Genesis 50:18

Jacob had died in Egypt after blessing his sons, and Joseph and his brothers had carried him back to Canaan to bury him, as he asked (Genesis 49, Genesis 50:1–14). For some seventeen years the brothers had lived in Egypt under Joseph’s care, ever since he made himself known to them during the famine. Now the mourning was over, and “when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead,” an old fear came back. While Jacob lived, they could tell themselves that Joseph spared them for their father’s sake. With Jacob gone, they wondered what would hold him back.

Their words are an anxious guess. “Peradventure” translates lûʼ, a small word meaning “if”, “perhaps” or “would that”, and here it carries their uncertainty: what if Joseph hates us? The verb for hate, sâṭam, means to hate, to lurk for someone, to set oneself against him. They feared a hatred that had been biding its time.

The second half of the verse is firmer: he “will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.” The verb shûwb means to turn back or return, and here it pictures their evil coming back on their own heads. “Peradventure” and “certainly” sit side by side. They were unsure of Joseph’s heart, and they were sure of what they deserved. “All the evil” covers a great deal. They had plotted to kill him, thrown him into a pit and sold him (Genesis 37:18–28). In their world a wrong of that size called for repayment, and the death of a family’s head was often the time when old scores were settled. Joseph also had the power to do it, since Pharaoh had set him over all Egypt (Genesis 41:40).

Their conscience had kept their sin before them all those years. Scripture speaks of the terrors that come upon the guilty (Leviticus 26:36) and of iniquities that are a burden too heavy to bear (Psalm 38:4), and Paul writes of the conscience bearing witness within us (Romans 2:15). David describes the weight of sin kept silent and the relief of confessing it to God (Psalm 32:3–5).

The brothers first approached Joseph at a distance. The KJV says they “sent a messenger”, and the Hebrew verb behind it is tsâvâh, to charge, appoint or command with authority, the same verb that follows in “Thy father did command”. They sent a charge to Joseph and said it rested on a charge from Jacob. “Thy father” (ʼâb, father) appeals to Joseph’s love and respect for Jacob, and “before he died”, literally before his death (mâveth), makes the words a last wish, which carried great weight in a family. “Saying” comes twice (lēʼmōr), and the second introduces what they present as Jacob’s own words.

The message asks, “Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil.” To forgive here is nâsâʼ, to lift, used here of lifting away and carrying off a burden of guilt. That is how God deals with the sins of his people: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). The word for trespass, peshaʻ, means transgression or rebellion, an act by which someone defies an authority. The brothers name what they did plainly, as trespass, sin and evil.

Then they add, “forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father.” They appeal to the faith they share with Joseph, and in calling themselves servants of Jacob’s God they own that their sin touched God as well as their brother.

“And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.” The verb bâkâh means to weep, bemoan or lament, the outward act of tears. Genesis leaves the reason unstated, and the scene makes the likeliest one clear. After years of kindness, his brothers still feared him enough to send a go-between and plead in their dead father’s name. It grieved him that they still carried their guilt and still doubted him. His tears come before any word of reassurance, the tears of a man who wanted his family whole.

The brothers then came in person: they “also went and fell down before his face”. “Went” is yâlak, to walk or go. The verb nâphal, to fall, is used here of lying face down, and “before his face” uses pânîym, the face, a word plural in form and always used as a singular. Lying prostrate was the posture of a subject before a king, or of someone pleading for mercy, and it owned Joseph’s authority over them.

With it they said, “Behold, we be thy servants.” The word ʻebed means a servant or bondman. The men who had sold their brother as a slave now offer themselves as his slaves. In the message they had called themselves servants of the God of Joseph’s father, and now they place themselves at Joseph’s own disposal.

This is where Joseph’s boyhood dreams reach their end. He had dreamed that his brothers’ sheaves bowed down to his sheaf (Genesis 37:7), and that the sun, the moon and the stars bowed down to him (Genesis 37:9). His brothers scorned those dreams, and now they fall before him of their own accord. The psalmist sings of how God watched over Joseph through all these years (Psalm 105:16–22).

Joseph’s first words are “Fear not”. The verb yârêʼ means to be afraid or to dread, and it can also mean to stand in awe. Here it is the brothers’ dread of what he might do to them. “Fear not” is a word God often speaks to his people in Scripture, and here Joseph speaks it to the men who wronged him.

His reason comes as a question: “for am I in the place of God?” The Hebrew, tachath ‘elohim, means instead of God, in God’s place. The answer is plain to everyone in the room. Joseph is a man, and God is God (ʼĕlôhîym, the plural of majesty used for the one true God). Judging his brothers and repaying their wrong belongs to God alone, and Joseph leaves it with him. He held power in Egypt to punish them, and he put that power under God’s right to judge.

The rest of Scripture says the same. In the song of Moses the LORD says, “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35). Paul tells believers to leave room for God’s wrath, “for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Peter says that Christ, when he suffered, “committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). Because God is the judge, Joseph is free to forgive.

“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” The whole story of Joseph has been leading to this sentence, and it explains every step of his life: the pit, the slave caravan, the prison and the palace. Joseph holds two truths together. His brothers planned harm, and they are to blame for it. God had his own purpose in the very same events, and his purpose was good.

The verb is the same in both halves. Châshab means to think, plan or devise, and it is often used of plotting harm. The brothers devised raʻ, evil in the widest sense, both wickedness and the harm it does. God devised it “unto good”, from ṭôwb, good in its broadest sense: what is beneficial, pleasant and well. One set of events carried two purposes. Theirs was to hurt, and his was to save.

“To bring to pass, as it is this day” points to what they could all see. Laʻasōt, “to bring to pass”, comes from ʻâsâh, to do or make, and the result stood before them, a family alive and fed in a land of plenty. “To save much people alive” uses lěhaḥayōt, from châyâh, to live, here to keep alive. “Much people” is ʻam, a people, with rab, many or great. Joseph’s family, from whom the nation of Israel would come, survived the famine, and so did the Egyptians and the others who came to Egypt for food under Joseph’s care.

Joseph had said the same thing to his brothers years before, when he told them it was God who sent him to Egypt. By keeping this family alive God was keeping his promise to Abraham, to make of him a great nation and to bless all the families of the earth in him (Genesis 12:2–3). Abraham himself had once gone down into Egypt in a famine. God does this again and again in Scripture. Moses reminded Israel that the LORD turned a curse into a blessing for them (Deuteronomy 23:5), and Paul wrote from prison that what had happened to him had served to spread the gospel (Philippians 1:12).

“Now therefore fear ye not” repeats the word of verse 19, and “therefore” ties it to what Joseph has just said. Because God meant it for good, the brothers can lay their dread down.

Then he makes a promise: “I will nourish you, and your little ones.” The verb kûwl means to hold or contain, and from that to sustain and provide for. Joseph commits himself to keep them and their children, the most helpless of the family, fed and cared for in Egypt. In this he reflects the God who provides for his people. Abraham called the mountain where God provided the ram Jehovahjireh, “the LORD will provide” (Genesis 22:14), and Jesus says that our heavenly Father feeds the birds of the air (Matthew 6:26).

“And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.” To comfort is nâcham, whose sense runs from sighing to pity to consoling. “Spake kindly” renders a Hebrew phrase that says he spoke to their heart (dâbar al lêb). His words went to the fear inside them and gave it rest. A family that began this story torn apart by envy and betrayal (Genesis 37) ends it with Joseph speaking tenderly to the men who sold him.

Joseph’s story points ahead to Jesus Christ. Christ “came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). He was betrayed and suffered though innocent, and God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9–11). Just as the brothers bowed before Joseph, every knee shall bow to him (Romans 14:11).

We stand where the brothers stood. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and we were by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), and being justified by faith we have peace with God (Romans 5:1). The brothers feared their peace had died with Jacob, and ours rests on Christ’s finished work, so it lasts. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18–20), making peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19–20), and Christ himself is our peace, who has broken down the wall that divided us (Ephesians 2:14).

Joseph’s question, “am I in the place of God?”, finds a remarkable answer in Christ. Jesus came to save the world, and he did not come to condemn it (John 3:17). On the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Yet the Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22). Christ holds the right to judge that Joseph left with God, and he shows the mercy that Joseph showed.

Verse 20 has its fullest fulfillment at the cross, where men meant evil and God meant it for good, “to save much people alive” for ever. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life (John 3:16). Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11). Joseph kept his brothers alive through a famine, and Christ gives eternal life.

In these verses God shows that he rules over every wrong done to his people and can turn the worst of it to the saving of many lives. He shows us a forgiveness that lasts because it rests on him. Joseph could forgive because he knew that judgment belongs to God and that God had meant it all for good. The brothers’ fear shows how heavy forgiven guilt can still feel, and Joseph’s tears and kind words show the patience that forgiveness takes.

Scripture asks the same of us. Jesus taught his disciples to forgive a brother who repents, even seven times in a day (Luke 17:3–4), and told them that the Father forgives those who forgive others (Matthew 6:14–15). Paul asks believers to forgive one another as Christ forgave them (Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:32). He calls God “the God of all comfort”, who comforts us so that we can comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Joseph did both. He forgave, and he spoke to his brothers’ hearts. Whoever still fears, like the brothers, that an old sin will come back on them has the same God to rest in, the God who meant it unto good.