Look at the sons of Jacob. Look at them when they took away their
brother, and after they had delivered him into slavery see them coming
back. How much they must have suffered with their secret during those
twenty years! What misery they must have endured as they looked, during
all those years, at their old father sorrowing for his son, Joseph! They
knew the boy had not been killed. They knew he was in slavery.
For twenty years the sin was covered up, but at last it came back upon
them. God had, in the meantime, been doing every thing for Joseph. He had
raised him nearly to the throne of Egypt.
A famine struck the land of the father, and the old man sent his sons
down into Egypt to purchase corn. God was at work. He was making these
men bring their own sin home to themselves. Their consciences smote them,
and they confessed, in the presence of Joseph, that their sin had found
them out. Twenty years after it was committed that sin was resurrected,
and they were brought face to face with it. “He that covereth his sin
shall not prosper.”