Great Moments in Bible History
Number 49
How Can You Forgive?
Very few brothers have ever done anything as mean as what Joseph’s brothers did to him. He spent years in slavery and even in prison because of it. It hurt so bad that Joseph was happy when God finally put him where he could forget his family and all the bad things they had done to him. Those brothers owed him. They owed him big time.
When someone sins against us, they create a debt. They owe us—and we know it. In some cases, it is possible for them to repay. In the Old Testament, if someone stole a sheep and got caught with the sheep in his possession, he had to give back the sheep plus a second one (Exodus 22:4). That seems like a fair way to settle that debt. But how can someone repay the debt of having sold his brother into slavery? The Old Testament laws actually covered that situation. The punishment was death! (Exodus 21:16) Although that sounds extreme, when you think about it, how could Joseph’s brothers ever repay him for the good years they had stolen from him? In the Old Testament the death penalty was reserved for crimes so bad that they could never be repaid—kidnapping and murder being obvious examples.
In Joseph’s day, the Old Testament laws had not yet been written, but even without a law, we all know intuitively that his brothers should have been made to pay. By the time those brothers showed up in Joseph’s life again, he was the second most powerful person in Egypt. He could have ordered them to be killed, just like the Old Testament law would later command. As we know, of course, Joseph did not do that. Instead, he put them in a situation very similar to what they were in when they committed that crime against him. He wanted to find out if they were the same heartless people they had been back then. In our last issue (on Genesis 44) Judah gave a magnificent speech in which he asked Joseph for the favor of being made a slave instead of his brother Benjamin.
If the brothers’ sin was going to be properly dealt with, those brothers needed to be sorry for what they had done. They needed to be determined not to do it again. Judah’s speech showed Joseph that they really were. They really had changed. Yet this still leaves us with the question, how can Joseph forgive them? They stole good years from his life. They can’t give him back what they stole. Is he just supposed to forget about that huge debt? In today’s study, Joseph will teach us a different way of looking at such debts.
“Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, ‘Make everyone go out from me.’ So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it” (Genesis 45:1-2). Judah’s great speech had moved Joseph to tears.
“And Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?’ But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.” The last person those brothers ever wanted to see in such a powerful position was Joseph—the one they had mistreated so badly. When he was at their mercy, they hadn’t shown him mercy. Now they are at his mercy and they do not expect any better in return. But he had no intention of paying them back. “So Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come near to me, please.’ And they came near. And he said, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.’”
Joseph showed amazing insight with his encouraging speech to his brothers. If we can learn to see things like he saw them, it will change our lives. For years Joseph had seen his brothers’ crime the same way we see people’s crimes against us. It was simply a huge debt against Joseph that they could never pay back. That was certainly true, but it was not the whole story. After Judah’s speech, Joseph gained a new way of looking at what had happened in his life. He saw that God was behind all those apparently bad things that had happened to him, but unlike his brothers, God was doing those things for the ultimate good of Joseph and his whole family. So instead of blaming his brothers for their despicable crime, he praised God for the good He was doing—even though He used the crime to bring about that good.
It is not easy to change our way of looking at things like Joseph did. When we have been wronged, we want to hold onto that wrong. We actually enjoy feeling bitter toward those who have wronged us. But Joseph shows us that we need to look at those wrongs from a different perspective. In each of our lives, nothing ever happens apart from God (Matthew 10:29). Even the crimes committed against us are done only with God’s permission, and only because God intends to bring about good through them. If we can learn to see things from that perspective, then we will be able to pray as Jesus taught us, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors ” (Matthew 6:12).
A Big Move
Once Joseph’s brothers were convinced that Joseph really didn’t hate them and wasn’t going to get them back for what they had done to him, then they had quite a reunion. Our author simply says, “After that his brothers talked with him” (Genesis 45:15), but I’m sure it must have taken a long time. It takes a lot of talking to cover 20 years.
When Pharaoh heard the news that Joseph was reunited with his family, he was delighted. He immediately invited the whole family to move to Egypt where they would live in the best land Egypt had to offer (verse 18). Joseph and Pharaoh both knew there was going to be five more years of famine. Without food from Egypt, Jacob’s family back in Canaan would become impoverished and possibly starve to death. Pharaoh was going to rescue them. He even went so far as to send wagons for the family to ride in during their move to Egypt.
This will begin a new chapter in the story of Abraham’s descendants. They will end up staying for several hundred years, but God will arrange things so that instead of being absorbed into Egyptian culture and losing their identity as descendants of Abraham, they will end up being feared by the Egyptians and eventually even made slaves. That story is told in the next book, the book of Exodus. For now, though, I’m sure the family was relieved at being saved from a deadly famine. Once Jacob learns that Joseph is still alive, he will be almost like a new man. It is a wonderful climax to a great story.
“Don’t Quarrel on the Way”
In addition to the wagons loaned by Pharaoh, Joseph provided numerous rich gifts to send back to his family. The last thing he said to his brothers as they got ready to leave was, “Do not quarrel on the way” (Genesis 45:24). That is about the last thing I would have expected Joseph to tell them. Why would they quarrel? Everything was working out great!
Actually, the brothers had a big problem. What were they going to tell Dad? Twenty years earlier they had lied to him about what had happened to Joseph. For 20 years they have pretended that they had nothing to do with Joseph’s disappearance. Nobody likes to face the music, but those brothers knew that was what they would have to do as soon as they got back home.
It is not hard to imagine plenty of quarreling that could go on during that trip. “You were the one who first wanted to kill him.” “Yes, but you were the one who suggested selling him.” That is the way sinners have been behaving ever since the days of Adam and Eve. We all want to blame everyone except ourselves for what we have done.
How could those brothers avoid quarreling? Joseph had shown them the way. He had forgiven them. If he could forgive them, then surely their father could. But none of us can get forgiven until we take responsibility for what we have done. The brothers had done that when Judah offered to become a slave instead of his brother Benjamin. They needed that same attitude when they went to their father.
Our author does not record that conversation with their father, but apparently, he did forgive them. Certainly, he never brought it up again in the story.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.