NOTES for Gen 45:1-28
1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. |
2 And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. |
3 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. |
4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. |
5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. |
6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. |
7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. |
8 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. |
9 Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: |
10 And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: |
11 And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. |
12 And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. |
13 And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. |
14 And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. |
15 Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him. |
16 And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come: and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. |
17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; |
18 And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. |
19 Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. |
20 Also regard not your stuff; for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours. |
21 And the children of Israel did so: and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. |
22 To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. |
23 And to his father he sent after this manner; ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his father by the way. |
24 So he sent his brethren away, and they departed: and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way. |
25 And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father, |
26 And told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not. |
27 And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: |
28 And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die. |
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The most important thing Joseph took from the experience of Egyptian life was a whole perception of reality. This statement can sound strange, but that is how it is: God's great world opened itself to Joseph in the twists of his difficult fate, while his brothers remained what they had been when he parted from them. The best testimony to this is Joseph's words about his life and his adventures in Egypt. He perceives his life as a mission. He says directly to his brothers: it was not you who sold me into slavery; it was God who brought me to Egypt so that now I might save you yourselves.
This turn of thought and plot occurs so often in all kinds of moralizing texts that it has already become a commonplace; and yet many believers are ready to testify to something similar on the basis of their own personal life experience. Some spiritual pattern is clearly visible here. A pattern connected, above all, with where, in what dimension, events take place. More precisely, in what world. In that great world of God which from the beginning was and remains God's Kingdom, or in that small little world separated from the Kingdom, which appears wherever those who oppose God act. This is the main question.
Joseph and his brothers live and act in different worlds. Joseph, of course, also did not enter God's great world at once; this world did not open itself to him at once. It required the experience of life in Potiphar's house and time in prison, and then the office of first minister. It required "swings" - in life and in existence - he had to live through the complete collapse of all plans, hopes, and expectations, so that God's will would become obvious to Joseph precisely as a force acting in his own life, not "in general." Then, when everything described had taken place and God's will had become reality for Joseph, God's great world opened itself to him. In this world only one will acts - God's - and only one plan is fulfilled - God's.
Joseph's brothers' plans, of course, are also fulfilled, but in their own little world. There, in their little world, they can turn out to be winners, and almost certainly will. That is no surprise: it is their world, and they are its masters. But victory in one's own little world, separate from God's great world, turns into defeat in God's great world. It turns into defeat completely unnoticed by those living in their own little world, at the very moment when they themselves think they have won and achieved everything they wanted. It is then that it is often revealed that the victory was illusory and the defeat was quite real. The brothers sold Joseph into slavery and got rid of him, just as they wanted, but they still had to bow down to him. They had to because such was God's plan.
Readings for 26 February 2026
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