1. Although Joseph knew his brethren when he saw them, they did not know him. This is not surprising. The years had passed over him between youth and manhood, and the coat of many colours was exchanged for the dignified dress and appointments of a great prince of Egypt. There was less alteration in them. They were already men when Joseph had seen them last, and the lapse of a little over twenty years may have slackened the activity of their step and furrowed the lines on their cheeks, but it had not carried the oldest of them beyond the vigour of life. The brethren of Joseph were strong men when they sold him into Egypt, and the brethren of Joseph were still strong men-older, but not old-when they bowed before him with their faces to the earth, as the first minister of the Egyptian Crown. In addition to all this, it would excite no wonder in Joseph to see his brethren there. Considering that the famine was spread over all the countries round, Canaan among them, it might rather be expected that the sons of Israel should be among those who came to buy corn. Their presence before the storehouses of Egypt was natural; but that the boy whom they sold those years ago for twenty pieces of silver should be supreme ruler under the sovereign of the proud kingdom of Egypt, this was so completely past the wildest reach of imagination that we do not wonder at their failing to know him; putting aside the disguises of dress, we should have wondered rather if they had known him. It was under the shelter, then, of this concealment that Joseph took the line of action which we are now going to observe.
2. Joseph's treatment of his brethren was one of the puzzles of our childhood; and some of us, perhaps, stumble over it still, especially over the pain which he caused to his favourite brother, Benjamin. The key to his whole method is that he was trying to find out whether they would behave in the same fashion as they had done before, and to prove to them, as well as to himself, that they would not.
Joseph was indeed saving his brothers alive by a great deliverance. He was providing against the immediate destruction with which the famine was threatening them; he was providing against the more thorough and permanent destruction which their own selfishness and crimes were working out. He understood this to be the purpose of God in His ways to them.
(1) The remembrance of the past.-Joseph tries them-puts them to the proof. Will they do the same thing as they had done before, or are they different men? So he demands their younger brother, and the demand brings back the remembrance of Joseph; they are certain that their father would look upon Benjamin's going with them as though he were losing Joseph a second time. How will they behave? Are they the same reckless, unfeeling men who sold Joseph? Or have the searchings of heart-the times of remorse which they must have experienced-had any effect on them? And then Joseph increased the mystery and the fear by taking Simeon and putting him in prison. Doubtless Simeon's voice had been loudest for murder in the old days. They felt the strange mystery of his selection. Then, again, the money found in their sacks increased their sense of mystery; they go home with failing hearts, saying, “What is this that God hath done unto us?” And after that came the meeting with Jacob without one son; and, worse still, the having to demand Benjamin from him. When Reuben cries, “Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee,” he has to feel, in his turn, his father's old sorrow, and to make the bitter discovery that he is not trusted, that his father has never forgotten his old unfaithfulness. So everything-Joseph's demand for Benjamin, their father's grief and reproaches-concurs to call up the old, sad scene; they see it acted over again as in a parable. At last the famine presses, and they set out again full of fear-fear of the old sin that seems coming back so vividly upon them; fear at having Benjamin with them; fear of meeting that stern ruler who had put Simeon in prison; fear about the questions he might ask concerning the money returned in their sacks. And this fear increased, their sense of some mysterious dealing with them grew, when they were invited to the palace of the great unknown prince, and found themselves, by the same secret knowledge that took Simeon, set in order according to their age, as if God Himself were sorting them. Then came the terrible agony as they saw the cup taken from Benjamin's sack, and heard the judgment which took him so hopelessly from them. As they had done to Joseph and their father, so had this strange, mysterious doom done to Benjamin and themselves. Did they now envy Benjamin-their father's favourite-as they had envied Joseph twenty years before? Were they ready to go back with another heart-breaking story to Jacob-a story this time only too true? The whole crime was being acted out over again before their eyes; the whole circumstances were being called to life again, except that they had not so far risen against their favoured brother.
(2) The reversal of the past.-There is no disposition on their part to disconnect their fortunes from his, to make selfish conditions of safety for themselves. They accept his offence as their own, his iniquity as the iniquity of them all. One fate, one lot for all; or, if a better doom for any, let that be for him. Great as his fault has been, deep as the danger and disgrace into which he has brought them, they will not desert him, and by this desertion obtain, as is plain they may do, a selfish deliverance for themselves. Their trial reaches its crisis when Joseph announces to them that Benjamin shall remain his servant, but that they all are free to return home. Judah is the spokesman in reply. Rejecting Joseph's suggestion, he makes, in the nobleness of self-offering love, another proposition. Stepping nearer in the passionate earnestness of the moment, he speaks out boldly, yet not at the same time forgetting for an instant that it is Egypt's lord with whom he speaks. This speech of Judah's has hardly obtained the admiration which it deserves. It is a noble model of the eloquence which sometimes visits men not eloquent by nature, when a great occasion has loosed their tongues. Briefly recapitulating what had passed since first he and his brethren came to Egypt, he puts back the temptation with which Joseph has tempted him and his brethren Without Benjamin he will not return home. The life of his father is bound up with the life of the lad; only let the lad return with his brethren, and he will remain, a bondman in his stead. This was enough for Joseph; this was all he wanted. The brethren that could thus speak and act were not the same that had sat down in Dothan to eat bread, while he, their brother, was lying in the pit; they were not the same that had brought his raiment dipped in blood to their father. There was nothing to hinder him now from declaring himself to them.
(3) The forgiveness of the past.-“Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.” Judah's appeal was overwhelming in its effect upon his brother. Joseph could restrain himself no longer. The heart's love refused to be kept back longer, and in spite of himself, the tenderness he had sought to hide beneath a harsh and cruel exterior burst from him, and made its presence felt. “I am Joseph” was his simple confession. It is impossible for us to conceive the effect of this revelation upon those men. For the moment they must have been utterly staggered, confounded, amazed. Remembering their cruelty to him, the dastardly wrong he had suffered at their hands; and seeing him before them the governor of a mighty nation, binding its princes at his pleasure, and teaching its senators wisdom, we can well understand how terror and remorse would so paralyse their heart as to leave them speechless in misery. They “could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” It was thus he poured balm into their wounded hearts. It was a noble speech, revealing a noble nature. He was seeking to put these brothers at their ease, to assure them of his forgiveness, to make them forget all their cruel wrong to himself, to induce them even to forgive themselves for their murderous hate, and so to establish a union with them of mutual love and trust. What more manifest evidence could we have of a noble mind, than this tender-hearted readiness to forgive personal injuries? What is there that exalts a man so highly in the esteem of his friends as a generous, kindly, forgiving spirit? “Who is the great man?” asks Buddha. “He who is strongest in the exercise of patience; he who patiently endures injury.” And do we not feel that, when a man can overcome the spirit of vindictiveness, when he can cast aside the sweetness of revenge, when he can forbear retaliation for the injury which has been done, or for the insult offered him, he has won for himself a nobility that is solid and true? We love the spirit which forgives most. We are ready to bear emphatic testimony to the nobleness of kindness, to the omnipotence of love. We treasure the remembrance of mercy as amongst the dearest recollections of life.
How sure we are of our own forgiveness from God. How certain we are that we are made in His image, when we forgive heartily and out of hand one who has wronged us. Sentimentally we may feel, and lightly we may say, “To err is human, to forgive divine”; but we never taste the nobility and divinity of forgiving till we forgive and know the victory of forgiveness over our sense of being wronged, over mortified pride and wounded sensibilities. Here we are in living touch with Him who treats us as though nothing had happened-who turns His back upon the past, and bids us journey with Him into goodness and gladness, into newness of life.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 27.]
If hasty hand or bitter tongue
Have ever done yon causeless wrong
By evil deed or word,
Have no bad thought your heart within,
For malice is a deadly sin
And hateful to the Lord.
Be yours such thought as Joseph felt,
When all his haughty brethren knelt,
As visioned dreams foretold,
And found, in that Egyptian Lord,
The Brother whom their hearts abhorred,
The slave whom they had sold.
Then not a tear, but such as pour
When hearts with love and joy run o'er,
Then not an angry word he gave,
But said, “My brothers, weep no more;
'Twas God who sent me on before
Your dearer lives to save.”
A twofold power Forgiveness hath,
She softens hearts, she tempers wrath,
And she is ever strong
To call a blessing down from Heaven;
Christ said, “If ye would be forgiven
Forgive your brother's wrong.”2 [Note: Cecil Frances Alexander.]
