CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 37:35. The grave.] Heb. Sheol. The unseen world, or the place of departed spirits. The A.V. also renders this word in some places hell, in others the pit. Probably derived from Heb. verb sha-al, to ask or inquire. It is that condition in which we ask after the lost ones. Where are they? Others derive it from a word which means cavity or pit. It is ever craving, never satisfied, demanding the whole human race.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Genesis 37:29-36
JACOB’S GRIEF FOR HIS SON
I. It was deep and overwhelming. Jacob had felt many a sorrow before, had mourned over the loss of those who were dear, but this sorrow went the deepest to his heart. The other calamities which fell upon him seemed to be more directly from the hand of God. They were to be expected in the ordinary course of Providence. But this fatality which happened to his beloved son would raise in him painful and inevitable self-questionings, and a sad sense of self condemnation. He could impute the blame to no one but himself. Why did he let the boy go alone on such a journey? Why did he send him without protection into a country abounding in wild beasts? Of course our sympathy is relieved when we know that Jacob’s sorrows were founded upon no real ground of fact. But it was all real to him. This was the saddest sorrow of all.
II. It was inconsolable. “He refused to be comforted.” (Genesis 37:35.) It seemed now as if his whole house had been given over to destruction, every prospect ruined! He speaks as one who had lost all hope in life. To allow grief to overwhelm the soul, and sink it into such depths of sorrow, betokens a want of confidence in God and in the power of His supporting grace. Eminent saints may have grievous afflictions, but even then they should not speak of them as insupportable. God had dispelled many dark clouds for Jacob before, and he should not have given way to despondency now.
III. It cast him upon the future. He ought to have sought God’s consolations in this world, though he looked to the future for full satisfaction and recompence. But he renounced the hope of seeing any more good in what remained to him of this present life. “I will go down,” he said, “into the grave unto my son mourning.” The word rendered “grave” is the Heb. Sheol, the place to which the souls of men depart after death, and where they await God. Jacob did not expect to go to his son in the grave, for (as he believed) Joseph had no grave. The Hebrews had a well-known word for “grave” (Genesis 23:9), which would have been employed here had it been intended to convey the idea of the last resting-place of the body. Surely Jacob looked beyond the grave, where was assembled the congregation of the fathers who had resigned their souls to God. The form of the Heb. word has the idea of direction, Shoel-ward. Thus he speaks of his life as passing on to that unknown land. He does not contemplate a state of non-existence. Joseph was still his son. There was a tie still between them. Each had a personality undestroyed. His son had a being somehow and somewhere. Jacob had learned from the promises of the Covenant that God was his God, and surely he must have felt the conviction that this sacred relationship would not end at death, but last on for ever. “He is not a God of the dead, but of the living,” for all live unto Him.” (Luke 20:37-38.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 37:29-30. His intentions were good, and his plan seemed to be well concerted, but it was not successful. It was not by Reuben that Joseph was to be delivered; he must yet pass through a deep scene of affliction before he obtains that glory for which he was destined. God often blasts the designs that are formed for the good of His people, not because He frowns upon them, but because the whole work is not yet accomplished which He intends to accomplish by their afflictions.—(Bush.)
The day came when Joseph’s brethren were compelled to hear Reuben and to remember bitterly this time.—(Genesis 42:22).
Genesis 37:31-32. They could not deny themselves the brutal pleasure of thus insulting their father, even in the hour of his distress, for his former partiality.—(Fuller.)
Genesis 37:33-34. Seldom does misfortune come alone. It is but a short time since Jacob was deprived of Rachel; now he has lost Joseph. In such a concealment of guilt they pass twenty-two years.—(Lange.)
It is no evil beast, but men more cruel than tigers that have done towards him what is done; but thus Jacob thought, and thus he mourned. We are ready to wonder how Reuben could keep his counsel; yet with all his grief he did so; perhaps he might be afraid of his own life.—(Fuller.)
Genesis 37:35. Joseph’s brethren add sin to sin, and dare to cover all with the infamous hypocrisy of comforting their father, when they themselves were the cause of his grief.
Jacob renounced the hope of seeing any more good in this world when his choicest comfort in life was taken away. He had the prospect of no days of gladness when Joseph, the joy of his heart, was torn in pieces by wild beasts. But he did not know what joys were yet before him in the recovery of his long lost son. We know not what joys or what sorrows are before us. It is rash, therefore, to prejudge the allotments of Providence, to infer the permanence of what we now feel. At any rate, we have no reason to despond while God’s throne continues firm and stable in heaven.—(Bush.)
Genesis 37:36. Little did the Egyptians dream that their future lord was come to be sold in their country; still less did they know the dignity and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ when He was brought into their country by another Joseph, and by Mary his wife. Time brings the real characters and dignity of some men to light.—(Bush.)
Little knew Joseph what God was in doing. Have patience, till He have brought both ends together.—(Trapp).