Gen. 42
IN the Scriptures of truth expressions are not used without their having due signification and importance; a name even is not varied by mere accident, or to please the ear; but the Spirit of God has a definite object in His use of the words, epithets, and names, which He employs throughout the Bible. Bearing this in mind, we may profitably inquire why the old name Jacob, and the new name Israel, are so frequently interchanged in the history before us. Thus the forty-second chapter opens with, “Now when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look one upon another?” The conduct of the Patriarch in this time of need was such that the Spirit of God employs his old name in the flesh. Israel had sunk back into Jacob; for he judged by what he saw and heard, instead of directing his eyes to the unseen and Almighty God (see chs. 35:10, 11); instead of calling to mind the vision of glory which had cheered him in his early pilgrimage at Bethel, he directed the thoughts of his sons towards Egypt, as if he would have them turn their eyes thither, instead of lifting them up to the living God. The circumstances of the case, it may be, seemed too plain to necessitate ally counseling with God; famine was at the doors, there was corn in Egypt, and he had money in his possession; what therefore could be more clear and simple than to send his sons to buy the necessary food? And thus the man of faith, whose name was Israel, sunk down into the man after the flesh, and lost for a time his princely standing. Beloved, is it not too often so with ourselves? Do we not, alas! frequently neglect to take counsel with Him whose name is “Counselor;” and thus, though kings and priests, become suppliants for the world’s favors, when we ought to be maintaining our place as princes with God and with men, and prevailing? Do not some circumstances appear too plain, too manifest upon the very face of them, to admit of a doubt as to how we should act; so we undertake them in our own strength, relying upon our wisdom; and the habit is engendered of leaning on our own resources, God being consulted only on great occasions? May not this failing of the Patriarch, this want of faith so manifest, also, in ourselves, be traced again to a neglect of another kind? Where do we find any record of a sacrifice between the thirty-fifth and forty-sixth chapters of his history? We read of no altar being erected by Jacob after he leaves Bethel (ch. 35:7), until he comes to Beersheba (ch. 46:1), on his way to Egypt, where he sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac, probably on the altar that Isaac himself had erected there. All seems to have been a dreary void for many years, as regards any open remembrance of the slain lamb; and the “kid of the goats,” instead of being offered to the Lord, is killed on one occasion by Israel’s sons, in order that they may dip Joseph’s coat in the blood; and on another used by Judah as the wages of iniquity. Does not this speak loudly to us concerning the fruitful source of unbelief and sin in the family of the faithful? If the slain lamb be neglected, if the soul do not feed much on the body and blood of, Christ, if the death of the Son of man be not often openly referred to in our houses, expediency will take the place of faith; our own resources will be trusted instead of the living God; and weakness and failure, or, it may be, some manifest fall, will be the sad result.
Verse 4. Jacob, having in his own wisdom discovered a way of keeping alive his household, sends his sons to buy corn; but he retains Benjamin, “for he said, Lest peradventure mischief befall him.” Having taken the management of it all into his own hands, he is afraid of what may happen if he sends his youngest child; he feels there is a “peradventure,” a perhaps, a chance, in the matter. Had the Lord been consulted, and His guidance followed, there would have been no peradventure; no mischief can happen if God be the guide; imaginary alarms will never occupy the soul if it be leaning on the Lord, and take no step without His direction. “Whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” (Prov. 1:3333But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. (Proverbs 1:33).)
Verse 5. “And the sons of Israel came to buy corn amongst those that came.” Here the name Israel occurs; and this draws our attention to the contrast between the glorious name, “sons of Israel,” and the abject way in which these men presented themselves, as suppliants for corn, on a par with others who came on the same errand into Egypt. They bow down as beggars with their faces to the earth, instead of being like sons of a prince, having power with God and with men, and prevailing. The money which they bring with them gives them no confidence, no superiority over others; but they act as soliciting a favor from the lord of the country, instead of conducting themselves as children of a king. The truth is, that if we would be princes and have power with men, we must first have power and prevail with God.
Verse 8. The heart of Joseph had been true to his brethren; neither the pit, the prison, nor the throne, had blotted them out from his affection; love, stronger than death, stronger than prosperity, had increased rather than diminished in his bosom; and there is nothing like love to retain in the memory the features of those dear to us. “Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.” They had arrived in the very land into which they had sold him, yet no recollection of the past returned to their minds. Their consciences had been thoroughly blunted; their sin was not remembered, for God had not been in their thoughts; and no lamb on the altar had witnessed to their own souls or to God that they were sinners. It was therefore one great object with Joseph in his subsequent dealings with them, to bring them into the conscious presence of a living God, in order that they might be truly humbled under a sense of their sin.
Verse 9. And now the dreams rushed back in all their vividness upon the memory of Joseph. Those visions of glory had been designed for his sustainment and comfort in the midst of the deep trials and sorrows through which he had to pass; but he seems not to have called them to mind until he had already entered upon the scene of the glory itself. Let it not be so with us, brethren; may we walk this vale of tears, this valley of the shadow of death, with the bright hope of glory already realized as substance to our souls; let it not be that we discover, for the first time, the truth of God’s word of promise, when we cannot help doing so; that is, when we have entered upon the actual enjoyment of what He has promised; but now in this season of our pilgrimage and temptation, may we have the hope richly shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, and be enabled to count affliction light, and but for a moment, because we realize by faith the exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Verses 9-14. Thrice does Joseph repeat the accusation, “Ye are spies,” “to see the nakedness of the land ye are come.” They had in former years counted him to be a spy upon their evil ways, and he now makes them feel the bitterness of being themselves suspected. How wonderfully also they were obliged to discover their falsehood in the very assertion that they were “true men;” for in proof that they were no spies, they gave an account of their number, “twelve brethren—and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not.” Had they been true to their father? had they been true to Joseph? Must not the very utterance of the words “one is not” have sounded afresh in the ears of Joseph the tale of their false dealings, and did it not revive in their own consciences, after years of forgetfulness, the memory of their sin?
Joseph proceeds to threaten them “By the life of Pharaoh,” and puts them all together into ward three days. For a time not a ray of hope is allowed to dawn upon them. The very name of God, which might have been some alleviation to them, as they must often have heard it in their father’s home, is withheld, and they are made to feel the misery of being shut up without a God to trust in, without a friend to help them in this the day of their calamity, “without hope, and without God in the world.” On the third day, however, light breaks in upon them. “And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do and live—I fear God!” What sounds were these coming from the supposed Egyptian Prince With what wonder, and yet how mixed with contrition they must have heard the words, “I fear God.” The name and presence of God thus unexpectedly brought into the scene, makes the past come vividly to their recollection. It may be that the words, “I fear God,” were the last they had heard from the lips of Joseph when they sold him into Egypt; at all events they were at length awakened in some measure to a sense of their iniquity. “And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.” Reuben also adds to the sting of their conscience by his allusion to the past; and lastly Simeon is bound before their eyes, so that they might even see the scene again enacted when they had sold Joseph as a bond slave to the Ishmaelites. Subsequently also, when one of them discovered the money returned in the sack’s mouth, “their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?” Everything has a voice reminding them of their, till now, long-forgotten iniquity. Truly “the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth,” and these men are scared at every turn.
We are, brethren, walking through a world where everything, to an awakened conscience, speaks to us of the death and absence of the beloved One. Everything should therefore remind us of our own sin, and yet not to cast down our souls in fear, but rather that we may rejoice in the sense of the abundant grace and mercy of Him who His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. If the iniquity of our heels compass us about, wherefore should we fear? Many a foot-print of the past might well affright us, were it not that we can discern the cross of Christ still farther back than our sins, and that God hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
‘Before, behind, around,
They set their fierce array
To fight and force me from my ground,
Along Emmanuel’s way.
I meet them face to face,
Through Jesu’s conquest blest,
March in the triumph of his grace,
Right onward to my rest.’
But let us also observe God’s dealings with Jacob. He as well as his sons was afraid when he beheld the money returned; for he had trusted in this wealth to purchase the corn, and had not sought the Lord; he is now made to see that God can supply him with corn without money; and the very arm on which he had leant becomes a tenor to him. His policy also in detaining Benjamin, “lest peradventure mischief befall him,” turns out exactly contrary to what he had expected; for Simeon is detained as a prisoner in Egypt, and he is compelled to send Benjamin also if he would keep his house from starving. What a lesson this teaches us of the folly of man’s expedients. Jacob had made flesh his arm, he trusted in his own sagacity, and now he cannot see when good is coming; but in the language of despair exclaims, “All these things are against me.”
Observe the contrast of these words of Jacob, with the words of the apostle in Romans 8:28, 31: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Jacob could not see afar off, he lacked the eye-salve, and consequently his vision was circumscribed within the limit of the events apparently happening around him. At the very moment that he said, “all these things are against me,” everything was in his favor. Joseph was a prince in Egypt, the whole of the treasures of that kingdom were at his disposal, and what was better than all, God was dealing with the hearts and consciences of his children, so that they had never before been in such a softened state; but unbelief cannot see these things, for unbelief cannot see God. The only eye-salve which will enable us to see things as they really are, is the precious blood of Christ; that will answer every purpose, wealth, sight, clothing, joy, peace, all will be ours if we keep “the Lamb as it had been slain,” constantly in view; the whole of the sanctuary and its furniture, and its priest, declare in every varied way, that one blessed tale of the death and resurrection of the Lord; and the soul that hides itself in that pavilion, will know the reality of those words, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things.”