Genesis 45

Joseph can no longer control himself. He sends every Egyptian out, weeps so loudly that Pharaoh’s household hears, and says, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” His brothers are dismayed and cannot answer. He calls them near, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt,” and tells them not to be distressed, because God sent him ahead of them to preserve life and to keep a remnant alive through the five years of famine still to come. He sends them to bring Jacob down to the land of Goshen, weeps on Benjamin’s neck, kisses all his brothers, and “after that his brothers talked with him.” Pharaoh welcomes the family with wagons and the best of Egypt, and Joseph sends them off with gifts and a charge: “Do not quarrel on the way.” Jacob’s heart goes numb with disbelief, but when he sees the wagons his spirit revives: “It is enough; Joseph my son is still alive.”

Three times Joseph says that God sent him (vv. 5, 7, 8), and he says it without erasing what the brothers did: “whom you sold into Egypt.” Both are true at once, as they will be again in Genesis 50:20. Forgiveness here is not pretending. It names the wrong and then refuses to let the wrong rule. The brothers who once “could not speak peacefully to him” (Genesis 37:4) now, after his tears and kisses, talk with him. The New Testament does not call this a picture of Christ, but many readers find it one of the clearest in the Old Testament: the brother they rejected and sold is the one God sent ahead to save their lives, and he makes himself known not to destroy them but to draw them near. Peter would preach that Jesus was handed over “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” by lawless men (Acts 2:23), and that through Him forgiveness is offered to the very people who rejected Him. Many hear in Joseph’s “Come near to me” the voice of the Savior who calls the weary to Himself (Matthew 11:28).