‘GOD IS HIS OWN INTERPRETER AND HE WILL MAKE IT PLAIN’
‘God did send me before you to preserve life.’
Joseph recognised his brethren at once, though they failed, as they bowed before the mighty vicegerent of Egypt, to recognise in him the child by them so pitilessly sold into bondage; and Joseph, we are told, ‘remembered the dreams which he had dreamed of them’: how their sheaves should stand round about and make obeisance to his sheaf; how sun and moon and eleven stars should all do homage to him. All at length was coming true.
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 God’s, and this gives him confidence in hazarding all, as he does 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.
—Abp. Trench.
Illustration
(1) ‘Joseph referred the whole order and purpose of his existence, all that had been adverse to it, all that had been prosperous in it, to God. He knew that violence and disorder had been at work in his life. What temptation had he to think of them as God’s? Imputing to Him a distinct purpose of good and blessedness, what a strange perverseness it would have been to think that anything which had marred the goodness and blessedness, anything which had striven to defeat the purpose, was His! It was the great eternal distinction which a heart cultivated, purged, made simple by God’s discipline, confessed—nay, found it impossible to deny.’
(2) ‘It may be that we have here an exact representation of a revelation which Jesus is going to make of Himself to his brethren the Jews. Now He is passing them through awful sufferings to bring them to repentance, and to prepare them to receive the supreme revelation of Himself. Ere long He will drop the veil, and say, I am Jesus, your brother, whom ye sold unto Pilate. The bride of Christ may well rejoice as she hears the tidings of this blessed reconciliation, for His brethren must ever be dear to her.’
(3) ‘The great mechanism of life contains many wheels within wheels. All would seem a meaningless whirl or result in a disastrous tangle and derangement were it not for the divine Spirit that presides over all, adjusting one historic motion or process to another, and developing as a resultant of all a higher life for the race, and a broader arena for the sweep and sway of the gracious influences of the Cross.’