Genesis 45

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:48utc

For me this chapter is the emotional highlight of the whole Old Testament. It is hard to read this drama with dry eyes. The pent-up emotions in Joseph's heart have reached the point where he cannot contain himself any longer. The bung of the vessels bursts and the content squirts out with force. Life at the court with its pomp and etiquette call for restraint and self control. This is no longer possible. So Joseph dismisses all the servants and guards and whoever usually surrounds him. He needs intimacy in order to reveal himself to his brothers.

Then he bursts out in tears. It is hard to imagine what the brothers' first reaction to this outburst was. Kings and presidents are not supposed to burst out in tears. The fact is reported to Pharaoh's palace. The NIV says: "And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it." Most commentators agree that this probably does not mean that Joseph's residence was so close to the royal palace that his voice could be hear. Probably the fact that Joseph cried for unknown reasons was reported. The KJV and RSV are probably more correct. KJV reads: "And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard."

Not only does Joseph lose control over his tears, he also is temporarily unable to screen his words. "I am Joseph! Is my father still living?" is what comes out of his very heart. "I am Joseph!" is clear; he reveals his identity to his brothers, but why ask if his father is still alive? There was no reason to doubt that the brothers had told the truth about Jacob. If Jacob would have been dead, Judah's moving speech would have been empty rhetoric. Joseph does not really ask for information, but at the height of his outburst he says: "I want my Daddy!" Here is a full-grown man, who has never severed his emotional bonds with his father. But then who has? Everybody needs the assurance of loving protection that only a father can give to his child. We need that from birth to adolescence, but we never outgrow it. Many people never experience the warmth of motherly love that makes them understand that they are loved. Many also grow up without the safe feeling of having a strong father who loves and guards and answers to our feeling of insecurity and uncertainty. Once we have grown into adulthood those lacks take their revenge upon us. We grow up without understanding what is lacking, but our subconscious knows and we go through life without the equilibrium of a healthy youth in which we received the right signals from our parents. This emotional lack contributes to a lack of spiritual understanding. Because it is through what our parents tell us, I am not talking about words but attitudes, that we understand who God is.

God has ordained that man, when he is born into this world, learns from the warmth of his mother's love and from the strength of his father's what it means that God loves him. The love our parents demonstrate to us is an image of a spiritual reality. If we do not get those pictures straight when we grow up we experience great difficulty in realizing God's love for us.

The extreme emotional pressure Joseph experienced when he revealed himself to his brothers made him say words that his reason could not account for. But he expressed very precisely what had been hidden for years under the surface of his consciousness.

If we try to probe the depths of Joseph's feelings at this moment, what about the emotions of the brothers? They had never been shocked like this before. The very foundations of their lives were shaken. They had lived their whole life in the shadow world of unreality which sin has created for us. They had followed their sinful desires and had made themselves guilty by their acts of cruelty and deceit. They had taken precautions to cover up this guilt and they had thought themselves rather successful in this effort. Now, all of a sudden, this thin veil is rent and they find themselves in the glorious light of reality.

In C. S. Lewis' book Perelandra the hero, Dr. Ransom, encounters a good spiritual being, and eledil, the equivalent of an angel. He realizes that he does not really like the "good" of the angel. Joseph's brothers come out of their darkness into God's glorious light and they do not enjoy it; they are terrified. If we consider Joseph's experience to be the picture of a traumatic spiritual experience of sanctification, we could look upon the brothers' experience as a picture of an even more traumatic conversion. They go from darkness into light, from death into life, from guilt into forgiveness and they are crushed. Here is Joseph, not dead but alive. They did not kill him. He forgives them and accepts them. If it is hard to be born into this world, (no baby enters life without crying), how much more difficult it is to be born again!

The only event that will surpass the story of this chapter is the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who crucified Him will see Him alive. They will cry in anguish, they will prefer to be crushed by falling rocks than to face the light of God and Jesus' forgiveness. "Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'" (Rev. 6:15-17)

The brothers were not facing the wrath of Joseph, but his love and forgiveness. Their first reaction must have been, though, the thought that Joseph would revenge himself upon them. He had them in his power, nothing would keep him from crushing them. But, as it turns out revenge is far from Joseph's mind. His tears are tears of love.

Grace is so hard to understand. When it first dawned on me that the Lord wanted to enter my life, I was sure He would embarrass me by exposing the filth I knew was inside me. When He did enter, He made clear to me that He was not even inclined to talk about my guilt, since my sins had been done away with at the cross. When the joy of forgiveness broke through, it was an experience beyond my wildest imagination.

The brothers never quite came to grips with the forgiveness of their sins. This is clear from the words they address to Joseph after Jacob's death. We read this in chapter 50:15-21. (In vs.15 we read: "When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, 'What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?'") The same feeling of anguish will be present when Jesus returns. In quoting Zecharia 12:10 ("And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son,") John says in Rev. 1:7 - "Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen." How much there is to be feared from "the wrath of the Lamb" I do not know. Most of the fear will come from a lack of understanding of God's grace. And when people do not see that their sins can be forgiven, they will not turn to God and repent. After all, who would want to give himself up to be punished? There will be a time, of course, when repentance will no longer be an option. That may be the case when Jesus returns.

Another mystery that we all have a hard time understanding is the fact that God uses our sins to the advancement of His kingdom. It was easy for Joseph to say to his brothers: "And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you" (vs. 5), they still knew themselves to be guilty to the highest degree. It is hard to accept God's forgiveness, it is even more difficult to forgive one's self. Forgiving one's self means living with absolute moral failure. The only reason for our rehabilitation before God is Jesus Christ. That leaves us, as persons, as moral outcasts. We cannot receive pardon and maintain our human pride in ourselves. The only boasting we are allowed to do is boasting in the Lord.

But, how can God use our sin in the advancement of our kingdom? This must be the lesson Jesus teaches us in the parable in Matt.13:33 of the woman who mixes yeast in her dough: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." Of course, sin can only be used for glory when it has been confessed and it is forgiven. But how and why God uses it, I do not understand.

We suppose, on the basis of vs. 4 that the brothers were still lying prostrate before Joseph. He has to tell them to get up and come closer. They do so because they obey the order; not because the immensity of the revelation is wearing off. They still are unable to open their mouths, even after Joseph's repeated declaration of his identity. There could have been no doubt about the truth of Joseph's statement. He spoke their language and he knew the details of their dark secret. There may also have been some familiar but unidentifiable features in Joseph about which the brothers had been puzzled, but which they could not place. None of the brothers would have suspected that this viceroy was their brother. If any of them would at one point during any of the two trips have said: "I wonder if we'll bump into Joseph!" this would have been treated as a bad joke.

Joseph paints with a few words the severity of the famine and the prognosis on the basis of God's revelation. We do not read that he explains in detail how he received this knowledge, but undoubtedly at some point he will have given them the whole story, including the dreams. He does not have to prove to them that he has become a powerful person in the Egyptian government. They themselves had experienced his power over them.

It sounds strange, though, that he calls himself a "father to Pharaoh." This is generally interpreted as "confidential friend and counselor," according to The Pulpit Commentary . It could also be that Joseph, in spite of his youth, was older than Pharaoh. He must have been about thirty-nine at this time. The unearthing of the tomb of Tut Anc Ammon produced a mummy of the Pharaoh who died as a teenager.

The land of Goshen to which Joseph refers in vs. 10 was, according to The Pulpit Commentary "a region on the east of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, extending as far as the wilderness of Arabia, a land of pastures, exceedingly fertile, styled also the land of Rameses, and including the cites Pithon and Rameses, and probably also On, or Heliopolis." This was the only part of Egypt that did receive regular rains, being situated close to the coast of the Gulf of Accaba. It was not dependent upon the flooding of the Nile.

Then he gives instructions to go back to Canaan and bring back Jacob and their families. It is not clear whether Joseph's words are given in chronological order. I suppose that the following outburst of emotions followed close upon the first one. It would seem strange that Joseph would unfold this well thought out plan before hugging Benjamin and his other brothers. But sometimes it is hard to know what to say in moments of extreme emotional stress. Joseph must have rehearsed these words over and over again before the time of his revelation to his brothers had come.

Vs. 14 tells us: "Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping." This scene must be a picture of the day of resurrection. We will throw our arms around our departed loved ones and we will shed an abundance of healing tears because the time of separation is over. These tears will mix with those that flow as a release of the pent-up emotions of the years of living on earth and God Himself will wipe them away, according to Rev. 7:17 and 21:4.

"And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him." (vs. 15). How long afterward? The verse makes a distinction between the way Joseph embraces Benjamin and the way he weeps "over" his brothers. Joseph is deeply moved by the scene of his brothers trying to digest the realization of their guilt and Joseph's pardon. It must have been a pathetic sight: grown men drawing the balance of their lives and coming up with a huge deficit, which they are unable to pay and which is wiped clean before their eyes. Joseph weeps over their struggle. But finally they are able to talk with him.

Word of the brothers' arrival reaches Pharaoh, who gives official sanction to Joseph's promise to his family. Probably Joseph himself sent word to the palace, or appeared in person before Pharaoh. Anyhow, Joseph's promise is turned into an official government order. Chariots are provided for the emigration of Jacob and his family to Egypt. The brothers had come as starving beggars, they return triumphantly with the most modern vehicles of

their time. They are fulfilling God's plan with the world, but they did not know that.

For the brothers and their families the move to Egypt meant salvation from starvation. For the future generations it would mean centuries of slavery. Even if the brothers would have been able to look into the future they would have been forced to move to Egypt, since survival in Canaan was impossible at that moment. They could have known more about the future than they cared to. God's prophecy given to Abraham must have been common knowledge since Moses knew about it four hundred years later. In Ch. 15:13,14 we read: "Then the LORD said to him, 'Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.'" This prophecy may never have come to their minds. Joseph's brothers do not give the impression of people living by the Word of God. Jacob was obviously aware of the prophetic word. We gather this from the first few verses in the next chapter. He went to Egypt with fear and God had to reassure him that it was alright.

After the famine was over the family would have had to option to return to Canaan. Evidently life in Goshen was to plush to give this serious consideration. It was Canaan God had promised them and they religiously arranged for their burials to be done there, but life was too good and too easy in Egypt to give up. "Apres nous le deluge!" (The flood will come after we are dead).

As they set out for Canaan to fetch Jacob and their families they are loaded with food and gifts. There was no need to carry food for one year, but they got enough for the journey back and forth and probably more. There were also "the best things of Egypt," a special gift for Jacob, which Adam Clarke interprets to be "some sort of delicacy." The brothers are all outfitted with new clothing and Benjamin receives a whole wardrobe, which may have included "a coat of many colors." Also Benjamin is given three hundred pieces of silver. The Berkley Bible converts this into "two hundred dollars worth of silver." In our time and age this would be a pittance, but in the olden days, before the gold standard was dropped and inflation hit our planet that must have been a sizable gift. It was ten times more than the money the brothers had received when they sold Joseph.

Vs. 24 adds an interesting note: "Then he sent his brothers away, and as they were leaving he said to them, 'Do not quarrel on the way!'" These words may have been said in jest, but truth can be very effectively communicated in a joking manner. Joseph knew the relationship his brothers had with one another. They were a rough bunch, which was more tied together by their common hatred than by their love for one another. They had mellowed over the years; they had come under conviction of sin, and they had received forgiveness. This had to be translated into a new fellowship with one another. The resurrection of Joseph from the dead, if we may use this image, should have the same effect upon them and their relationships as Jesus' resurrection has for us and visa versa.

Then they arrive home and they tell Jacob the news. What did they tell him? This part of the story remains hidden from us. Did they confess their crime or did the skeleton remain in the closet? I have an inkling that Jacob never heard the full story. We should try to imagine the magnitude of Jacob's emotions. For about fifteen years he had lived with the tragedy of the loss of his son. Joseph was not dead. Jacob mourned because of a lie, but this did not make any difference in his mourning. Then, all of a sudden, he is told that Joseph is not dead; not just alive, but gloriously alive as ruler of Egypt.

It is impossible not to pause here and draw a comparison between the death of Joseph and the death of Christ. The difference is obvious: Joseph never died; he was only thought to be dead. Christ died in reality. But as far as living is concerned the parallel is striking. The fact that Joseph was not dead made all the difference in Jacob's life, as well as in the brothers' lives. The least part of the glory of it for Jacob was that he would not die of starvation. The greatest was that he had his son back. It did mean provision for his old age, but that was peripheral. In the center stood the fact that, what had been the deepest wound in his soul, the great tragedy of his life, was healed.

Yet, this was not the way Jacob experienced it initially. When his sons tell him the news that Joseph is alive, Jacob does not react emotionally. We read in vs. 26 "They told him, 'Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.' Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them." The KJV and RSV say: "His heart fainted." This gives us the wrong impression. A physical fainting would have meant that the message got through to Jacob and overwhelmed him to the point where he lost consciousness. The Pulpit Commentary says: "literally, grew chill, the primary idea of the root being that of rigidity through coldness." The Dutch translates it with "his heart remained cold." ("zijn hart bleef er koud onder.") There was no normal reaction because there was no hope left in his heart. Hope and life go together. Those who give up hope have given up life. Jacob needed some kind of resurrection himself to be able to react normally again. His soul did not only need healing, it needed reviving. In the resurrection there is hope even for people whose souls have died in this life.

The discovery of the resurrection of Jesus Christ often has the same effect upon people. Wherever the Gospel is preached, the resurrection of Christ is mentioned. But not many people take this seriously or apply it to their lives. When the truth of the fact that Christ conquered death, not only for Himself but also for us, penetrates into a human heart it has a revolutionary effect. It turns lives around and brings dead souls back to life.

Finally, Jacob is convinced by the facts. Hearing Joseph's word repeated, they sound like things Joseph would have said, and seeing the carts convinces Jacob. Again, the brothers may not have repeated everything Joseph said. Especially the words "I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!" will have been omitted. But Jacob has enough proof to set out for Egypt. If nothing else convinced him, the delicacies Joseph had sent for him would. Joseph knew what Jacob liked. Jacob's experience was similar to Thomas's when he was invited to touch the marks of the nails in Jesus' hands and the scar of the spear in His side. And here we may quote Jesus' words at that occasion: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29)

But Jacob does not leave without mentioning once more his approaching death. His death had been the main subject when Joseph was supposed to be dead, it is still the predominant theme of his life when Joseph appears to be alive. Jacob was 130 years old at that time, according to what he told Pharaoh in chapter 47:9. He died at the age of 147, seventeen years later, according to chapter 47:28. In spite of Jacob's gloom, death was not immanent.