'Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said, My father
and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and
all that they have, are come out of the land of Canaan;
and, behold, they are in the land of Goshen. And he took
some of his brethren, even five men, and presented them
unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What
is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy
servants are shepherds, both we, and also our fathers.
They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the
land are we come; for thy servants have no pasture for
their flocks, for the famine is sore in the land of
Canaan: now therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants
dwell in the land of Goshen. And Pharaoh spake unto
Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come
unto thee: The land of Egypt is before thee; in the
best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell;
in the land of Goshen let them dwell: and if thou knowest
any men of activity among them, then make them rulers
over my cattle. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father,
and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob
said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage
are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the
days of the years of my life been, and have not attained
unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in
the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh,
and went out from before Pharaoh. And Joseph placed his
father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in
the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land
of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished
his father, and his brethren, and all his father's
household, with bread, according to their families.'
--GENESIS xlvii. 1-12.
1. The conduct of Joseph in reference to the settlement in Goshen is an
example of the possibility of uniting worldly prudence with high
religious principle and great generosity of nature. He had promised his
brothers a home in that fertile eastern district, which afforded many
advantages in its proximity to Canaan, its adaptation to pastoral life,
and its vicinity to Joseph when in Zoan, the capital. But he had not
consulted Pharaoh, and, however absolute his authority, it scarcely
stretched to giving away Egyptian territory without leave. So his first
care, when the wanderers arrive, is to manage the confirmation of the
grant. He goes about it with considerable astuteness--a hereditary
quality, which is redeemed from blame because used for unselfish
purposes and unstained by deceit. He does not tell Pharaoh how far he
had gone, but simply announces that his family are in Goshen, as if
awaiting the monarch's further pleasure. Then he introduces a
deputation, no doubt carefully chosen, of five of his brothers (as if
the whole number would have been too formidable), previously instructed
how to answer. He knows what Pharaoh is in the habit of asking, or he
knows that he can lead him to ask the required question, which will
bring out the fact of their being shepherds, and utilise the prejudice
against that occupation, to ensure separation in Goshen. All goes as he
had arranged. Thanks partly to the indifference of the king, who seems
to have been rather a _roi fainéant_ in the hands of his energetic
_maire du palais_, and to have been contented to give, with a flourish
of formality, as a command to Joseph, what Joseph had previously
carefully suggested to him (vers. 6, 7). There is nothing unfair in all
this. It is good, shrewd management, and no fault can be found with it;
but it is a new trait in the ideal character of a servant of God, and
contrasts strongly with the type shown in Abraham. None the less, it is
a legitimate element in the character and conduct of a good man, set
down to do God's work in such a world. Joseph is a saint and a
politician. His shrewdness is never craft; sagacity is not alien to
consecration. No doubt it has to be carefully watched lest it
degenerate; but prudence is as needful as enthusiasm, and he is the
complete man who has a burning fire down in his heart to generate the
force that drives him, and a steady hand on the helm, and a keen eye on
the chart, to guide him. Be ye 'wise as serpents' but also 'harmless as
doves.'
2 We may note in Joseph's conduct also an instance of a man in high
office and not ashamed of his humble relations. One of the great
lessons meant to be taught by the whole patriarchal period was the
sacredness of the family. That is, in some sense, the keynote of
Joseph's history. Here we see family love, which had survived the trial
of ill-usage and long absence, victorious over the temptation of
position and high associates. It took some nerve and a great deal of
affection, for the viceroy, whom envious and sarcastic courtiers
watched, to own his kin. What a sweet morsel for malicious tongues it
would be, 'Have you heard? He is only the son of an old shepherd, who
is down in Goshen, come to pick up some crumbs there!' One can fancy
the curled lips and the light laugh, as the five brothers, led by the
great man himself, made their rustic reverences to Pharaoh. It is as if
some high official in Paris were to walk in half a dozen peasants in
blouse and sabots, and present them to the president as 'my brothers.'
It was a brave thing to do; and it teaches a lesson which many people,
who have made their way in the world, would be nobler and more esteemed
if they learned.
3. The brother's words to Pharaoh are another instance of that ignorant
carrying out of the divine purposes which we have already had to
notice. They evidently contemplate only a temporary stay in the
country. They say that they are come 'to _sojourn_'--the verb from
which are formed the noun often rendered '_strangers_,' and that which
Jacob uses in verse 9, 'my _pilgrimage_.' The reason for their coming
is given as the transient scarcity of pasturage in Canaan, which
implies the intention of return as soon as that was altered. Joseph had
the same idea of the short duration of their stay; and though Jacob had
been taught by vision that the removal was in order to their being made
a great nation, it does not seem that his sons' intentions were
affected by that--if they knew it. So mistaken are our estimates. We go
to a place for a month, and we stay in it for twenty years. We go to a
place to settle for life, and our tent-pegs are pulled up in a week.
They thought of five years, and it was to be nearly as many centuries.
They thought of temporary shelter and food; God meant an education of
them and their descendants. Over all this story the unseen Hand hovers,
chastising, guiding, impelling; and the human agents are free and yet
fulfilling an eternal purpose, blind and yet accountable, responsible
for motives, and mercifully ignorant of consequences. So we all play
our little parts. We have no call to be curious as to what will come of
our deeds. This end of the action, the motive of it, is our care; the
other end, the outcome of it, is God's business to see to.
4. We may also observe how trivial incidents are wrought into God's
scheme. The Egyptian hatred of the shepherd class secured one of the
prime reasons for the removal from Canaan--the unimpeded growth of a
tribe into a nation. There was no room for further peaceful and
separate expansion in that thickly populated country. Nor would there
have been in Egypt, unless under the condition of comparative
isolation, which could not have been obtained in any other way. Thus an
unreasonable prejudice, possibly connected with religious ideas, became
an important factor in the development of Israel; and, once again, we
have to note the wisdom of the great Builder who uses not only gold,
silver, and precious stones, but even wood, hay, stubble--follies and
sins--for His edifice.
5. The interview of Jacob with Pharaoh is pathetic and beautiful. The
old man comports himself, in all the later history of Joseph, as if
done with the world, and waiting to go. 'Let me die, since I have seen
thy face,' was his farewell to life. He takes no part in the
negotiation about Goshen, but has evidently handed over all temporal
cares to younger hands. A halo of removedness lies round his grey
hairs, and to Pharaoh he behaves as one withdrawn from fleeting things,
and, by age and nearness to the end, superior even to a king's dignity.
As he enters the royal presence he does not do reverence, but invokes a
blessing upon him. 'The less is blessed of the better.' He has nothing
to do with court ceremonials or conventionalities. The hoary head is a
crown of honour, Pharaoh recognises his right to address him thus by
the kindly question as to his age, which implied respect for his years.
The answer of the 'Hebrew Ulysses,' as Stanley calls him, breathes a
spirit of melancholy not unnatural in one who had once more been
uprooted, and found himself again a wanderer in his old age. The
tremulous voice has borne the words across all the centuries, and has
everywhere evoked a response in the hearts of weary and saddened men.
Look at the component parts of this pensive retrospect.
Life has been to him a 'pilgrimage'. He thinks of all his wanderings
from that far-off day when at Bethel he received the promise of God's
presence 'in all places whither thou goest,' till this last happy and
yet disturbing change. But he is thinking not only, perhaps not
chiefly, of the circumstances, but of the spirit, of his life. This is,
no doubt, the confession 'that they were strangers and pilgrims'
referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He was a pilgrim, not
because he had often changed his place of abode, but because he sought
the 'city which hath foundations,' and therefore could not be at home
here. The goal of his life lay in the far future; and whether he looked
for the promises to be fulfilled on earth, or had the unformulated
consciousness of immortality, and saluted the dimly descried coast from
afar while tossing on life's restless ocean, he was effectually
detached from the present, and felt himself an alien in the existing
order. We have to live by the same hope, and to let it work the same
estrangement, if we would live noble lives. Not because all life is
change, nor because it all marches steadily on to the grave, but
because our true home--the community to which we really belong, the
metropolis, the mother city of our souls--is above, are we to feel
ourselves strangers upon earth. They who only take into account the
transiency of life are made sad, or sometimes desperate, by the
unwelcome thought. But they whose pilgrimage is a journey home may look
that transiency full in the face, and be as glad because of it as
colonists on their voyage to the old country which they call 'home,'
though they were born on the other side of the world and have never
seen its green fields.
To Jacob's eyes his days seem 'few.' Abraham's one hundred and
seventy-five years, Isaac's one hundred and eighty, were in his mind.
But more than these was in his mind. The law of the moral perspective
is other than that of the physical. The days in front, seen through the
glass of anticipation, are drawn out; the days behind, viewed through
the telescope of memory, are crowded together. What a moment looked all
the long years of his struggling life--shorter now than even had once
seemed the seven years of service for his Rachel, that love had made to
fly past on such swift wings! That happy wedded life, how short it
looked! A bright light for a moment, and
'Ere a man could say "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness did devour it up.'
It is well to lay the coolness of this thought on our fevered hearts,
and, whether they be torn by sorrows or gladdened with bliss, to
remember 'this also will pass' and the longest stretch of dreary days
be seen in retrospect, in their due relation to eternity, as but a
moment. That will not paralyse effort nor abate sweetness, but it will
teach proportion, and deliver from the illusions of this solid-seeming
shadow which we call life.
The pensive retrospect darkens as the old man's memory dwells upon the
past. His days have not only been few--that could be borne--but they
have been 'evil' by which I understand not unfortunate so much as
faulty. We have seen in preceding pages the slow process by which the
crafty Jacob had his sins purged out of him, and became 'God's
wrestler.' Here we learn that old wrong-doing, even when forgiven--or,
rather, when and because forgiven--leaves regretful memories lifelong.
The early treachery had been long ago repented of and pardoned by God
and man. The nature which hatched it had been renewed. But here it
starts up again, a ghost from the grave, and the memory of it is full
of bitterness. No lapse of time deprives a sin of its power to sting.
As in the old story of the man who was killed by a rattlesnake's poison
fang embedded in a boot which had lain forgotten for years, we may be
wounded by suddenly coming against it, long after it is forgiven by God
and almost forgotten by ourselves. Many a good man, although he knows
that Christ's blood has washed away his guilt, is made to possess the
iniquities of his youth. 'Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and
never open thy mouth any more, when I am pacified toward thee for all
that thou hast done.'
But this shaded retrospect is one-sided. It is true, and in some moods
seems all the truth; but Jacob saw more distinctly, and his name was
rightly Israel, when, laying his trembling hands on the heads of
Joseph's sons, he laid there the blessing of 'the God which fed me all
my life long, ... 'the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.' That was
his last thought about his life, as it began to be seen in the breaking
light of eternal day. Pensive and penitent memory may call the years
few and evil, but grateful faith even here, and still more the cleared
vision of heaven, will discern more truly that they have been a long
miracle of loving care, and that all their seeming evil has been
transmuted into good.