THE DEATH OF JACOB.
We have now reached the closing stage of all. For about seventeen years
Jacob sojourned in Egypt, and about one hundred and forty-seven here
below; but the “evil” of which he complained to Pharaoh is drawing to
an end. The patriarch is about to die. Joseph was summoned into his
father’s presence, along with his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, who
were adopted as his own by the dying patriarch; they received his
blessing along with their father (Gen. xlviii.); and after the aged man
had prophetically sketched the history or character of each of the
future patriarchs, “he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded
up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.”
And in concluding these sketches, we may glance again at the mode in
which the mighty God brought good to all nations and all times out of
the misdeeds of the sons of Jacob. In our world there is much to
perplex and bewilder us in studying the ways of Providence, and it is
not always easy—for us, at least—to “justify the ways of God to man;”
but he will sooner or later justify them himself, and make it plain to
all that his ways, like his Word, are pure.
For example, we have already seen what benefits accrued to Joseph
himself from the cruelty of his brethren, and how fully he recognized
the hand of God in all that had befallen him. Just as Jehovah will make
it plain at last, before the assembled world, that the very wrath of
man has praised him, in the present instance he made the evil passions
of those brothers remarkably advance the eternal purposes of the God of
heaven. The promises made to Adam and to Abraham are here helped a
stage forward to their fulfilment in spite of all that seems to oppose.
Somehow or other, though we cannot see it, or explain it at all, even
sin—the abominable thing which God hates—will be made to promote his
glory; and of that result we have a specimen in the events of this
remarkable family.
To Jacob, also, as well as to the land of Egypt, we see what benefits
resulted from the sin of his sons. All the guilt of that sin lay upon
them, and was not in the least jot mitigated by the manner in which God
overruled it for good; but it is full of encouragement to a child of
God, to see it working out the purposes of his Father. Jacob was saved
from death by starvation; his family, and myriads besides, were the
same: and thus he who sought only to do evil by stirring up the envy of
Joseph’s brethren, was compelled to do good thereby again and again.
THE END