1. Of a great injury.(1) To Joseph.(2) To Jacob. The beloved and trusted son taken from him. His heart well nigh broken by the story that was told him.

2. Of brothers. The crime therefore greater. More easy to forgive the offence of a stranger than of a friend (Psalm 41:9; Psalm 55:12, 13, 20).

3. The pardon magnanimously bestowed. Proved by deeds as well as words. Their sin extenuated. He dwells on the good that came out of it, not on the evil that was in it. Tried to soften down their harsh self-censure. The method of professing pardon may detract from its value, and suggest a doubt of its sincerity.

4. Marked by deep affection. He could not repress his emotions, nor conceal his joy. Judah, the darkest character, not excepted.

5. Practically demonstrated. He will henceforth care for them during the famine.

II. A KING'S GRATITUDE. Pharaoh's.

1. It had been already proved. He had exalted Joseph.

2. He now cares for Joseph's friends. Royally lays himself out for their present good. Strange contrast to the conduct of many kings towards their deliverers and helpers (Charles I. and Earl Stafford; Charles II., and his treatment of the faithful adherents of his house in its misfortunes; also David and Barzillai).

3. It was bountifully expressed. Will have all Joseph's family invited to Egypt. Promises that they shall have " the fat of the land." Sends with the invitation the means of conveyance. Enjoins the free use of means and subsistence. "Regard not your stuff," &c. (ver. 20).

III. A FATHER'S ZOO. Jacob's.

1. Imagine Jacob's home. The old man of 130 years, feeble, doubtful, fearful, apprehensive. Waiting for the return of his sons. Anxious concerning Benjamin.

2. Picture the arrival at home. They are all there. Benjamin amongst them. Simon also. Joyful greeting.

3. They tell their story. Good news. Joseph yet alive! governor of Egypt.

4. Jacob's doubts. He is suspicious of his sons.

5. The arrival of the waggons convinces him. His spirit revives. His great joy. New hopes. He will see Joseph again, and in such a robe of office as his affection could not have provided. What greater joy can a father know than that excited by good news of absent children. Those who leave home with good principles the most likely to create such joy. Religion supplies the only true basis of character. The Lord was with Joseph. He will be with us in our wanderings, if we begin them with Him. Learn: Let love be without dissimulation. Forgive injuries and prove the reality of forgiveness.

(J. C. Gray.)

I. Now, of course, it would have been very easy for him at once to have made himself known to his brethren, to have fallen on their necks and assured them of his forgiveness. But he has counsels of love at once wiser and deeper than would have lain in such a ready and off-hand declaration of forgiveness. His purpose is to prove whether they are different men, or, if not, to make them different men from what they were when they practised that deed of cruelty against himself. He feels that he is carrying out, not his own purpose, but Cod's, and this gives him confidence in hazarding all, as he does not hazard it, in bringing this matter to a close.

II. Two things were necessary here: the first that he should have the opportunity of observing their conduct to their younger brother, who had now stepped into his place, and was the same favourite with his father as Joseph once had been; the second, that by some severe treatment, which should bear a more or less remote resemblance to their treatment of himself, he should prove whether he could call from them a lively remembrance and a penitent confession of their past guilt.

III. The dealings of Joseph with his brethren are, to a great extent, the very pattern of God's dealings with men. God sees us careless, in easily forgiving ourselves our old sins; and then, by trial and adversity and pain, He brings these sins to our remembrance, causes them to find us out, and at length extracts from us a confession, "we are verily guilty." And then, when tribulation has done its work, He is as ready to confirm His love to us as ever was Joseph to confirm his love to his brethren.

(Archbishop Trench.)

II. THE CONSTANT FEAR WROUGHT BY CONSCIOUS GUILT. The tender emotion of Joseph was not shared by his brethren. His declaration, "I am Joseph," drew from them no glad expressions of joy. They were silent from dismay. "His brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence." Conscious guilt filled them with alarm and anxious questioning. Could he ever forgive them? Since he had them now in his power, and he had become so great, would he not take vengeance upon them? Their sense of guilt had not perished or weakened with time. It was as enduring as Joseph's love.

III. GOD CHOOSES THE WICKED TO ACCOMPLISH HIS DIVINE PURPOSES. Joseph had been sold, from malice, by his brethren into Egypt. And yet God had sent him there. It seems like an irreconcilable contradiction of facts, and yet the thing alleged was true. And our view of the world's events is inadequate unless we believe that God in a similar way always takes a controlling part in the affairs of men. Did this fact lessen the guilt of the sons of Jacob? Did Joseph mean that they were excused on account of it? Certainly not. Their guilt was according to their intention.

IV. THE INVITED FIND GRACE BECAUSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE GOOD, For his father's sake and for Benjamin's sake, Joseph forgave them all they had done to him. What magnanimity of spirit! It was as if he had blotted out their sin and remembered it no more. And his efforts to allay and banish their fears assured them that from him they had nothing to dread. It was a beautiful fore-gleam of the grace of the Gospel. So Christ has sought to assuage our guilty fears by speaking to us of His Father and our Father, and by owning us as His brethren. Well is it for us that we are connected in this way by ties of relationship with the good of earth and sky. If we stood alone, unconnected with others whose prayers and merit move heaven's favour in our behalf to give us further opportunity to repent, or which win for us undeserved consideration from our fellow-men — who show us kindness for the sake of a father, or a mother, or a sister, or some other — it would be far worse with us. But their merit, like charity, covers a multitude of sins in us. We are clad in a borrowed grace, derived from them, and our faults are excused and borne with, and our meagre virtues rated far above their real value.

V. THE GROUND OF PEACE FOR WRONG-DOERS. When Joseph had fallen upon Benjamin's neck and wept, and had kissed all his brethren and wept upon them, "after that his brethren talked with him." The speechless terror exhibited by them at first then vanished away. What cured their trouble of heart? It was the assurance they had that Joseph looked upon them graciously for their father's and brother's sake, and that he entirely forgave their sin. This assurance had been wrought in them by the words and acts of Joseph. The kiss he had given them, and his tears of joy, formed an indubitable token of pardon and reconciliation. In his treatment of them we have, therefore, a hint of God's treatment of men for their sin, and of the way a guilty soul may find peace. Two things are required:

1. A worthy Mediator to whom we are so related that His merit will procure us Divine favour.

2. Indubitable evidence of acceptance and pardon through Him. The Christ was such a Mediator. He was "holy, harmless, undefiled,... higher than the heavens," and "not ashamed to call us brethren." Through our relationship with Him as brethren, we are invested with His righteousness.

(A. H. Currier.)

II. THE SACREDNESS OF FAMILY TIES. The relation of children to their parents, and of brothers and sisters to each other is peculiarly sacred. Other connections we may determine for ourselves; this is appointed by God. It brings great opportunities and great risks. There are no others we can hurt so sorely, or make so glad, as those in our own household.

III. THIS STORY ILLUSTRATES CHRIST'S FORGIVENESS. The great Elder Brother suffers at our hands; yet loves us when we will not love Him, and waits for years till our need shall bring us to His feet. Even then He cannot take us at once to His bosom. The sense of guilt must be awakened, the tears of penitence flow.

(P. B. Davis.)

II. HIS DELICACY OF FEELING.

III. HIS ENTIRE FORGIVENESS.

1. He strives to prevent remorse.

2. He bids them see in their past history the plan of God.

(T. H. Leale.)

1. Observe the delicacy of Joseph's feelings in removing all the witnesses of his emotion. Feeling, to be true and deep, must be condensed by discipline.

2. Notice the entireness of Joseph's forgiveness.(1) This may be inferred from his desire to prevent remorse (ver. 5).(2) A further proof of the entireness of Joseph's forgiveness is, that he referred the past to God's will (ver. 8). Upon this we have three remarks to make. First, that it is utterly impossible for us to judge of any event, whether it is a blessing or misfortune, from simply looking at the event itself; because we do not know the whole. Fancy the buying of a slave in a cave in Canaan; and straightway there springs up in your breast a feeling of indignation. Pass on a few years, and we find Joseph happy, honoured, and beloved; two nations at least are saved by him from famine. Secondly, we remark how God educes good from evil, and that man is only an instrument in His hands. A secular historian, treating of mighty events, always infers that there has been some plan steadily pursued; he would have traced step by step how it all came about, and referred it all to Joseph. But from the inspired history we find that Joseph knew not one step before him. Thirdly, we remark that there is a danger in the too easy acquiescence in the fact that good comes from evil; for we begin to say, Evil then is God's agent, to do evil must be right; and so we are landed in confusion. Before this had taken place, had Joseph's brethren said, "Out of this, good will come, let us sell our brother," they would have been acting against their conscience; but after the event it was but faith to refer it to God's intention. Had they done this before, it would have been presumption. But to feel that good has come through you, but not by your will, is humiliating. You feel that the evil is all yours, and the good is God's.

II. THE SUMMONS OF JACOB BY PHARAOH.

1. Remark, Pharaoh rejoiced with Joseph (ver. 16). Love begets love. Joseph had been faithful, and Pharaoh honours and esteems him.

2. The advice given by Joseph to his brethren (ver. 24). We should do well to ponder on Joseph's advice, for when that wondrous message was given to the world that God had pardoned man, men at once began to quarrel with each other. They began to throw the blame on the Jew alone for having caused His death; they began to quarrel respecting the terms of salvation.

3. Last]y, we remark the incredulity of Jacob, "his heart fainted." There are two kinds of unbelief, that which disbelieves because it hates the truth, and that which disbelieves because the truth is apparently too glorious to be received. The latter was the unbelief of Jacob; it may be an evidence of weakness, but not necessarily an evidence of badness.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

II. CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN SILENCE. An illustration of the profitlessness of all crime. Sin is, as one of its Hebrew names tells us, missing the mark, whether we think of it as fatally failing to reach the ideal of conduct, or as always, by a Divine nemesis, failing to hit even the shabby end it aims at. "Every rogue is a roundabout fool." They put Joseph in the pit, and here he is on a throne. They have stained their souls, and embittered their father's life for twenty-two long years, and the dreams have come true, and all their wickedness has not turned the stream of the Divine purpose any more than the mud dam built by a child diverts the Mississippi. One flash has burned up their whole sinful past, and they stand scorched and silent among the ruins. So it always is. Sooner or later the same certainty of the futility of his sin will overwhelm every sinful man, and dumb self-condemnation will stand in silent acknowledgment of evil desert before the throne of the Brother, who is now the prince and the judge, on whose fiat hangs life or death. To see Christ enthroned should be joy; but it may be turned into terror and silent anticipation of His just condemnation.

III. ENCOURAGEMENT AND COMPLETE FORGIVENESS (vers. 4-8). More than natural sweetness and placability must have gone to the making of such a temper of forgiveness. He must have been living near the Fountain of all mercy to have had so full a cup of it to offer. Because he had caught a gleam of the Divine pardon, he becomes a mirror of it; and we may fairly see in this ill-used brother, yearning over the half-sullen sinners, and seeking to open a way for his forgiveness to steal into their hearts, and rejoicing over his very sorrows which have fitted him to save them alive, and satisfy them in the days of famine, an adumbration of our Elder Brother's forgiving love and saving tenderness.

IV. MESSAGE TO JACOB.

1. It bespeaks a simple nature, unspoiled by prosperity, to delight thus in his father's delight, and to wish the details of all his splendour to be told him. A statesman who takes most pleasure in his elevation because of the good he can do by it, and because it will please the old people at home, must be a pure and lovable man. The command has another justification in the necessity to assure his father of the wisdom of so great a change. God had sent him into the promised land, and a very plain Divine injunction was needed to warrant his leaving it. Such a one was afterwards given in vision; but the most emphatic account of his son's honour and power was none the less required to make the old Jacob willing to abandon so much, and go into such strange conditions.

2. We have another instance of the difference between man's purposes and God's counsel in this message. Joseph's only thought is to afford his family temporary shelter during the coming five years of famine. Neither he nor they knew that this was the fulfilment of the covenant with Abraham, and the bringing of them into the land of their oppression for four centuries. No shadow of that future was cast upon their joy, and yet the steady march of God's plan was effected along the path which they were ignorantly preparing. The road-maker does not know what bands of mourners, or crowds of holiday makers, or troops of armed men, may pass along it.

V. THE KISS OF FULL RECONCILIATION AND FRANK COMMUNION. The history of Jacob's household had hitherto been full of sins against family life. Now, at last, they taste the sweetness of fraternal love. Joseph, against whom they had sinned, takes the initiative, flinging himself with tears on the neck of Benjamin, his own mother's son, nearer to him than all the others, crowding his pent-up love in one long kiss. Then, with less of passionate affection, but more of pardoning love, he kisses his contrite brothers. The offender is ever less ready to show love than the offended. The first step towards reconciliation, whether of man with man or of man with God, comes from the aggrieved. We always hate those whom we have harmed; and if enmity were only ended by the advances of the wrong-doer, it would be perpetual. The injured has the prerogative of praying the injurer to be reconciled. So was it in Pharaoh's throne-room on that long past day; so is it still in the audience chamber of heaven. "He that might the vantage best have took, found out the remedy." "We love Him, because He first loved us."

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

1. It is an expression of great humility. The governor of Egypt remembered that he was Joseph, a Hebrew — the son of an old pilgrim who now sojourned in Canaan, and the brother of these plain and vulgar strangers who depended on his goodness and solicited his clemency.

2. Here is soft and gentle reproof. He hints at their crime, but without menaces or reproaches. He alludes to it as if he only aimed to palliate it.

3. Here is the language of forgiveness.

(1)Proceeding not merely from a sudden flow of passion, but from settled goodness of heart.

(2)Permanent.

4. Here is a pious reference of his brethren to the wonderful works of Providence. Your Joseph, whom you had doomed to death or perpetual slavery, is employed of God to preserve you and your families from misery and ruin.

5. This is an expression of filial affection; for mark what immediately follows: "Doth my father yet live?" How tender, how affectionate, how dutiful the question.

6. Here is an expression of general benevolence. "I am Joseph, whom ye sold in Egypt God did send me before you, to preserve life." He considered himself as promoted to power, not for his own sake, but for the public good; and to this end he applied the power which he possessed.

(J. Lathrop, D. D.)

2. In finding their brother again, those sons of Jacob found also their own better selves which they had long lost. They had been living in a lie, unable to look the past in the face, and so becoming more and more false. Trying to leave their sin behind them, they always found it rising in the path before them, and again they had to resort to some new mode of laying this uneasy ghost. So, too, do many of us live as if yet we had not found the life eternal, the kind of life that we can always go on with — rather as those who are but making the best of a life which can never be very valuable, nor ever perfect. There seem voices calling us back, assuring us we must yet retrace our steps, that there are passages in our past with which we are not done, that there is an inevitable humiliation and penitence awaiting us. It is through that we can alone get back to the good we once saw and hoped for; there were right desires and resolves in us once, views of a well-spent life which have been forgotten and pressed out of remembrance, but all these rise again in the presence of Christ.

3. A third suggestion is made by this narrative. Joseph commanded from his presence all who might be merely curious spectators of his burst of feeling, and might, themselves unmoved, criticise this new feature of the governor's character. In all love there is a similar reserve.

(M. Dods, D. D.)

(H. Melvill, B. D.)

(J. Parker, D. D.)

(A. M. Symington, D. D.)

1. to test their character, to see whether they repented of their past life, whether they were now good sons to Jacob, and good brothers to Benjamin;

2. If their disposition was not changed, to change it.

(E. Stock)

     4823   famine, physical
     5447   poverty, causes

Genesis 45:5-15

     8428   example

Genesis 45:8-11

     5738   sons

Genesis 45:9-11

     5449   poverty, remedies

Jacob and Doubting Souls --A Parallel
"And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die."--Genesis 45:28. I THINK THAT THE PATRIARCH JACOB may well serve as the type and emblem of a doubting soul, one who has been told the good news of salvation, the gospel of God's grace, but who cannot bring his mind to believe it. Let us think for a few minutes of old Jacob. First of all, he was a man who was very ready to believe evil tidings. When his sons held up before him a coat dipped in the blood …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 42: 1896

Jesus and his Brethren
"Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren 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 …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 43: 1897

Gifts Received for the Rebellious
Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them. W hen Joseph exchanged a prison for the chief honour and government of Egypt, the advantage of his exaltation was felt by those who little deserved it (Genesis 45:4, 5) . His brethren hated him, and had conspired to kill him. And though he was preserved from death, they were permitted to sell him for a bond-servant. He owed his servitude, …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

Letter xv (Circa A. D. 1129) to Alvisus, Abbot of Anchin
To Alvisus, Abbot of Anchin He praises the fatherly gentleness of Alvisus towards Godwin. He excuses himself, and asks pardon for having admitted him. To Alvisus, Abbot of Anchin. [18] 1. May God render to you the same mercy which you have shown towards your holy son Godwin. I know that at the news of his death you showed yourself unmindful of old complaints, and remembering only your friendship for him, behaved with kindness, not resentment, and putting aside the character of judge, showed yourself …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Genesis
The Old Testament opens very impressively. In measured and dignified language it introduces the story of Israel's origin and settlement upon the land of Canaan (Gen.--Josh.) by the story of creation, i.-ii. 4a, and thus suggests, at the very beginning, the far-reaching purpose and the world-wide significance of the people and religion of Israel. The narrative has not travelled far till it becomes apparent that its dominant interests are to be religious and moral; for, after a pictorial sketch of …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament