Chapter 8: Joseph'S Second Interview With His Brethren
CHAPTER 8: JOSEPH'S SECOND INTERVIEW WITH HIS BRETHREN
(Genesis 43.)
"Kind hearts are here; yet would the tenderest one
Have limits to its mercy: God has none.
And man's forgiveness may be tree and sweet,
But yet he stoops to give it. More complete
Is Love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,
And pleads with thee to raise it. Only heaven
Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says Forgiven!"
A. PROCTOR.
WHERE IS THERE such another story as this of Joseph? It seems sometimes impossible to believe that the events happened thirty-five centuries ago, in the solemn, rainless land of the Nile and the Pyramids. They might have occurred within our own memory, the experience is so natural, so life-like, so like our own. And yet orientalists assure us that, in its minutest details, it is verified by the paintings which, to this day, exist on the walls of palaces and temples, unimpaired and fresh.
I feel it impossible to dwell on it line by line; I must content myself with taking only the broad outlines of the story.
Our next chapter will deal with that affecting scene, when Joseph caused every man to go out from him, while he cast aside his dignity, stepped down from his throne, and fell upon the necks of his brethren and wept. We have a lesser task just now, yet full of interest; we have to consider the successive steps by which that wayward family was brought into a position in which its members could be forgiven and blessed. May the Holy Spirit help us to understand this; because Joseph, who was exalted from the pit to the palace, is an evident picture of Him who lay in the grave, but is now exalted to the right hand of the Father to give repentance unto Israel and the remission of sins! And as we review the successive steps by which Joseph led his brethren, we shall probably catch a glimpse of those various processes by which the Saviour humbles us and leads us to Himself. Should these words be read by the members of some family which is living in this famine-stricken world, minding only the things of sense and sin, ignorant of the great Brother who lives yonder on the throne of God and loves us--let them read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, for they may shed a light on some dark landings of their life, and explain things hard as the riddle of the Sphinx.
I. THERE WAS THE PRESSURE OF POVERTY AND SORROW (Genesis 43:1).
Jacob had never turned his thoughts to Egypt if there had been plenty in Canaan. The famine drove the sons of Israel into Egypt to buy corn. And even though poor Simeon was bound in Egypt, the brothers had not gone a second time if it had not been for the rigour of that necessity, which sometimes drives the most timid birds and deer to the homes and haunts of men. At first the old father strongly opposed the thought of their taking Benjamin, even if they went themselves; and his children lingered.
There is a touching picture given of the conversation between the old man and his sons, a kind of council of war. Reuben seems already to have lost the priority which his birthright would have secured, and Judah held the place of spokesman and leader amongst the brethren. He undertook to deal with the old man for the rest. At the outset, Jacob's request that they should go down to buy food was met with the most distinct refusal, unless Benjamin was permitted to "accompany them. And when he complained of their having betrayed the existence of another brother, the whole of them vindicated their action, and declared that they could not have done otherwise. At last Judah made himself personally responsible for the lad's safety, a pledge which, as we shall see, he nobly redeemed. And so, at last, the old man yielded, proposing only that they should take a present to mollify the ruler's heart, a double money to replace what' had been returned in their sacks, and uttering a fervent prayer to the Almighty on their behalf. Thus God in his mercy shut up every other door but the one through which they might find their way to plenty and blessedness. There was no alternative but to go down to Egypt.
So is your life. You have had all that this world could give. Beauty, money, youth, health, success, have come up and poured their horns of plenty into your lap. You have had all that man could wish. But what has been your state of heart meanwhile? Have you bethought yourself of your ill-treatment of your great Elder Brother? Have you set your affections upon things above? Have you lived for that world which lies beyond the narrow horizon of the visible? You know you have not. So God has called for a famine on your land, and broken the whole staff of your bread. You have lost situation and friends. Your business is broken. Beauty, youth, health--all have vanished. Joseph is not; Simeon is not; and Benjamin is on the point of being taken away. Everything has been against you.
It is a severe measure: hove will you bear it? In the first burst of the tempest, you say stubbornly, "I will not go down; I will not yield; I will stand out to the last." But, beware! It is a fatal mistake to wrestle against the love of God. Jacob tried it by the Jabbok ford; and he limped on a halting thigh until he gathered his feet up into his deathbed. God will have his way at last if not at first. The famine must continue until the wanderer arises to return to the Father, with words of penitent contrition on his lips. It is in vain to row to bring the ship to land: the sea will not cease her raging until the runaway prophet is on his way back to his home. "I will be," saith the Lord, "unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; and none shall rescue. I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek Me early." Oh that your reply might be!--"Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up."
II. THERE WAS THE AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE.
For twenty years conscience had slept. And as long as this was the case there could be no real peace between Joseph and his brethren, They could never feel sure that he had forgiven them. He would always feel that there was a padlock on the treasure-store of his love. You never can feel at perfect rest with your friend, so long as there is some unexplained wrong between you. Conscience must awake and slowly tread the aisles of the temple of penitence, telling the beads of confession. This is the clue to the understanding of Joseph's behaviour.
Joseph, to arouse their dormant consciences, repeated as nearly as possible to them, their treatment of himself. This has already engaged our thought. "Ye are spies," was the echo of their own rough words to himself. The prison, in which they lay for three days, was the counterpart of the pit in which they placed him. Men will best learn what is the true nature of their own iniquities when they experience the treatment which they meted out to others. And Joseph's device was a success. Listen to their moan, "We are verily guilty because of our brother."
Here again is a clue to the mysteries of our own lives.
God sometimes allows us to be treated as we have treated Him, that we may see our offence in its true character, and may be obliged to turn to Him with words of genuine contrition. Your child has turned out badly enough: you did everything for him; now he refuses to do what you wish, and even taunts you. Do you feel it? Perhaps this will reveal to you what God feels, in that, though He has nourished and brought you up, yet you have rebelled against Him. Your neighbour, when in trouble, came to you for help, and promised to repay you with interest, with many protestations: now he prospers, and you ask him to repay you; but he either laughs at you, or tells you to wait. Do you feel it? Ah, now you know how God feels, He who helped you in distress, to whom you made many vows, but who reminds you in vain of all the past. You know what it is to stand day after day a suppliant, waiting at a gate which never opens, listening for a footstep that never comes. Do you feel it? Ah, now you know what He feels who twenty years ago stood at the door of your heart and knocked, and is there now waiting, full-handed, to enrich you. That conscience must indeed be fast in slumber that awakens not at such appeals.
III. THERE WAS THE DISPLAY OF MUCH TENDER LOVE TOWARDS THEM.
As soon as Joseph espied them he invited them to his own table to feast with him. The brothers were brought into his house, where every kindness was shown to them; as if, instead of being poor shepherds, they were the magnates of the land. Their fears as to the return of the money were allayed by the pious, though prevaricating, assurance of the steward that if they had discovered it in their sacks it must have been put there by God, as there was no doubt about the price of their corn having come into his hands. And when Joseph came they prostrated themselves before him in striking fulfilment of his own boyish dream. He asked them tenderly about the well-being of their father; and there must have been a pathos in his words to Benjamin which would have revealed the whole secret if they had not been so utterly unprepared to find Joseph beneath the strange guise of the great Egyptian governor.
What an inimitable touch is that, which tells us how Joseph's heart welled up into his eyes, so that he needed to make haste to conceal the bursting emotions, which threatened to overmaster him. "He sought where to weep, and he entered into his chamber, and wept there. And he washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself; and said, Set on bread."
There may be prophetic touches here. And we may yet see the counterpart of this scene literally fulfilled, when the Lord comes forward to recognize and receive his ancient people. But in the meanwhile what shall we say of his love to ourselves? Ah, we need the fervid heart and the burning words of a Rutherford to deal with such a theme. The rejected Brother may seem strange and rough. He may cause sorrow. He may bind Simeon before our eyes. But, beneath all, He loves us with a love in which is concentrated the love of all parents to their children, and of all friends for their beloved. And that love is constantly devising means of expressing itself. It puts money into our sacks; it invites us to its home, and spreads banquets before us; it inclines stewards to meet us peacefully; it washes our feet; it takes a tender interest in those we love; it wishes us grace from God; it adjusts itself to our temperaments and puts us at our ease, so that gleams of light as to the love of Jesus strike into our hearts! He feels yearnings over us which He restrains, and dares not betray till the work of conviction is complete, and He can pour the full tides of affection on us, without injury to others or harm to ourselves.
IV. THERE WAS THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR SELF-CONFIDENCE.
They thought their ward was good; but when they told their family history, Joseph refused to believe it, and said it must be proved. They were confident in their money; and as they paid down the shining pieces, they congratulated themselves that in this respect at least they were even with this rough governor--now at least he cannot touch them or count them as defaulters. But when they reached their first halting-place on their way home, "as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender, he espied his money; for, behold, it was in the sack's mouth: and he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and lo, it is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another. What is this that God hath done unto us?"
How often this happens in the experience of sinful men! They want to stand right with God; but they like to do so in their own way. Like Cain, they bring the fruit which their own hands have raised. Like these men, they bring their hard-earned money. Like the Pharisees, they bring prayers and tithes and gifts. But when these gifts have been laid upon the altar, their donors are amazed to find that they count for nothing, and are even given back. No! the mercy of God, which is the true bread of the spirit, is not to be bought by anything we can bring; it must be received as a gift without money and without price. Jacob said, "Peradventure it was an oversight": but it was not; it was part of a deeply-laid plan, designed and executed for a special purpose. There is no oversight, and no peradventure, in the life of man.
"All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good."
They were confident also in their integrity. Little knowing what was in the sack of one of them, when the morning was light they started on their return journey for the second time. They were in high spirits. Simeon was with them; so was Benjamin, notwithstanding the nervous forebodings of the old father. They were evidently in high favour with the governor, else they had not been treated to so grand a feast on the previous day. Their sacks were as full as they could possibly hold. But they had hardly got,, clear of the city gate, when they were arrested by the steward's voice. "Stop! Stop! Why have ye rewarded evil for good?" And they said, "Wherefore saith my lord these words? Behold, the money which we found in our sacks' mouths we brought again unto thee: how then should we steal silver or gold out of thy lord's house?" And, so sure were they of their integrity, that they went further and said: "With whomsoever thy master's cup is found, let him die, and we also will be my lord's bondmen." "Then they speedily took down every man his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack." And the steward searched them there on the bare road, beginning with the eldest to the youngest, "and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack." Well might Judah and his brethren come to Joseph's house and fall before him on the ground, and say, "What shall we say unto my lord? What shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants." They were stripped of every rag of self-confidence, and were shut up to his uncovenanted mercy.
Same men resemble Benjamin. They are naturally guileless and beautiful. Some faint traces of original innocence linger about them. Their type is shown forth in the young man whom Jesus loved, as he stood before Him breathless with haste, protesting that he had kept all the commandments blameless from his youth. We do not reckon sin to such; and they do not reckon it to themselves. The publican and the sinner may stand in urgent need of the blood of Christ; but surely nitre and soap will suffice for them. But this reasoning is full of flaws. Such people seem good, only because they are compared with sinners of a blacker dye. Compare them with the only standard of infinite purity; and they are infinitely condemned. "If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." The servants think the linen dean as it hangs upon the line, contrasted with the dingy buildings around; but when the snowflakes fall, they wonder that they never before discerned its lack of whiteness. The schoolboy thinks his writing good, only so long as he contrasts it with that of a worse penman than himself; but he soon alters his opinion when he catches sight of the copy. So estimable characters pride themselves on their morality, only until they behold the seamless robes of Christ, whiter than any fuller on earth could whiten them. But these must be taught their utter sinfulness; they must learn their secret unworthiness; they must he made to take their stand with the rest of men. Benjamin must be reduced to the level of Simeon and Judah. The cup must be found in Benjamin's sack.
A preacher of the Gospel was once speaking to an old Scotchwoman, who was commonly regarded as one of the most devout and respectable people in that part of the country. He was impressing on her need of Christ.
At last, with tears in her eyes, she said, "Oh, sir, I have never missed a Sabbath at the kirk; and I have read my Bible every day; and I have prayed and done good deeds to my neighbours; and I have done all I knew I ought to do: and now do you mean to tell me that it must all go for nothing?" He answered, "Well, you have to choose between trusting in these and trusting in the redemption which God offers you in Christ. You cannot have both. If you are content to part company with your own righteousness, the Lord will give you his; but if you cling to your Bible-reading and Sabbath-keeping and good deeds, the Lord's righteousness cannot be yours." It was quite a spectacle, he said afterwards, to see that old woman's face. The cup was found in Benjamin's sack. For some time she sat in silence, her elbows on the table, her face buried in her hands: a great struggle was going on within. At length the tears began to stream from her eyes, and, lifting up her clasped hands to heaven, she cried out, "Oh, my God, they shall all gang for nothing!" In a moment more she cast herself on her knees and accepted the Lord Jesus as her Saviour. It is when the cup is found in Benjamin's sack that he, too, is brought to the feet of Jesus.
There is a stolen cup in your sack, my respectable, reputable, moral friend. You are probably unconscious of it. You pride yourself upon your Nameless life. You suppose that Christ Himself has no controversy with you. But if you only knew you would see that you are robbing Him of his own. You use for yourself time and money and talents which He bought with his own precious blood, and which He meant to be a chosen vessel unto Himself.
It is remarkable that you, who are so scrupulous in paying every man his dues, should be so careless of the daily treachery of which you are guilty in defrauding the Lord of his own purchase. But if you hide the unwelcome truth from yourself, you cannot hide it from your Lord. "Wot ye not that such an one as He can certainly divine?" "He searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins of the children of men." And "he that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him."
How then shall we act? First, .Do not linger. "Except we had lingered, surely now ere this we should have returned twice." Except you had lingered, ere this you would have become an earnest, happy Christian. "The angels hastened Lot as he lingered." Make haste! The door is shutting; and when it shuts it will lock itself. The entrance is nearly bricked up. The hour-glass is nearly run out, and when its last grain has gone the court of mercy will close.
Secondly, Make full confession or restitution. "They came near to the steward of Joseph's house and communed with him," and told him all about the finding of the money, and offered it back in full weight. Commune with Christ as you close this story. Tell Him all that is in your heart. Restore what you have taken wrongfully from Him or from others. Make full and thorough restitution. "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long; for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy."
Thirdly, Throw yourself on the merry of Christ. Judah did not excuse himself or his brethren; he had been non-suited if he had. He adopted a wiser course--he pleaded for mercy. Mercy for their own sakes! mercy for the lad's sake! mercy for the sake of the old father with his grey hairs at home! Try that plea with your Lord. You will find that it will not fail you. Say, as you beat upon your breast, "Be merciful unto me, the sinner!" He will not be able to refrain. He will say, in broken accents, "Come near unto Me; I am Jesus your Brother: your sins nailed Me to the cross, but speak of it no more; grieve not for it. God has overruled it for good, that I might save your lives by a great deliverance."