up the struggle,
Mr. Gladstone joined in my effort, and just as we both were giving up, our good
and noble Queen come to the rescue, and we landed them all at the top. A
similar dream occurred during the early part of my canal crusade.”
Dreams but not dreams
“Carnal men hear of the beauty of holiness, of the excellency of
Christ, of the preciousness of the covenant, of the rich treasures of grace, as
if they were in a dream. They look upon such things as mere fancies, like to
foolish dreams of golden mountains, or showers of pearls.” “This their way is
their folly.” When scientific men describe to us their curious experiments and
their singular discoveries, we know them to be persons of credit, and therefore
accept their testimony: why do not men of the world do us the like justice and
believe what we tell them? We are as sane as they, and as observant of the law
of truth: why, then, do they not believe us when we declare what the Lord has
done for our souls? Why is our experience, in the spiritual world, to be
treated as a fiction, any more than their discoveries in chemistry or
geography? There is no justice in the treatment with which our witness is
received. Yet the Christian man need not complain, for in the nature of things
he may expect it to be so, and the fact that it is so is a confirmation of his
own beliefs. In a world of blind men, an elect race to whom eyes had been
given, would be sure to be regarded ae either mad or false. How could the
sightless majority be expected to accept the witness of the seeing few? Would
it not touch their dignity to admit that others possessed faculties of which
they were destitute? And would it not be highly probable that the blind would
conspire to regard the men of eyes as fanatical dreamers or deluded fools?
Unrenewed men know not the things which are of the Spirit of God, and it is by
no means a strange thing that they should deride what they cannot understand.
It is sad that those who are dreamers, in the worst sense, should think others
so, but it is by no means so extraordinary as to cause surprise. Oh, my Lord,
whatever others may think of me, let me be more and more sensible of Thy
presence, and of the glorious privileges and hopes which are created in the
heart by Thy grace. If men should even say of me as of Joseph, “behold this
dreamer cometh,” it will not grieve me so long as Thou art with me, and Thy
favour makes me blest. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Verse 20
We will say, some evil beast hath devoured him
Plottings of iniquity
This text is no part of revelation.
It is a premeditated falsehood, agreed to and told by Joseph’s brothers, to
account for his absence.
I. THAT WICKED
MEN DARE NOT TRUST EACH OTHER TO EXPLAIN THINGS, BUT MUST AGREE TO FALSIFY AND
DECEIVE. “We will say.”
II. THAT IT IS A
CHARACTERISTIC OF WICKED MEN TO LAY THE BLAME OF THEIR SINS UPON OTHERS. “We
will say, a wild beast,” etc. From the very first it was so. Adam struck upon
that mean device, and threw the blame of his sin upon his wife: “The woman that
Thou gavest me.” I know of no instance in the Bible that so clearly indicates
the strength of the tendency as this. Some blame one thing or person, and some
another; but, like Joseph’s brethren, they know there is no “wild beast,” and
they must sooner or later confess their sins and say, “We are verily guilty.”
III. THAT WICKED
MEN FEEL THERE IS A TIME COMING WHEN THEY MUST MAKE OUT A CASE--MUST TELL HOW
THINGS HAPPENED, “We will say, an evil beast,” etc. (T. Kelly.)
The conspiracy
I. THE VICTIM.
Joseph. What were his crimes?
1. He had done his duty as superintendent of the shepherds; even
though it must have been painful to him to convey bad tidings about his
brethren, and painful to grieve his father’s mind by doing so. Yet he only
discharged the duty of his office. The fault was theirs, not his.
2. He had been marked as his father’s special favourite and
confidant. But they should have tried to be more worthy of trust themselves.
3. He had been favoured with wonderful dreams, in which their future
subordinate relation was clearly indicated.
II. THE PLOTTERS.
1. Ten against one. Cowardice of this. Combination of thought and
strength for a wicked purpose.
2. Ten brothers against one brother. Fratricical struggles the worst
of all. Of all relatives, such near ones as these should agree.
3. Ten men, and brothers, against a youthful brother. Might and
numbers are not always a proof of right (once all the world was against our
elder Brother).
4. Ten wicked men against one good man. “Though hand join in hand,
wickedness shall not go unpunished.”
5. Ten sons against a father. In plotting against Joseph they were
fighting against Jacob. Those who oppose Jesus are rebelling against God.
III. THE PLOT.
1. The opportunity.
2. The conspiracy. “The dreamer cometh.” All agree on one point.
Joseph to be put out of the way. First resolve to kill him and tell a lie to
hide the crime (Genesis 37:20). Reuben intercedes,
intending to rescue him (Genesis 37:22). They agree to this,
thinking he would die of starvation. Thus they would not shed his blood, and
yet would take his life. They strip off his offending coat. Approach of the
merchants. Judah would make a profit by the transaction. He little thought of
the great profit his wickedness would yield Genesis 45:7-8). Joseph is sold. Imagine
his cries and tears, &c. Genesis 42:21). The remorse of Reuben,
and the joy of the rest.
3. The consequences. One sin leads to another. They must resort to
lying, &c. The trouble that comes upon Jacob (Genesis 42:34-35). Learn:
I. Innocent
people are often surrounded by evil (John 16:33).
II. Virtue and
truth to be pursued, notwithstanding danger.
III. One sin leads
to another. Ultimate concealment impossible.
IV. God makes the
wrath of man to praise Him.
V. Jesus has
saved us from going down into the pit, and has redeemed us from bondage. (J.
C. Gray.)
Joseph’s confinement in a tank
The tank in which Joseph’s brethren cast him was apparently one of
those huge reservoirs excavated by shepherds in the East, that they may have a
supply of water for their flocks in the end of the dry season, when the running
waters fail them. Being so narrow at the mouth that they can be covered by a
single stone, they gradually widen and form a large subterranean room; and the
facility they thus afford for the confinement of prisoners was from the first
too obvious not to be commonly taken advantage of. In such a place was Joseph
left to die--under the ground, sinking in mire, his flesh creeping at the touch
of unseen slimy creatures, in darkness, alone; that is to say, in a species of
confinement which tames the most reckless and maddens the best balanced
spirits, which shakes the nerve of the calmest, and has sometimes left the
blankness of idiocy in masculine understandings. A few wild cries that ring
painfully round his prison show him he need expect no help from without; a few
wild and desperate beatings round the shelving walls of rock show him there is
no possibility of escape; he covers his face, or casts himself on the floor of
his dungeon to escape within himself, but only to find this also in vain, and
to rise and renew efforts he knows to be fruitless. Here, then, is what has
come of his fine dreams. With shame he now remembers the beaming confidence
with which he had related them; with bitterness he thinks of the bright life
above him, from which these few feet cut him so absolutely off, and of the
quick termination that has been put to all his hopes. Into such tanks do young
persons especially get east; finding themselves suddenly dropped out of the
lively scenery and bright sunshine in which they have been living, down into roomy
graves where they seem left to die at leisure. They had conceived a way of
being useful in the world; they had found an aim or a hope; they had, like
Joseph, discerned their place and were making towards it, when suddenly they
seem to be thrown out and are left to learn that the world can do very well
without them, that the sun and moon and the eleven stars do not drop from their
courses or make wail because of their sad condition. High aims and commendable
purposes are not so easily fulfilled as they fancied. The faculty and desire in
them to be of service are not recognised. Men do not make room for them, and
God seems to disregard the hopes He has excited in them. The little attempt at
living they have made seems only to have got themselves and others into
trouble. They begin to think it a mistake their being in the world at all; they
curse the day of their birth. Others are enjoying this life, and seem to be
making something of it, having found work that suits and develops them; but,
for their own part, they cannot get fitted into life at any point, and are
excluded from the onward movement of the world. They are again and again flung
back, until they fear they are not to see the fulfilment of any one bright
dream that has ever visited them, and that they are never, never at all, to
live out the life it is in them to live, or find light and scope for maturing
those germs of the rich human nature that they feel within them. All this is in
the way to attainment. This or that check, this long burial for years, does not
come upon you merely because stoppage and hindrance have been useful to others,
but because your advancement lies through these experiences. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Evil and mistaken policy
After this profound scheme no doubt there would follow a chuckle
of triumph. The thing was so lucky in its plan, in its seasonableness, in its
practicability; it seemed to meet every point of the case; it made an end of
the whole difficulty; it turned over a new leaf in the history of the family.
Let us understand that our plans are not good simply because they happen
to be easy.
Let us understand that a policy is not necessarily sound because
it is necessarily final. In the case before us we see both the power and the
weakness of men. Let us slay--there is the power; and we will see what will
become of his dreams--there is the weakness. You can slay the dreamer, but you
cannot touch the dream. You can poison the preacher, but what power have you
over his wonderful doctrine? Can you trace it? Where are its footprints? Ten or
twelve men have power to take one lad, seventeen years of age, to double him
up, and throw him, a dead carcase, into a pit. Wonderful power! What then? “And
we will see what become of his dreams.” A word which perhaps was spoken in
scorn or derision, or under a conviction that his dreams would go along with
him. Still, underlying all the derision is the fact that, though the dreamer
has been slain, the dream remains untouched. The principle applies very widely.
You may disestablish an institution externally, politically, financially; but
if the institution be founded upon truth, the Highest Himself will establish
her. If we suppose that by putting out our puny arms and clustering in eager
crowds round the ark of God, we are the only defenders of the faith and
conservers of the Church--then be it known unto us that our power is a limited
ability, that God himself is the life, the strength, the defence, and the hope
of His own kingdom. The principle, then, has a double application--an
application to those who would injure truth, and an application tothose who
would avail themselves of forbidden facilities to maintain the empire of God
amongst men. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Joseph cast into the pit
The favoured son of Jacob was but a type of the Beloved of the
Father. Joseph, in being thus murdered in the intention of his brethren, and,
as it were, buried in the pit, yet preserved in order to be exalted to the
right hand of royalty and power, was a type of Christ crucified, buried, risen,
and glorified. Joseph was far away from his father when trouble overwhelmed
him, and his loud cries for help died away in the distance without reaching the
parental ear. And what were the words of Jesus in the depths of His affliction?
(Psalms 22:1-2). Pity from man He did not
expect, and if His Father had but been near Him, He felt that He could brave
every danger and endure every pain. Nay, that suffering would have lost all its
sting, and sorrow its misery. But the bitter and the agonizing thing was to
feel that He was alone--literally alone in His unparalleled sufferings. He had
come to them on a better errand than Joseph’s, and with a message of mercy from
abetter than any earthly father. One would think that a herald from so august a
court, and bearing so welcome a message, would have been hailed with
acclamations of delight by the Jewish people. That people had long been looking
anxiously for their long-promised Messiah. His deportment was far more lovely
and prepossessing than Joseph’s--His innocency of life and warmth of brotherly
affection far exceeded Joseph’s--He was the chiefest among ten thousand, and
the altogether lovely. He pleaded with the Jews with a depth of pathos never
equalled. Have you ever envied Christ? Do you envy Him His right to the throne
of your heart, and have you usurped it, and seated yourself in that throne?
There is such a thing, too, as envying the Lord Jesus, in the persons of His
happy and highly-favoured followers. Let us cheerfully share our blessings with
every afflicted Joseph who is east into the pit of adversity. (E. Dalton.)
No pit can hide from God’s eye
How were Joseph’s brethren to secure themselves from the reproach
of the world, and the indignation of their father? They would cast Joseph’s
body into some pit after they had killed him. But where were they to find a pit
deep enough to hide him from the view of God? It was right not to disoblige
their father; but was their God less to be regarded than their father? Many
heathens will rise up in judgment against those professors of the true
religion, who behave in such manner, as if it were a matter of indifference
what sins they commit, if they can preserve their characters from suspicion. A
certain Hindoo, trained up in the strictest sect of the religion of his
country, had macerated his body to such a degree, that his life was in imminent
danger. A Christian physician, who went to see him with the governor of the
town, begged him to swallow an infusion of the Jesuit’s bark in wine, which he
thought might preserve his life. The religion of the Indian prohibited this
cure. The physician promised that none should hear of it. But the poor Indian
answered, that he could not hide it from himself, and chose to die, rather than
violate his conscience. (G. Lawson, D. D.)
Good intentions must be boldly carried out
Reuben’s intention was good, and let all due credit be given to
every man who has a good intention, a merciful object in view. No one of us has
a word to say against such a man. But there are times when everything depends
upon tone, precision, definiteness, emphasis. I am not sure that Reuben could
not have turned the whole company. There are times when one man can play with a
thousand. A little one can put ten thousand to flight. Why? Because wickedness
is weakness. There is more craven heartedness among bad men than ever you can
find among men who are soundly, living good. Is that a hard message to some of
you? You know a very bold wicked man. Well, so you do; but that man is a
coward. One day the shaking of a feather will cause him to become pale, and to
tremble and turn round suspiciously, and timidly, as if every leaf in the
forest had an indictment against him and all the elements in the universe had
conspired to destroy him. Here is a call to us, most assuredly. We are placed
in critical circumstances. Sometimes eight or nine men upon the board of
directors have said that their plan will take this or that particular course.
We believe that the plan is corrupt; we believe that it is wicked, displeasing
to God, mischievous to man. What is our duty under circumstances such as these?
To modify, to pare away, to dilute sound principle and intense conviction, to
speak whisperingly, timidly, apologetically? I think not. But to meet the
proposition with the definiteness of sound principle, and to be in that
minority which in the long run is omnipotent--the minority of God. It is not
easy to do this. Far be it from me to say that if I had been in Reuben’s place
I should take a more emphatic course. We are not called upon, in preaching
God’s truth, to say what we would have done under such circumstances; but to
put out that which is ideal, absolute, final, and then to exhort one another,
to endeavour by God’s tender mighty grace to press towards its attainment. (J.
Parker. D. D.)
Verse 25
A company of Ishmaelites
Lessons
1.
Providence
can make eyes to see, and such objects to be presented, which may occasion
diversion of evil plots against the saints.
2. God orders travellers, and trades, and journies, to serve His own
ends to His servants.
3. Accidental events to men are settled providences unto the
servants of God.
4. Trade from land to land, about proper fruits of the respective
countries, hath been, of old, ordered by Providence, for common advantage God
allows and commends it (Genesis 49:13).
5. The same place may be aimed at by God and men, but upon several
accounts (Genesis 37:25).
6. Providence toucheth hearts as well as eyes of sinners to defeat
cruel designs against His.
7. One spoiler may be wrought upon by God to cause others to desist
from cruelty.
8. Thoughts of the unprofitableness of sin is a forcing means to
avoid it.
9. Murder and concealment of blood bring no advantage to sinners (Genesis 37:26.)
10. Hypocrites may judge there is no profit in one sin, but some in
another.
11. Hypocrites may dissuade men from one sin, but incite them to
others, Come, &c.
12. Malice of formalists to sincere Christians sticks not to sell
them to bitter enemies of the Church.
13. God makes natural relation and motions to flesh sometimes to keep
persons from cruelty.
14. God causeth the counsel of one conspirator to defeat the rest,
and makes them concur to His ends (Genesis 37:27).
15. Providence offers opportunity to sinners for doing their will,
that His may be done.
16. Murderers are made deliverers by God at His pleasure and in His
measure.
17. The most innocent souls may be sold for slaves when aimed by God
to be lords.
18. A small price do wicked men put upon the best of God’s servants,
nay on His Son.
19. Gracious souls, surprised by the wicked in their honest ways, may
be carried whither they would not.
20. Ishmaelites may carry innocents to Egypt for their ends, but God
orders them thither for His own. So God maketh use of sinners. They bring him
to make gain of him, God sends him to save and gain others. (G. Hughes, B.
D.)
Caravan trade
From very early times, a lively caravan trade was entertained
between Syria and the East Jordanic provinces on the one hand, and Egypt on the
other; it brought the esteemed products of Arabia and the wares and
merchandises of eastern Asia into the land of the Pharaohs; and in the course
of time, the importation was conducted with all possible regularity, and on
lines prudently chosen and marked out. We find, thai so early as the sixteenth
dynasty, stations were formed, temples erected, and wells dug and protected, in
the Arabian Desert, for the benefit of those who had occasion to pass through
it in their commercial travels. Egypt had, at that period, already attained a
great measure of the civilization of which it was capable; it enjoyed a strong
government and well-organized public institutions; and the political and social
relations were regulated on a firm basis. This sense of security favoured the
development of comfort and luxury; the higher castes especially appreciated all
that delights and embellishes life; their wants increased in an incredible
degree; and they encouraged every undertaking which promised to gratify them.
Among the articles in peculiar demand were all varieties of spicery and
perfumes, required not only for the feasts and pleasures of the living, but for
the embalming of the dead; the mummies generally emitted so delicious a
fragrance that they were for generations kept in the houses of the relatives,
arranged along the walls, and then only entombed; which practice, however,
received, no doubt, its first impulse from the devoted love bestowed in Egypt
on departed parents and relatives. The amount of spicery consumed for all these
purposes was necessarily immense; and the caravan introduced in our narrative
was exclusively laden with those costly commodities. The men who conducted it
were Midianites (Genesis 37:28; Genesis 37:36), a tribe partly nomadic,
but partly actively engaged in commerce. But as the Ishmaelites commanded by
far the greatest part of the caravan trade, all those who carried on the same
pursuits were designated by their name. (M. M.Kalisch, Ph. D.)
Circumstances favouring bad men
There are times when circumstances seem to favour bad men. Some of
us are accustomed to teach that circumstances are the voice of Divine
Providence. There is a sense--a profound sense--in which that is perfectly
true. God speaks by combinations of events, by the complications of history, by
unexpected occurrences. Most undoubtedly so. We have marked this. In many cases
we have seen their moral meaning, and have been attracted to them as to the
cloudy pillar in the day time and the fire by night. At the same time, there is
another side to that doctrine. Here in the text we find circumstances evidently
combining in favour of the bad men who had agreed to part with their brother.
They sat down to eat bread--perfectly tranquil, social amongst themselves, a
rough hospitality prevailing. Just as they sat down to enjoy themselves with
their bread they lifted up their eyes, and at that very moment a company of
Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels. What could be more
providential? They came in the very nick of time. The brethren hadn’t to go up
and down hawking their brother, knocking at door after door to ask if anybody
could take him off their hands; but at the very moment when the discussion was
pending and anxiety was at white heat, these circumstances so combined and
converged as to point out the way of Providence and the path of right. Then we
ought to look at circumstances with a critical eye. We ought first to look at
moral principles and then at circumstances. If the morality is right, the eventuality
may be taken as an element worthy of consideration in the debate and strife of
the hour. But if the principles at the very base are wrong, we are not to see
circumstances as Divine providences, but rather as casual ways to the
realization of a nefarious intent. Let us be still more particular about this.
I do not deny that these Ishmaelites came providentially at that identical
moment. I believe that the Ishmaelites were sent by Almighty God at that very
crisis, and that they were intended by Him to offer the solution of the
difficult problem. But it is one thing for us to debase circumstances to our
own use and convenience, and another to view them from God’s altitude and to
accept them in God’s spirit. (J. Parker D. D.)
The uncertainties that characterize our human existence
How true it is that we know not what a day may bring forth! Joseph
goes out on his father’s errand and never more returns to his father’s
house--does not see his father again, in fact, for twenty-two years. Of course
the crime of his brothers was of the cause of this long separation between him
and his venerable parent. But how often similar things occur even among
ourselves! Some years ago a little boy was stolen from his home in
Philadelphia, and though every means that affection could suggest or
professional skill could devise have been used for his discovery, the mystery
has never been cleared up, so that to this hour his parents are in most
horrible suspense. In our own city, too, scarcely a week elapses without the
announcement that some one has disappeared from home and business, and very
frequently nothing more is heard of him. But, apart from such occurrences,
which may be traced to the cunning and malignity of wicked men, and which are a
disgrace to our much boasted civilization, how often it happens, in the simple
providence of God, and without blame to any one, that those who part in the
morning with the hope of meeting again in a very short while never see each
other more on earth! The street accident causes death; or the sudden outbreak
of fire in the building in which their office hours are spent cuts off all
possibility of escape, and they are burned to ashes; or a panic in a crowded
place of amusement which they visited has caused a great loss of life, and they
are numbered among the victims; or a railroad collision has smashed the train
in which they were passengers, and they are reported among the dead; or,
without any such catastrophe, they have simply yielded to a sudden paroxysm of
illness and passed within the veil. Who knows not how frequently such things
are occurring in the midst of us, so that, as we have lately had occasion again
and again to say, the proverb is verified that it is “the unexpected that
happens.” What then? Are we to have our hearts for ever darkened with the
shadow of the possibility of such things coming to us? No; for that would be to
make our lives continually miserable; but the lesson is that we should be ever
ready to respond to the call of God, and should take short views of things by living,
as nearly as possible, a day at a time. We need not borrow trouble on the
strength of the uncertainty to which I have referred, for “sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof”; but we ought to be taught by it to finish every day’s
work in its own day, since its lesson is, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for
thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Judah’s suggestion
The very brightest and luckiest idea of all. He touched human
nature to the very quick when he said, “What profit is it?” And instantly they
seemed to convict themselves of a kind of thickheadedness, and said one to
another, “Ah, to be sure, why no profit at all. Here is an opportunity of
selling him, and that will turn to the account of us all. Sell is as short a
word as slay. Sell! that will get clear of him. Let us sell. Sell! we shall
have no blood upon our hands. Then we shall, perhaps, have a couple of shekels
a-piece, and tossing them up in the air an inch or so, and catching them again,
and hearing their pleasant chink. This is the plan, to be sure. This is the way
out of the difficulty. We are sorry we ever thought of shedding blood; we shake
ourselves from all such imputations. Let us sell the lad, and there will be an
end of the difficulty.” Selling does not always take a man out of difficulty.
Bargain-making is not always satisfactory. There is a gain that is loss; there
is a loss that is gain. There is a separation that takes the hated object from
the eyes, yet that object is an element in society and in life--working,
penetrating, developing--and it will come back again upon us some day greater
than power, with intensified poignancy; and the man that was driven away from
us a beggar and a slave may one day rise up in our path, terrible as an avenger,
irresistible as a judgment of God. Well, his brethren were content. Men even
say that they enjoy a great peace, and, therefore, that if circumstances are
tolerably favourable, they say that on the whole they feel in a good state of
mind. Therefore, they conclude that they have not been doing anything very
wrong. Let us understand that vice may have a soporific effect upon the
conscience and judgment; that we may work ourselves into such a state of mind
as to place ourselves under circumstances that are fictitious, unsound in their
moral bearing, however enjoyable may be their immediate influence upon the
mind. I am struck by this circumstance, in reading the account which is before
me, namely, how possible it is to fall from a rough kind of vice, such as, “Let
us slay our brother,” into a milder form of iniquity, such as, “Let us sell our
brother,” and to think that we have now actually come into a state of virtue.
That is to say, selling as contrasted with slaying seems so moderate and
amiable a thing, as actually to amount to a kind of virtue. Am I understood
upon this point? We are not to compare one act with another and say,
Comparatively speaking this act is good. Virtue is not a quantity to be
compared. Virtue is a non-declinable quality. I know how easy it is, when some
very startling proposition has been before the mind, to accept a modified form
of the proposition, which in itself is morally corrupt; and yet to imagine, by
the very descent from the other point, that we have come into a region of virtue.
When men say, “Let us slay our brother,” there is a little shuddering in
society. We don’t want to slay our brother. “Well, then,” says an acute man,
“let us sell him.” And, instantly, amiable Christian people say, “Ay, ay, this
is a very different thing; yes, let us sell him.” Observe, the morality is not
changed, only the point in the scale has been lowered. When God comes to judge
lie will not say, Is this virtue and water? is this diluted vice? but, Is this
right? is this wrong? The standard of judgment will be the holiness of God! (J.
Parker, D. D.)
Verse 28
Sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and
they brought Joseph into Egypt
Joseph sold into Egypt
I.
A
FAMILY FEUD THE FOUNDATION OF A NATIONAL CALAMITY. Bondage for four hundred
years.
II. A DESPISED
CLASS BECOMES THE INSTRUMENT OF GOD’S PROVIDENCES AND JUDGMENTS. Ishmaelites:
the slave-traders of their day.
III. THE COMFORT OF
DEATH FOR PERSONAL LOSS AND AWAKENED JUDGMENTS (Genesis 37:35). (W. R. Campbell.)
Joseph sold into Egypt
1. The narrative shows one of
the not uncommon ways which God takes to prepare men for usefulness and
blessing. The pathway to any eminence in usefulness, virtue, or joy, is
commonly rugged. Muscular strength comes of abundant toil, mental vigour of
hard study, moral force of temptation and discipline. It is by fire that gold
is separated from its dross, and iron hardened into steel. Even the Captain of
our salvation was made perfect through suffering. One cannot guess of how many
noble lives the secret, if disclosed, would be found in some great trial. An
Arab once bemoaned his fate thus: “Alas, I fear that God doth not remember me.
I have no trials, nothing but ease and enjoyment.” You cannot make a great life
out of sunshine alone. Nor need one lose heart if his whole earthly course
seems to be under a cloud. As the discipline of youth may be for riper years,
so that of one’s whole earthly career is for the ages beyond.
2. Again, the narrative shows how responsible parents are for the
conduct and welfare of their children. One of the gravest errors in family
training is that favouritism of which Jacob was guilty. On the one hand it
engenders weak and offensive pride; on the other, angry and bitter resentment.
Dissension is inevitable.
3. Here, again, we are impressed with the danger of sin in thought
and feeling. Apparently, the criminal deed of Joseph’s brethren was wholly
unpremeditated. It was an unhappy moment’s impulse. It has been said that “with
one bound a soul sometimes overleaps all blessed restraints; we flee into crime
as if the dogs of sinful desire were upon us.” We rush to deeds of which at
other moments we thought ourselves incapable. The petted feeling grows to be so
completely master, that we obey it when obedience has ceased to be a pleasure.
Some of the world’s greatest criminals were not only sweet in childhood, but
apparently amiable in youth. Let us never forget the tendency of sin to grow,
and that as imperceptibly as does the plant or tree. It is also to be
remembered that the guilt centres in the disposition rather than in the act.
“God sees hearts as we do faces.” “The powder that is explosive and the powder
that explodes do not differ.” “He that hateth his brother is a murderer.”
4. Yet again, we here learn something of the unmixed wickedness of
the particular sin of envy. It is the opposite of that “charity out of a pure
heart,” which, while it rejoices over a brother’s or sister’s good fortune, is
itself thereby enriched; of that spirit which makes all another’s gains its
own, which is the richer for its neighbour’s riches, the gladder for its
brother’s gladness. As love is of heaven, envy is of hell.
5. Briefly, at least, we must notice the illustration we here have
of the bitter outcome of sin.
6. For God’s children, the culminating lesson of this fragment of
history is one of patience and trust in life’s darkest hours. (H. M. Grout,
D. D.)
Sold to the Ishmaelites
I. This narrative
may remind us of THE UNCERTAINTIES THAT CHARACTERIZE OUR HUMAN EXISTENCE. It is
“the unexpected that happens.” The lesson is, that we should be ever ready to
respond to the call of God, and should take short views of things by living, as
nearly as possible, a day at a time.
II. We may see
from this narrative that THE BEGINNING OF SIN IS LIKE THE LETTING OUT OF WATER.
What began in envy leads to murder, and that again gives birth to falsehood.
Sin thus multiplies as rapidly as the Colorado beetle, and no matter what may
be the first one, you may always call its name Gad, for you may surely say, “a
troop cometh.” Therefore, if we would successfully resist it, we must withstand
its beginnings. Especially is this true of envy, which is purely soul-sin--the
hatred of a man for the good that is in him. Envy must be supplanted by the
love of Christ.
III. We may learn
that IN SEEKING TO DEFEAT GOD’S PURPOSES WE ARE ALL THE WHILE UNCONSCIOUSLY HELPING
ON THEIR FULFILMENT. We cannot explain the “ law” of it, but we clearly see the
fact. Oh the marvellous wisdom of that providence of God which thus, without
doing violence to the will of any human being, lays all their actions under
tribute for the furtherance of its designs! And what is the use of a man trying
to thwart God’s purposes when, whether he will or not, everything he does only
helps them forward? Surely it is better far to acquiesce in them, and find our
happiness in the doing of His will!
IV. I note from
this narrative that WE NO NOT GET RID OF A RESPONSIBILITY BY PUTTING IT OUT OF
SIGHT.
V. THERE IS A
RETRIBUTIVE ELEMENT IN OUR TROUBLES. Jacob, who deceived his father Isaac, is
now deceived by his own children. One of his “chickens” came home “to roost,”
and very bitter was the experience. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Lesson analysis
I. JOSEPH ABUSED.
1. Stripped of his raiment (Genesis 37:23).
2. Taken by force (Genesis 37:24).
3. Cast into a pit (Genesis 37:24).
II. JOSEPH SOLE.
1. The ready purchasers (Genesis 37:25).
2. The mercenary plea (Genesis 37:26-27).
3. The paltry price.
III. JOSEPH
MOURNED.
1. Cruel deception (Genesis 37:33).
2. Pitiable woe (Genesis 37:34).
3. Inconsolable sorrow (Genesis 37:35). (American Sunday
School Times.)
Man’s passions and God’s purpose
I. THE BROAD
TEACHING OF THE WHOLE STORY IS, THAT GOD WORKS OUT HIS GREAT PURPOSES THROUGH
EVEN THE CRIMES OF UNCONSCIOUS As. As coral insects work, not knowing the plan
of their reef, still less the fair vegetation and smiling homes which it will
one day carry, but blindly building from the material supplied by the ocean a
barrier against it; so even evildoers are carrying on God’s plan, and sin is
made to counterwork itself, and be the black channel through which the flashing
water of life pours.
II. THE POISONOUS
FRUIT OF BROTHERLY HATRED. The swift passage of the purely spiritual sin of
jealous envy into the murderous act, as soon as opportunity offered, teaches
the short path which connects the inmost passions with the grossest outward
deeds. Like Jonah’s gourd, the smallest seed of hate needs bat an hour or two
of favouring weather to become a great tree, with all obscene and blood-seeking
birds croaking in its branches. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”
Therefore the solemn need for guarding the heart from the beginnings of envy,
and for walking in love. The clumsy contrivance for murder without criminality,
which Reuben suggested, is an instance of the shallow pretexts with which the
sophistry of sin fools men before they have done the wrong thing. The mask
generally tumbles off very soon after. The bait is useless when the hook is
well in the fish’s gills. “Don’t let us kill him. Let us put him into a
cistern. He cannot climb up its bottle-shaped, smooth sides. But that is not
our fault. Nobody will ever hear his muffled cries from its depths. But there
will be no blood on our hands.” It was not the first time, nor is it the last,
that men have tried to blink their responsibility for the consequences which
they hoped would come of their crimes. Such excuses seem sound when we are
being tempted; but, as soon as the rush of passion is past, they are found to
be worthless. Like some cheap castings, they are only meant to be seen in
front, where they are rounded and burnished. Get behind them, and you find them
hollow. “They sat down to eat bread.” Thomas Fuller pithily says: “With what
heart could they say grace, either before or after meat?” What a grim meal! And
what an indication of their rude natures, seared consciences, and deadened
affections!
III. The ill-omened
meal is interrupted by the sudden appearance, so picturesquely described, of
THE CARAVAN OF ISHMAELITES WITH THEIR LOANED CAMELS. Dothan was on or near the
great trade route to Egypt, where luxury, as well as the custom of embalming,
opened a profitable market for spices. The traders would probably not be
particular as to the sort of merchandize they picked up on their road, and such
an” unconsidered trifle “ as a slave or two would be neither here nor there.
This opportune advent of the caravan sets a thought buzzing in Judah’s brain,
which brings out a new phase of the crime. Hatred darkening to murder is bad
enough; but hatred which has also aa eye to business, and makes a profit out of
a brother, is a shade or two blacker, because it means cold-blooded calculation
and selfish advantage instead of raging passion.
IV. Leaving Joseph
to pursue his sad journey, our narrative introduces for the first time REUBEN,
whose counsel, as the verses before our lesson tell us, it had been to cast the
poor lad into the cistern. His motive had been altogether good; he wished to
save life, and, as soon as the others were out of the way, to bring Joseph up
again and get him safely back to Jacob Genesis 42:22). Well meant and kindly
motived as his action was--and self-sacrificing too, if, as is probable, Joseph
was his destined successor in the forfeited birthright--his scheme breaks down,
as attempts to mitigate evil by compliance and to make compromises with sinners
usually do. The only one of the whole family who had some virtue in him, was
too timid to take up a position of uncompromising condemnation. He thought it
more politic to go part of the way, and to trust to being able to prevent the
worst. That is always a dangerous experiment. It is often tried still; it never
answers. Let a man stand to his guns, and speak out the condemnation that is in
his heart; otherwise he will be sure to go farther than he meant, he will lose
all right of remonstrance, and will generally find that the more daring sinners
have made his well-meant schemes to avert the mischief impossible.
V. THE CRUEL
TRICK BY WHICH JACOB WAS DECEIVED is perhaps the most heartless bit of the
whole heartless crime. It canto as near an insult as possible. It was
maliciously meant. The snarl about the coat, the studied use of “thy son” as if
they disowned the brotherhood, the unfeeling harshness of choosing such a way
of telling their lie--all were meant to give the maximum of pain, and betray
their savage hatred of father and son, and its causes.
VI. AND WHAT OF
THE POOR OLD FATHER? His grief is unworthy of God’s wrestler. It is not the
part of a devout believer in God’s providence to refuse to be comforted. There
was no religious submission in his passionate sorrow. How unlike the quiet
resignation which should have marked the recognition that the God who had been
his guide was working here too! No doubt the hypocritical condolences of his
children were as vinegar upon nitre. No doubt the loss of Joseph had taken away
the one gentle and true son on whom his loneliness rested since his Rachel’s
death, while he found no solace in the wild, passionate men who called him “father,”
and brought him no “ honour.” But still his grief is beyond the measure
which a true faith in God would have warranted; and we cannot but see that the
dark picture which we have just been looking at gets no lighter or brighter
tints from the demeanour of Jacob. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Joseph sold into Egypt
I. A BEAUTIFUL
IDEAL OF WHAT A YOUNG CHRISTIAN SHOULD BE.
1. Having no fellowship with that which is evil.
2. As loved of the good.
II. THE SAD
EXPERIENCES THROUGH WHICH MANY A CONSISTENT YOUNG CHRISTIAN PASSES.
1. Joseph was hated of his brothers because their father loved him.
2. Joseph was cruelly treated by his brothers.
3. There are lighter and darker shades among the wicked.
III. THE SORROW
WHICH CRUEL TREATMENT CAUSES,
IV. THE TENDER
PROVIDENCE OF GOD IS SEEN IN THE DISPOSAL OF JOSEPH IN EGYPT.
1. His promotion in Potiphar’s house proves this.
2. That he reached the rulership of Egypt through his experiences in
Potiphar’s house, proves it. Lessons: The permissions of God are full of
mystery, but also full of grace.
2. The story of Joseph proves the possibility of youthful piety, and
that Christian character may glow in adversity. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
Apparent disaster often real advancement
The chief peril which threatened Joseph was the foolish partiality
of his father. Under this unwholesome influence he was likely enough to become
vain, insolent, overbearing. So it was best that he should be removed from this
mischievous hot-house of favouritism into a more bracing climate; where, under
biting winds and nipping frosts, his virtues would be well rooted. Fortune’s
frowns serve our well-being, as much--perhaps more--than fortune’s smiles. If
friends of God, no harm can ever befall us.
I. WE SEE HERE
INNOCENCE PROVOKING MALICE TO VILER DEEDS. Without question, the presence of a
righteous man brings to light the baseness of the wicked. Just as the summer
sun quickens the growth of noxious weeds, and makes the stench of a foetid
sewer still more odious; so the influence of a saintly character exasperates
base men to do their worst. The presence of the Son of God on earth provoked
Satan to put out prodigious efforts of malice. To a vitiated palate even food
will produce vomiting. The beneficent errand of Joseph obtained only opprobrium
and ill.nature. “Behold,” said they, “this dreamer cometh.” Then this was the
worst thing malice could lay to his charge. In this respect also Joseph was a
type of Jesus Christ. The only accusation men could prefer against either was
that he had aspired to be a king. Yet this was not merely a prophetic
assertion; it was a divinely appointed office; it was a certain destiny. The
righteous man must inevitably rule.
II. WE SEE HERE
WICKEDNESS RAPIDLY MATURING ITS FRUITS.
1. Sin is a hardening and a blinding process. It treats its victims
as the Philistines treated Samson--puts out their eyes. They saw not Joseph as
a brother; they saw him only as a dreamer. They saw only the gain of twenty dollars--about
a dollar a piece; they were blind to the tremendous loss.
2. Under favourable circumstances sin speedily develops. Hatred soon
grew into murderous conspiracy, into rude violence, into lying, deceit,
avarice, fraud; into base traffic of a brother’s flesh--the sum of all
villainies. In the fields of nature some plants will bear ten thousand seeds;
but this plant of sin is yet more prolific in effects.
3. Yet sin is temporarily checked by a sense of responsibility.
Reuben alone of the eleven sought the deliverance of Joseph.
4. Sin defeats its own ends. When the innocent lad was led away an
abject slave, had they baffled his dreams? They had helped the business
forward.
III. WE SEE HERE
THAT HARD SERVICE IS THE WAY TO SOVEREIGNTY. There is great truth in the maxim
that “he would rule, must first learn to serve.” Napoleon I. rose to
sovereignty because he served well in the lowest ranks of the French army.
Jesus Christ is enthroned in the hearts of myriads because He has served them
so faithfully and so generously. It is a law in mechanics that in proportion as
a free body is forced downward, will it rise upward when the force is
withdrawn. Nature helps a rebound. (J. Dickerson Davies,M. A.)
Anything better than confinement in the dry pit
To be brought out of a pit wherein there is no water, is in
Scripture represented as a great deliverance. Joseph would learn in this pit to
bear those other sufferings that were allotted to him. He was sold to foreign
merchants. He was carried into a strange land, to be again sold as a slave. He
was cast into a prison, where he lay for several years. But the remembrance of
the pit wherein was no water, and of his fruitless cries for relief, would make
him think that his condition, under all these circumstances of distress, was
not so bad as it might have been, and as it once actually was. (G. Lawson,
D. D.)
Joseph betrayed and sold for twenty pieces of silver
Joseph, in his betrayal into the hands of the Ishmaelites, was a
distinct type of the Redeemer betrayed into the hands of the Gentiles. The name
of the betrayer was the same. In the case of Joseph it was a brother who lifted
up his heel against him; in the case of Christ, it was His own familiar friend
in whom He trusted, which did eat of His bread (Psalms 41:9) that betrayed Him. In both
eases it was covetousness which prompted the betrayer to the dark deed of
treachery. In both cases the betrayer dissembled, and accomplished his wicked
design under the mask of friendship. Do you observe how Judah speaks? How
subtle is his argument, and yet how transparently hollow and treacherous and
insincere! As hollow and as insincere as the kiss of Judas! Look at his speech.
“Come,” said he, “and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand
be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh.” Oh what a contemptible vice
is covetousness! The rest of his brethren readily consented to this proposal.
The proposal itself, and their acquiescing in it, gives us a very painful view
of the deceitfulness of the human heart. The proposal was a monstrous one; it
was most cruel; and yet they ignorantly imagined that by adopting it they would
be washing their hands of bloodguiltiness. They appear to have viewed it as an
admirable contrivance, by which they would get rid of Joseph effectually,
without loading their consciences with his death, just as though they would not
be quite as responsible in the sight of God for the mischief done him by the
Ishmaelites, as though their own hands bad wrought it. It is very melancholy to
see the conscience of man thus deceiving him. And are there not other practices
amongst us in which this same principle of drugging our consciences deceitfully
can be traced? Is there no such thing as servants being employed to do what we
would be ashamed to do ourselves? But perhaps we may discover something more
than a practical lesson in this conduct of the patriarchs. May not their “Let
not our hand be upon Him” remind us of the Jews? When Pilate said to them,
“Take ye Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him,” what did they say?
“Oh no! let not our hand be upon Him; do you crucify Him; yes, crucify Him, by
all means; but as for us, it is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” There
are two other points in the text in which Joseph was a type of Christ. He was
sold as a slave; Jesus was born under the law--a slave to perform all the rigid
requirements of a law without mercy. Not one jot, not one tittle of that rigid
law was ever relaxed for Him. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver,
Jesus was sold for thirty. At what price do you value the Lord Jesus Christ? Is
He, in your estimation, the pearl of great price? (E. Dalton.)
Joseph sold to Arabs
The passage of an Arab caravan towards Egypt, and its purchase of
Joseph, is equally true to early times, and to the unchanging Eastern life of
to-day. Sir Samuel Baker’s boy, Saat, had, in the same way as Joseph, been
carried off while he was tending goats, by an Arab caravan; hidden in a gum
sack, and finally taken to Cairo and sold as a slave. “All the world may
perish, so far as we care,” said an Arab to Niebuhr, “if only Egypt remains.”
And it was left to them even more in Joseph’s day than now, from the dislike of
Egyptians to leave their country even for purposes of gain. The trade in
“spices” was exceptionally great between the valley of the Nile and
neighbouring countries; from the quantity used for embalming mummies, for
burning as incense, or as disinfectants; for which they were in great repute.
Even the names of the first and second of the three spices named--gum
tragacanth, from Lebanon and Palestine generally, Armenia and Persia; balsam
from the balsam-tree of Gilead; and lauda-num the gum collected still from the
leaves of the cistus-rose--from Syria and Arabia, have been found in the list
of two hundred drugs named in the temple-laboratory of Edfu; for each temple
had its laboratory and apothecary. Even the twenty pieces of silver given for
Joseph are exactly the price fixed under Moses as that of a male slave between
five and twenty years of age (Leviticus 27:5); so nearly had human
beings kept the same value for centuries. (C. Geikie, D. D.)
Sold into slavery
Mr. H. M. Stanley told an awful story of African slavery, in the
Manchester Free Trade Hall. He said: “A slave trade was a great blight, which
clung to Africa like an aggravated pest, destroying men faster than children
could be born. He overtook a party of Arab marauders on the Congo in November,
1883, over 1,200 miles from the sea. They had utterly desolated a number of
villages, massacred all the adult males who had not at once fled, and carried
off the women and children. He never saw such a sight before. In a small camp
300 fighting men kept in manacles and fetters, 2,300 naked women and children,
their poor bodies entrusted with dirt, all emaciated and weary through much
misery. Here was the net result of the burning of 118 villages, and the devastation
of forty-three districts, to glut the avaricious soul of a man who had
constituted himself chief of a district some 200 miles higher up. Though over
seventy-five years old, here he was prosecuting his murderous business, having
shed as much human blood in three months as, if collected into a tank, might
have sufficed to drown him and all his thirty wives and concubines. Those 2,300
slaves would have to be transported over 200 miles in canoes, and such as could
not be fed would die, and perhaps 800--perhaps 900--of all the number would
ever reach their destination.”
From the pit to slavery
In Joseph’s being lifted out of the pit only to pass into slavery,
many a man of Joseph’s years has seen a picture of what has happened to
himself. From a position in which they have been as if buried alive, young men
not uncommonly emerge into a position preferable certainly to that out of which
they have been brought, but in which they are compelled to work beyond their
strength, and that for some superior in whom they have no special interest.
Grinding toil, and often cruel insult, are their portion; and no necklace heavy
with tokens of honour that afterwards may be allotted them can ever quite hide
the scars made by the iron collar of the slave. One need not pity them over
much, for they are young and have a whole life-time of energy and power of
resistance in their spirit. And yet they will often call themselves slaves, and
complain that all the fruit of their labour passes over to others and away from
themselves, and all prospect of the fulfilment of their former dreams is quite
cut off. That which haunts their heart by day and by night, that which they
seem destined and fit for, they never get time nor liberty to work out and
attain. They are never viewed as proprietors of themselves, who may possibly
have interests of their own and hopes of their own. In Joseph’s case there were
many aggravations of the soreness of such a condition. He had not one friend in
the country. He had no knowledge of the language, no knowledge of any trade
that could make him valuable in Egypt--nothing, in short, but his own manhood
and his faith in God. His introduction to Egypt was of the most dispiriting
kind. What could he expect from strangers, if his own brothers had found him so
obnoxious? Now, when a man is thus galled and stung by injury, and has learned
how little he can depend upon finding good faith and common justice in the
world, his character will show itself in the attitude he assumes towards men
and towards life generally. A weak nature, when it finds itself thus deceived
and injured, will sullenly surrender all expectation of good, and will vent its
spleen on the world by angry denunciations of the heartless and ungrateful ways
of men. A proud nature will gather itself up from every blow, and determinedly
work its way to an adequate revenge. A mean nature will accept its fate, anal
while it indulges in cynical and spiteful observations on human life, will
greedily accept the paltriest rewards it can secure. But the supreme
healthiness of Joseph’s nature resists all the infectious influences that
emanate from the world around him, and preserves him from every kind of morbid
attitude towards the world and life. So easily did he throw off all vain
regrets and stifle all vindictive and morbid feelings, so readily did he adjust
himself to and so heartly enter into life as it presented itself to him, that
he speedily rose to be overseer in the house of Potiphar. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Verse 29-30
Reuben returned
Lessons
1.
Under
the wise providence of God, helpers may come too late to so save oppressed.
2. Creatures as they intend, so may they do their utmost to save,
when God will not have it so.
3. The pit, under God’s disposal, giveth up to sale, when it is
intended unto freedom.
4. Nature is apt to be passionate to rending cloths upon
disappointments (Genesis 37:29).
5. Brotherly affection disappointed, though not true, will make one
fall upon disappointers with indignation.
6. Passiom may make men judge that not to be, which is, and so may
make mourners.
7. Natural affection may put men to their wits’ end upon disappointments,
and fears of worse events (Genesis 37:30). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Lessons
1. Hypocrisy may admit trouble in some evil, but conspires wilfully
to do other. Reuben with them.
2. The coat of innocency may be made a cloak to cover cruelty.
3. Cruelty makes use of policy to hide itself from discovery. Kid’s
blood for man’s.
4. Sinners’ subtlety sometimes to put it off from themselves, makes
evil worse than it is. Blood without blood (Genesis 37:31.)
5. Beastly acting sinners use, to turn over their sins to beasts (so
if the word be striking through).
6. The guilty have their harbingers, to conceal sin more cunningly.
7. Sin makes men shameless to bring the tokens of their wickedness
to plead for them.
8. Sellers of brethren make not much to do that, which may kill
their fathers.
9. Sinners use to make their refuge in lies, and so add sin to sin.
10. Impudent sinners, though they be conscious, yet make things
doubtful unto others (Genesis 37:32).
11. Good men may be deceived by sinners, upon that which they know.
12. Gracious souls may be too credulous toward the wicked, who speaks
falsely to them.
13. Over much credulity makes men receive that which afterwards they
find false (Genesis 37:33). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Without doubt
Without doubt
While in relation to some things men doubt where they ought to
trust, with other matters they will feel quite certain, though they have good
cause for questioning.
Consider the habit of taking certain notions “without doubt,” as it is
illustrated in the case of Jacob.
I. THE HABIT IS
DEPENDENT ON PREDISPOSITION. The sanguine are “without doubt” of success, where
the cautious are “without doubt” of disaster. The despondent regard the world
through darkened spectacles. It is no wonder that their prospects seem gloomy.
II. THE HABIT IS
ENCOURAGED BY APPEARANCES. To Jacob appearances were sadly significant. What
more evidence could be wanted? We should remember that all appearances may be
against the true facts.
III. THE HABIT
LEADS TO GREVIOUS MISTAKES. Jacob’s verdict was “without doubt.” Nevertheless,
it was a wrong verdict. We talk of the evil of doubt. There are evils of positiveness.
IV. THE HABIT IS
POSITIVELY MISCHIEVOUS. It causes distress when we are needlessly positive of a
painful surmise. It does more harm. It paralyses our efforts to better a gloomy
state of affairs.
V. THE HABIT MAY
BE A PUNISHMENT OF FORMER UNTRUTHFULNESS. In his youth Jacob deceived his
father; in his old age Jacob was deceived by his sons. He was cunning and wily.
Yet he was over-reached, and suffered from the trickery of others. Worldly
acuteness is no security against deception in matters that lie nearest to our
heart. The fox may be out witted, while the lamb is spared in its simplicity.
Application: See how the coprinciples work in various directions.
1. Domestic anxiety. Parents are often inclined to dread the worst
of absent children lost to sight, and perhaps unheard of for years. Yet they
may be as safe and prosperous as Joseph became.
2. Prospects for life.
3. Our spiritual condition. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
He refused to be comforted
Real and unreal consolations
Earth is so full of sorrows, and its sorrows are so various, and
its cry for their healing so piteous and so importunate, that no man who lives
can always stop his ears, if he can even steel his heart, against the demand
for his sympathy and his ministration.
The world itself has its forms and its phrases of consolation; borrowed, no
doubt, in name, from Christianity and the Bible, but divested, in the transfer,
of their efficacy for healing, by being torn (as it were) from the context, and
presented bare and solitary to the aching and thirsting heart. And the Church
has its ministry of comfort; its ordained and consecrated representatives in
things sacred, of whose profession it is one half, and not the least anxious
and difficult half, to be at the beck and call of sorrow, whatever its kind or
cause, for the express purpose of conveying to it, in Christ’s behalf, the
consolations of the Gospel. Nevertheless, how many are they who, whether the
world speaks or the Church, yet, like the patriarch in the text, “refuse to be
comforted.” How small a part of the suffering of mankind as a whole, even in
Christendom, is healed, or sensibly mitigated, by the comfort professedly
offered it. Let us ask why. Let us take a few specimens of consolation, as the
word is commonly understood, and see where and why they fail, and must fail, in
doing the thing attempted. We need not, for our present purpose, distinguish
accurately between different kinds of distress. Pain is pain, whether it has to
do with mind or body, with circumstances or affections, with conscience or the
soul. And as the malady is, in this sense, one in all cases, so the idea and
principle of consolation, may be the same in very various applications.
1. Thus there is one kind of consolation, the least adroit, it may
be, but not the least common, which practically consists in a disparagement of
the suffering. This sort of comfort fails in both the essentials. First, it is
unsympathizing; and secondly, it is unreal. A man could not thus speak who felt
with you. This man is just getting rid of an irksome duty. He does not enter
into your ease. Thus the comfort lacks sympathy, and must be refused. But it
lacks reality too. It is not true that you exaggerate. Your pain is painful.
2. There is another kind of consolation, of which the characteristic
is that it deals largely in false promises. The physician, conjured to be true,
looks the patient in the face, and says she thing that is not. “He sees nothing
to make him anxious. You may live for years.” He tells the next person he meets
that you are a doomed man. You are anxious--you have cause to be so--about
professional success. You confide your misgiving, your apprehension, your
mortification, to your friend. To save himself, or to save you, a moment’s
pain, he assures you that you are mistaken. “The next turn of fortune’s wheel
will be in your favour. He has reason to hope, he almost knows, that your name
stands next for an appointment.” To a third person he says plainly that you are
a failure, that you have not a chance. Worse still is it, when the soul is the
subject.
3. There is a still larger class of consolations which have this for
their feature, that they use true words but apply them falsely. In mere
carelessness, in worse than carelessness, in headlong headstrong presumption, a
man has incurred a terrible, perhaps fatal, accident. There is instantly a
chorus of comforters, it is the will of God. Worse than this: a son has been
the plague of his home, the scourge of mother and sister, the ill example, the
guide into all mischief, of brothers and schoolfellows! no change, save from
worse to worse, comes over his youth; all manner of sin and wickedness is his
sport and his occupation; at last he commits a crime, brings shame upon his
name, reduces his family to misery and destitution--who cannot anticipate, even
then, a view of the terrible history, whichshall lightly and confidently bring
into it, if not for the sinner yet for the sufferers, the hand and counsel of
God; bidding them believe that the whole aspect of it, for them at least, is
one of blessing and hope and fatherly love? And so, when at last the grave
closes over one whose whole life has been a denial and defiance of the Bible,
whose last breath may have been the repudiation, not only of clergyman or
sacrament, but of prayer, and of Christ, and of immortality itself; there are
those who can see in all this nothing more than an idiosyncrasy or a
misfortune, and who, not contented (as all ought to be) with silence and
sorrow, with refraining from cruel judgments and ill-omened words, are ready to
offer to the survivors the most cheerful and confident of consolations, as if
over a deathbed of sweet hope, crowning a life of consistent, of Christ-like
devotion. Brethren, the sight and the touch of suffering is keen and sensitive;
and it must revolt against all this as an offensive obstrusion of an unreal and
impertinent consolation. That which we could not say without cruelty in the individual
instance, or in the house darkened by the calamity itself, we can say and we
ought to say in general terms, while it may yet be for the admonition of men
whose day of grace is not ended. Truth is not always comfort. We cannot always
with propriety say in the moment of sorrow the word which nevertheless may be
the true one, about the healing power of time, or the reparative processes of
reviving interests and affections. But this has no exception; comfort cannot be
without truth. Sympathy itself is dead, being alone. Let us who would be “sons
of consolation,” take good heed to our truthfulness. This estimate of life and
the Bible will alter the language of our consolations. It will make them
entirely real, and in the same degree strongly supporting. We shall ask no man
to call evil good, or to write sweet for bitter. When some terrible thing
happens, and we are called to minister, we shall say, “Alas, my brother!” Let
us sit and weep together over the mighty power of evil. Oh, how necessary was
the Gospel! Oh, how intelligible has become the Cross! Oh, how desirable that
last revelation--death and hell cast into the lake of fire--the tabernacle of
God come down to earth, and tears wiped from off all faces! And then, although
we cannot offer the false consolation, which confounds light and darkness,
receives with an impartial and indifferent complaisance alike the good and the
evil, sees a God (so called) equally in both and in neither, and encourages an
easy, trivial, light-hearted passage, through a world “neither clear nor dark,”
into another world, itself neither day nor night; yet we shall at least have
realized God in His holiness, Christ in His necessity, life in its seriousness,
heaven in its glory; we shall at least have renounced for ever that vile
flattery which barters truth for a smile--that ignoble traggicing in great
names, of which the Nemesis is the forfeiture of great realities. And the moral
of it all is weighty and legible. If the battle is so sore around and within
us; if good and evil are not words but things; if Christ and Satan are not
phantoms but persons; if we must have a side, though we know it not, and he
that is not with Christ must be against Him--let us be serious. The mere use of
true words will help us.(Dean Vaughan.)
I will go down into the
grave unto my son mourning
Jacob’s grief for his son
I. IT WAS DEEP
AND OVERWHELMING.
II. IT WAS
INCONSOLABLE.
III. IT CAST HIM
UPON THE FUTURE. (T. H. Leade.)
Jacob’s mistake
“I will go down to the grave,” or to the world of departed
spirits, “mourning for my son.” Jacob did not hope to see any more good in this
world, when his choicest comfort in life was taken from him. He had the
prospect of no days of gladness, when Joseph, the joy of his heart, was torn in
pieces by wild beasts. But he did not know what joys were yet before him in the
recovery of his long-lost son. We know not what joys or what sorrows may be
before us in the course of our lives. Let us never despond while God’s throne
continues firm and stable in heaven. Jacob had the prospect of sorrow while he
lived in the world. He knew, and he ought to have rejoiced in the knowledge,
that his sorrows would last only during his present life. The saints of God
will indeed be in heaviness through manifold temptations, whilst they continue
in this bad world. But they have good reason (if they had hearts) to rejoice
with joy unspeakable, and full of glory, in the prospect of the unknown joys
that lie beyond the grave. The present life is but a single night to their
future life; and although sorrow may endure through the whole night, yet joy
cometh in the morning. (G. Lawson, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》