MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 41:53-57
THE SEVEN YEARS OF FAMINE
I. Joseph’s administration.
1. It showed great prudence and skill. During the years of plenty he laid up for the years of famine. He was the prudent man that forseeth the evil. The time of plenty was the time of political and social salvation, and Joseph used it well. He did his work systematically and thoroughly. (Genesis 41:48). Consequently he has plenty of bread for the people throughout the years of famine. The policy of selling the corn, instead of giving it, was both good and wise. The people would thus have the motive for exertion, and at the same time be able to maintain the dignity of, at least, a nominal purchase.
2. It showed a spirit of dependence upon God. The meaning of the dream was given to Joseph by the inspiration of God, and he had faith that God would carry out His own word.
3. It was the exhibition of a character worthy of the highest confidence. Pharaoh could only say to the Egyptians: “Go unto Joseph, what he saith to you, do.” Both intellectual and spiritual qualities are required in a true ruler of men, and with both, in a remarkable degree, Joseph was endowed. A pious disposition, modest and retiring graces of character may adorn obscure lives, but he who has to deal much with mankind, and to take a position of command and influence in this world’s business, must possess the wisdom of the serpent as well as the harmlessness of the dove. Mere piety by itself is not sufficient. Eli was a good, but a weak man, and therefore unfit to guide and command others. The power of intellect alone may be a power for evil, but combined with piety towards God it is a power for good.
II. Lessons. There are useful and important lessons to be learned from Joseph’s administration during these seven years of famine.
1. How quickly adversity waits upon prosperity! It is thus in the experience of individual lives. God hath set one over against the other. Blessings grow out of our afflictions, and also afflictions grow out of our blessings. A man may live many years in prosperity, and rejoice in them all; “yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many.” (Ecclesiastes 11:7.)
2. What an advantage to have a true and powerful friend in the day of calamity! This Joseph was the temporal saviour of his country, and of many surrounding nations. All stores were laid up with him, and their administration committed to him alone. We have a Saviour and Deliverer from greater evils than those which fell upon Egypt, even Jesus in whom all fulness dwells, and to whom all are invited to go who are perishing for lack of the bread of life.
3. God often brings about His purposes of love and mercy by affliction. His beneficent purposes concerning nations, families, individuals. God is represented as “calling” for a famine, and “breaking the whole staff of bread.” (Psalms 105:16.) He “called” for it that He might bring Jacob and his whole family into Egypt, and thus prepare those great events which were at length to bring his first begotten into the world for the salvation of mankind.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 41:53. When the people heard that the days of plenteousness were to be seven years, thousands would no doubt be strongly tempted to say to their souls, “Eat, drink, and be merry; to-morrow shall be as this day, and so shall the next and many following days and years be, and much more abundantly.” But the day of prosperity was now at an end, and the days of adversity had arrived. The end of all the changing things in this world of change will soon come, and then the beginning of them will appear like yesterday when it is past. “A perpetuity of bliss is bliss,” and that only.—(Bush.)
Genesis 41:54. The evils threatened by God will fall heavily upon those who use not the proper means for averting them. Joseph could look forward with a steady eye, and without terror, to the days of famine, which came at the time specified, and were as grievous as he had predicted. When they came he knew that his wisdom would be acknowledged by all the land of Egypt, and by all the people of the surrounding countries.—(Bush.)
Good Jacob is pinched with the common famine. No piety can exempt us from the evils of neighbourhood. No man can tell, by outward events, which is the patriarch, and which the Canaanite.—(Bp. Hall.)
Genesis 41:55. If any of the people had refused to go to Joseph, they would have despised not Joseph only, but the king who had clothed him with power. And are not the despisers of our great Redeemer in like manner despisers of His Father, who has set Him as King in His holy hill of Zion? If we need food for our souls, to whom are we to have recourse but to Jesus, whom God has appointed as the sole dispenser of that bread which nourisheth unto everlasting life? Those who will not come to Him for the bread of life are despisers of their own mercies.—(Bush.)
Genesis 41:56. Joseph did not throw open his storehouses until the people felt the pressure of hunger, else they would have wasted the fruits of his provident care. God reserves the blessings of His salvation until we feel the want of them.
Genesis 41:57. All that a man hath will he give for his life, and for those things that are necessary to preserve life. He will travel into the most distant regions rather than perish with hunger in the land of his nativity. Why, then, do men grudge a little labour, or a little expense, for what is no less necessary for our souls, than the bread that perisheth is for our bodies?—(Bush.)
Joseph is now filling up his generation work in useful and important labours; and like a true son of Abraham, he is blessed and made a blessing. Yet it was in the midst of this career of activity that his father Jacob said with a deep sigh, Joseph is not! What a large portion of our troubles would subside, if we knew but the whole truth!—(Fuller.)
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 41:54. In all lands.] “All the lands adjacent to Egypt, such as Arabia and Palestine. The word all in popular discourse is taken in a relative sense, to be ascertained by the context. We are not aware that this famine was felt beyond the distance of Hebron.”—(Murphy.)