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Gen_41:51-52
The first son he called Manasseh, which means forgetting—or, which may, as a substantive, be rendered forgetfulness. And why? “For God, said he, hath made me to forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” It is a beautiful and interesting circumstance in the history of Joseph, that he has God ever before his eyes. When tempted to sin, his cry is, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” When the court officers in prison were troubled by their dreams, he said, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” When the king tells him that he had heard of his skill in the interpretation of dreams, he is anxious to turn the credit from himself to God—“It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” When the purport of the royal dreams becomes clear to him, he again sees God in them—“God hath showed Pharaoh what he is about to do.” “The thing is established by God; and God will shortly bring it to pass.” So, when he discloses himself to his brethren, and they are overwhelmed with shame and compunction, he says, “Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life;” and, “God sent me before you, to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” Again, in the message sent to his father, “God hath made me lord of all Egypt.” Also, in the address to his brethren after the death of his father, “Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.” At last, he dies in the conviction that “God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land;” and so assured is he of this, that he takes an oath of them that they will carry his bones with them to the land of their future possession. It was this constant reference to God in all things, before all things, and for all things, that forms the real characteristic of Joseph’s history, and is the true secret to all his glory and success. So here, in the name of his first-born son, he erects what he knows will be, and what he means to be, an imperishable monument of his conviction that it is God who has made him to forget all his misery, and all his father’s house.
Now, it is the infirmity of our flesh that we look too much to the immediate instruments of our blessings, and forget God in them, or content ourselves with a cold and formal acknowledgment. It is well for us when, like Joseph, we are able—or rather, when we are enabled—to make the consciousness of God’s presence and intervention in all our affairs, a vital principle of action—a law of life unto ourselves. Nor shall we be therefore the less grateful to the instruments of our mercies. Far otherwise. For he who most clearly sees God as the source of all his blessings, is of all others the man most grateful to the agents through whom these blessings come to him.
Joseph’s mention of the fact, in giving his son the name of Manasseh, shows the sense in which he is to be understood as having forgotten his toil and his father’s house. It does not mean that these things were obliterated from his mind—for the very act is one of remembrance. It was, in fact, his duty and privilege to remember them; for his impressions of the Divine goodness would have become weak, had he forgotten the evils from which he had been delivered. But in one sense he had forgotten the misery of his former state. He did not allow the memory of it to embitter his present advantages. He cherished no resentful remembrances against those who had been the instruments of his affliction. The memory of his troubles was comparatively lost in the happiness that had now succeeded. So, also, in what he says of his father’s house. His subsequent conduct shows that he had a most lively recollection of his father, and of all the tenderness which had been showered upon his early years. Neither had he ceased to remember the cruel treatment of his brethren; but he ceased to lay it to heart; all that was painful in the remembrances of the past was expelled from his mind. It was with him as with the captives of Babylon—“When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: Then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” Psa_126:1-3.
So shall it be with us one day; but not yet, not here. When the Lord shall turn the captivity of our Zion—when the church militant has become the church triumphant—when a King greater than Pharaoh shall put in our hands victorious palms, and array us in more glorious vestments than Joseph wore—then shall we also forget, or remember as a dream, the toil through which we have passed, and all the afflictions of our earthly house.
To his other son Joseph gave the name of Ephraim, which means fruitfulness, for which he gives the strong reason—“For God hath made me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction,” in that very land in which he had endured so much trouble and disgrace. No man had ever more occasion than Joseph to know the fruitfulness of affliction; and his history is a striking manifestation of what we have all, more or less, occasion to experience—that God, in the dispensations of his providence and grace, cuts even to the quick the branches of the vine that he wills to bear much fruit. We may search history, we may explore the knowledge and experience of our own lives, in vain, for any instance of much fruit for God or for man, having been yielded by unafflicted men; and, in general, the ingathering of useful fruits has been proportioned to the intensity of the affliction—short of crushing the soul. May God give it to all of us to be fruitful in the land of our affliction—always remembering that there are better lands beyond, and better days to come.