JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN
BY
W. K. TWEEDIE, D.D.,
AUTHOR OF “SEED-TIME AND HARVEST,” “THE EARLY CHOICE,”
“PARABLES OF OUR LORD,” ETC.
See the wan victim of his brethren’s scorn,
In Pharaoh’s dungeon, drooping, abject, lone!
But God is there, the friend of the forlorn,
And Joseph’s prison opes beside the throne.
LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1872.
PREFACE.
The story of Joseph is at once so simple that childhood is arrested and
rivetted by it, and so profound that sages may deepen their wisdom by
meditating on the truths which it embodies. An attempt is here made to
point out some of the more important lessons which the narrative
teaches,—to manifest the wisdom and the watchfulness of Providence,—and
show how God on high exercises his prerogative of educing good from
what we are often tempted to regard as only and hopelessly evil. While
man displays his wickedness by committing sin, the Holy One displays
his goodness by restraining it; and though his ways are confessedly “a
great deep,” we get glimpses through the gloom,—we catch echoes amid
the silence, which enable us to know, that when the tangled web of
providence shall have been unrolled in light, it will be seen that he
“has done all things well.” As the bones of Joseph were carried before
the Hebrews during all their wanderings, from Egypt to Canaan, till
they found a resting-place in that land of promise, the truth of God
here goes before us still, a very pillar of cloud and of fire.
CONTENTS.
I. JOSEPH CAST INTO THE PIT, 9
II. JOSEPH SOLD TO THE ISHMAELITES, 15
III. JOSEPH IN PRISON, 21
IV. JOSEPH INTERPRETING PHARAOH’S DREAMS, 31
V. JOSEPH’S ADVANCEMENT, 41
VI. “YE ARE SPIES,” 48
VII. THE CUP IN BENJAMIN’S SACK, 57
VIII. THE MEETING OF JOSEPH AND BENJAMIN, 65
IX. THE MEETING OF JACOB AND JOSEPH, 73
X. JACOB IN THE PRESENCE OF PHARAOH, 79
XI. THE DEATH OF JACOB, 85
JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN.
CHAPTER I.
JOSEPH CAST INTO THE PIT.
When Jesus would inculcate some of the deepest lessons which he ever
taught, he took a little child and set him in the midst of his
disciples (Matt. xviii. 2–4), and made that child his text. Truth thus
found an inlet into the mind which even the Great Teacher might have
attempted in vain to impress, without some material illustration of his
spiritual lessons.—Let us endeavour to imitate the Saviour’s wisdom,
and seek some lessons to guide us in the touching history of Joseph.
It is well known, then, that on a certain occasion that youth obtained
permission to visit his brothers at a part of Canaan somewhat distant
from their father’s home. But, previous to that time, he had given them
great offence; and their anger only waited for a fit occasion to break
forth in violence against him. And we should not fail to notice what
caused that anger. First, Joseph was a great favourite with his father,
who testified his partiality to the boy by the gift of a coat of many
colours, and thus unwisely laid a foundation for feuds and divisions in
his family (Gen. xxxvii. 3, 4). Moreover, Joseph had dreamed certain
dreams which gave great offence to his brothers; for they indicated
that the time would come when the other children of Jacob would do
homage to Joseph, who was one of the youngest (Gen. xxxvii. 5–11). The
feelings which rankled in the bosoms of his brothers before, now
rankled more and more, and were ripened by irritation for a violent
outbreak at last. It appears, further, that Joseph had, at least on one
occasion (ver. 2), complained to his father regarding the misdeeds of
his brothers; and all these things made him “hated by them, so that
they could not speak peaceably to him.”—All this suggests to us the
strange lesson, that there are some men who “hate him that rebuketh
them, and abhor him that speaketh uprightly” (Amos v. 10). Men are so
wedded to their own ways, even when they lead down to death, that we
become their enemy if we tell them the truth. How often did scribe,
Pharisee, priest, and people break out in violence against Jesus for
his truthful warnings!
No sooner, then, did they see Joseph approaching Dothan, where they fed
their flocks, than his brothers thought the time had come at length for
humbling their father’s favourite. The first proposal was to put him
instantly to death; but Reuben interposed, and their sentence was, to
throw Joseph into a pit, and leave him to perish unpitied there!
Blinded by envy, or goaded by rage, they trampled on every tender
feeling, and evil became their chief good.
In the good providence of God, however, the youth was taken from that
pit, in which he was to have been buried alive, and sent to a distant
country, there to be the saviour of not a few, in a temporal sense. To
cover their wickedness, his brothers next resolved to show to their
father Joseph’s coat of tartan, dipped in the blood of a kid, as if he
had been devoured by ravenous beasts.—Their brother might become a
slave; their father’s heart might be torn with anguish; their own souls
might be deeply stained with sin piled above sin;—but what of all
these, when men are bent on indulging their evil and malignant
passions? Let misery be heaped upon misery, yet men will not be
diverted from their iniquity.
But wicked as their deeds were, and an outrage at once against a father
and a brother, and, above all, against their God, he who makes the
wrath of man to praise him employed that wrath remarkably to work out
his purposes in this case. And he is doing the same at this hour. Think
of the miseries, spread over many years of agony, inflicted by fierce
persecutors on the Christians of Madagascar in our day, and then mark
how they increase in number notwithstanding. Think of the bloody
massacres in India, the martyrdoms of native Christians there, with the
butchery of all who wear the Christian name; and yet mark how that is
overruled to rouse the churches to spread the truth in that dark-souled
land. Think, above all, of the Cross of Jesus,—of the woes which were
there endured, with all the malignant passions which nailed the
Redeemer to the tree; and then see how God can make our wickedness
promote his own glory,—can bring joy out of anguish, and life out of
death, and blessings unutterable out of the very curse (Gal. iii. 13).