The new life is further developed in Joseph, in whom it arrives at full spiritual manhood—he is the eighth from, Judah. He possesses some qualities that have little or no place in the struggling and rejoicing activities of Gad, Asher, and Naphtali—not so much the activities of spiritual life as its passivity, showing that what we are is of more importance even than what we do. For a great part of his life he could do apparently nothing: he was shut up and could not come forth, baud in fetters, the iron entering into his soul; but he had that noblest of qualities, fortitude; “his bow abode in strength.”
This is the last and highest development in human beings of spiritual life. “Joseph is a fruitful bough,” which receives every rough blow without resentment, yielding up in return its own rich fruit— “that noble tree that is wounded itself when it giveth the balm;” that divine passivity of fruitfulness, which, when nailed to a cross, showers down from its dead branches pardon and beneficence on the murderers. “The archers have sorely grieved him [it is not the passivity; of callousness]; and shot at and hated him, but his bow abode” [he did not use it against them; he kept it for their enemies]. And it “abode in strength “: it is the self-restraint of power; not the supineness of weakness. Here is a remarkable verse in Colossians: “Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power unto.” Unto what, now, would the mind expect this grand cumulative energy to lead? “Unto all patience and long-suffering, with joyfulness.” The balance-wheel of a watch seems to be doing all the work, but the spring, hidden away and apparently unmoving, does more. Incessant motion may be, like the shaking palsy, a sign of weakness, not of strength. There is a calmness like that of a star, apparently lonely and motionless in the darkness, but when viewed by more than mortal sight, it is seen to be filled with a teeming and fruitful energy, traveling in the exact course its Creator appoints, and irradiating the darkness of Cimmerian night to myriads of unthankful eyes.
“A fruitful bough by a well:” hidden sources of nourishment as of energy—the water of life springing from the wounded ground. Though he may be imprisoned, he is like a noble tree in a gaol-yard: for him, “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.” “His branches run over the wall.” When Pellico was at Bran, and sinking into torpid misery, through the protracted sufferings of his imprisonment, he was comforted and strengthened by Count Oroboni, a fellow-prisoner of singular beauty and nobility of character. This man, suffering all that a refined mind in loathsome surroundings can, combined with prolonged illness from accident and disease, retained a lofty serenity of confidence in God and good will to man. “Too kind for bitter words to grieve, Too firm for clamor to dismay,” “Oroboni was indefatigable in turning my attention to the motives which man has to show kindness to his enemies,” says Pellico.” “Many men had injured him, yet he forgave all, and had the magnanimity to relate some laudable trait or other belonging to each, and seemed to do it with pleasure his noble virtue delighted me. Struggling as well as I could to reach him, I at least trod in the same track, and I was then enabled to pray with sincerity; to forgive, to hate no one, and dissipate every remaining doubt and gloom.”
The cactus is a churl: he wounds every one who touches him. The nettle is a meaner though softer nature: those that touch him gently he stings; grasp him strongly, and he is soft as velvet. The thistle is determined and “high-spirited “; he reverses that: touch him gently and he is harmless; but let those that roughly handle him beware—Nemo me impune lacesset! Far above all these, living “in those bright realms of air,” where “The chestnuts spread their palms, Like holy men at prayer,” is the “Fruitful Bough,” extending to all his gracious beneficence. The insects shall burrow in it; the woodpeckers pierce it; the sparrow find there “an house and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young “; the grass shall be sheltered by its shadow, and the air scented and tinted by its odor and bloom: to those who treat it kindly, yielding ever fragrance and fruit in its season; and to those who assail it with rough blows, maintaining a god-like dignity of patience, showering down upon their heads its opulent benediction. For as high as the heaven is above the earth; so great is a lofty spirit above a “high spirit “; so much higher is dignity than pride.
Therefore the blessing on Joseph is of a nature spiritual and hidden, having the character of eternity and infinitude. “The Almighty shall bless thee with the precious things of heaven, the dew and the deep that coucheth beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb......unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills” These descended on the head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of him that was, separate from his brethren. He had suffered a doable rejection—from the world and from his brethren—and the benison is thus doubly emphasized.
“From thence [i.e. from the Mighty God of Jacob] is The Shepherd, The Stone of Israel.” It is very appropriate that the promise of the Messiah in His patient and passive character should be thus connected with Joseph; it is the more striking as the connection is only moral, not by lineage as in the case of Judah and Shiloh. The mind naturally passes from thinking of Joseph in these aspects to the patient and suffering Redeemer Whom he typified. Whatever there was in Joseph of tender love, of watchful care, of painful self-sacrifice and vicarious suffering, is a fleeting shadow to us of the Great Shepherd of Israel. Whatever there was of solid and abiding passivity, of weight and strength, of constancy and consistency that, formed in fire and flood, can endure through fire and flood, is an adumbration of that Stone— “tried” and “precious “which the builders rejected, but which the Almighty has made the head of the corner. “And He shall bring forth the Headstone with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace, unto it!”