I. TESTIMONY TO POWER OF CHARACTER. Joseph's influence. The five brethren selected perhaps with a view to their appearance, and in the number five, which was regarded as a significant number among the Egyptians. The monarch's reception of the strangers due to Joseph's influence. Generally diffused. There is much graciousness in the heathen monarch, although partly to be ascribed to national characteristics, for the Egyptians were a very different race from the Canaanites; still we may believe that the conduct of Pharaoh was mostly due to the effect of Joseph's ministry and personal exemplification of the religious life. One true man is a great power in a country.

II. A conspicuous EXAMPLE of Divine grace. The old patriarch is presented. He plainly impressed the monarch as extremely aged, perhaps indicating that the centenarian was a great rarity then among heathen nations. His long life was a long course of gracious dealings. The effect of a religious life in prolonging the years is exemplified. It is said that since Christianity obtained its legitimate, or more of its legitimate influence in Europe, the average length of human life has been doubled. Yet, as Jacob confesses, he is not as old as his fathers. His life had been a pilgrimage in a wilderness. His days few and evil, compared with what they might have been. Seventeen years longer they were lengthened out - a testimony to the effect of peace and prosperity in preserving life when it is under the blessing of God. Jacob blessed Pharaoh. The less is blessed of the greater. The two princes stood face to face - the prince of God - the prince of Egypt.

III. A PROPHETIC PACT: the world shall be blessed through the heirs of the Divine promise. Jacob had much to be thankful for; and although he thanked God first, he teaches us by his example not to forget the claims of fellow-creatures in our gratitude, even though they be separated from us in faith and religion. - R.

The significance of the transaction is obvious; it brought men back to first principles; made them feel, in a very practical way, their absolute dependence on God, and on that one man through whom God was pleased to deal with them. But what are we to think about its morality? Was Joseph right in buying men? The following considerations, are, to my own mind, satisfactory.

1. Joseph was acting under Divine guidance in an extraordinary emergency. It was not his own wisdom that foresaw the plenty and the famine, and which devised the plan he was raised up to carry out. It was God who gave him the message to Pharaoh, and it was God more than Pharaoh who exalted him to absolute power.

2. It is unreasonable to impute mean motives or cruelty to a man whose character, before this time and after it, was so singularly noble and good.

3. The people themselves proposed this arrangement, and they accepted it with gratitude. "And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants."

4. Left to themselves, where would they have been? Even supposing that every farmer from the cataracts to the seaboard had been as fully persuaded that famine was coming as men generally are that they must soon die, yet greed and the craving for present indulgence would have got the better of their prudence during the years of plenty; and long before the fourth year of continuous famine, Egypt would have become one grave. As it was, Joseph saved their lives, and saved them also from the utter moral ruin into which years of indolent pauperism would have sunk them. "As for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt, even to the other end." I understand this to mean, not that Joseph transported the population of the Delta to the vicinity of the Cataracts, and vice versa, but that he brought them in from the fields, where they could do nothing, and provided them some form of work in the towns. The fact is recorded to the honour of Joseph. When our own government has had to deal with famine, it has exhausted its ingenuity in making work for the relieved. "So far, then, is Joseph's plan of selling instead of giving the corn to the people, from being a matter of reprehension, that we ought to be astonished at a course of proceeding which anticipated the discoveries of the nineteenth century after Christ, and at the strength of mind which enabled the minister of the Egyptian crown to forego the vulgar popularity which profuse but unreasonable bounty can always secure."

5. The arrangement, as described by the sacred narrative, was a highly beneficent one. The record is very brief and subordinate, but its meaning becomes sufficiently clear on candid examination.

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