W. K. Tweedie

“ Blinded by envy, or goaded by rage, they trampled on every tender feeling, and evil became their chief good.
In the good providence of God, however, the youth was taken from that pit, in which he was to have been buried alive, and sent to a distant country, there to be the saviour of not a few, in a temporal sense. To cover their wickedness, his brothers next resolved to show to their father Joseph’s coat of tartan, [13] dipped in the blood of a kid, as if he had been devoured by ravenous beasts.—Their brother might become a slave; their father’s heart might be torn with anguish ”

“ When we see fools making a mock at sin, and multitudes seeking in it the only pleasure or the only gratification which they know, surely that is because they do not know the dark depths into which it sinks them!
6. And, to name no more, there was in that sin the love of money, which is the root of all evil. Those unnatural brothers, blinded by hatred, and eager to get the offender out of the way, actually sold him for a slave. They valued gold or silver more than their brother’s life, his happiness, or his affection. ”

“ For a time, men may get success in iniquity; but their fall and their crash are the greater. Witness the penury and the shame of the fraudulent bankrupt—the lordly oppressor—the unjust dealer of every name. The history before us illustrates all this.
Pharaoh’s rest had been troubled by dreams, and when summoned, as we have just seen, into the royal presence, Joseph was able to read them—his God was with him, and he prospered even in that. ”

“ Affection was trampled in the dust,—it was in truth cast into the pit beside Joseph,—it had no power in the hearts of those hating and hateful men. Surely such a case occurring in the Bible so soon after the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, was designed by God to show us the terrible ravages wrought by sin in the soul. Just as war, with its bloody work, has often deflowered the fairest regions of the earth, does fierce passion waste the soul of man.
2. There was sin committed against their father. What although the patriarch should suffer uttermost woe when bereft of his favourite son! ”

“ Another man represents the cause of the people—not as a demagogue does, for selfish or for turbulent ends, but for man’s social improvement or social elevation—for man’s happiness, in short, in time and for ever. Knox, for example, or Chalmers—what intelligent Christian, with the open Bible [29] for his standard, can hear these names without feeling that these were representative men? Or a third man represents the martial spirit. We cannot hear his name without thinking of wars, and battles, and victory, and fame—that poor shadow which men pursue, and blindly speak of as glory. ”

“ If we have witnessed one scene of affection when Joseph embraced his brother Benjamin, we are now to behold another, when the patriarch Jacob meets with his long lost son. We are often permitted, even in this life, to see joy and gladness according to the days in which we have seen grief ”

“ Now, Joseph’s case comes under this general rule. He was to become in God’s hand the instrument of preserving millions from a terrible death; but, to achieve that result, he must surmount obstruction after obstruction, and rise from a pit into which his brothers threw him, and a dungeon to which false accusation led. He was to turn famine into plenty, and dearth into comparative cheapness; and how was it done? He must first be hated by his brethren; and then he must be sold as a slave; then he must be cast into a prison, and disciplined there for thirteen years ”

“ The story of Joseph is at once so simple that childhood is arrested and rivetted by it, and so profound that sages may deepen their wisdom by meditating on the truths which it embodies. An attempt is here made to point out some of the more important lessons which the narrative teaches,—to manifest the wisdom and the watchfulness of Providence,—and show how God on high exercises his prerogative of educing good from what we are often tempted [vi] to regard as only and hopelessly evil. While man displays his wickedness by committing sin, the Holy One displays his goodness by restraining it ”

“ If conscience has hitherto been dormant or dead, it is about to be roused to a terrible activity. It is soon to be with them as with the thief who “dreads an officer in every bush.”
The first thing that the guilty brothers did, when they reached the abode of Joseph, was to “fall before him on the ground,” and so fulfil once more that prediction concerning them and their doing obeisance which had at first excited their enmity or their envy. They had to plead their cause with all the force of Eastern pathos before Pharaoh’s viceroy—their own brother ”

“ By Joseph’s case we are taught that there is a God that judgeth in the earth, and encouraged to commit ourselves in well-doing to him, assured that, though villany may seem to prosper, there is a curse in it—though God’s people be cast down, they cannot be destroyed: His right hand will lift them up. ”

“ There was no Bible then to embody the [24] mind of God to man, such as it is now our most blessed privilege to enjoy; and in the absence of such a book, knowledge was sometimes mysteriously imparted by dreams. We are not able to explain how that took place; but He who made the mind can impress it as he wills, and he often impressed it by dreams, by visions, or by voices. For his companions in prison, Joseph had the chief butler and the chief baker of Pharaoh’s household; and as they dreamed dreams which he was enabled to interpret, that, in the providence of God, led to his liberation. ”

“ Deception is systematized, and iniquity is drawn “as with a cart rope.” But all is like a building upon the sand, or worse,—upon a sea-wave, unless the Lord be with us. The whole is found at last to be a mockery, like the mirage of the desert. ”

“ There is much that is lovely and of good report as between man and man in our natures, notwithstanding of the fall, and one of the fountains of the heart is here broken open. We see how brother loves brother, and, by contrast with that scene, are enabled to understand how far the minds of Joseph’s brethren [66] must have been warped and deadened by hatred or envy, when they could trample as they did upon the affection which should knit brother to brother. ”

“ When he has a work to do, none can hinder; instruments will be found, and his purposes on earth will be promoted, in spite of all that can resist or gainsay. As well may we expect to roll back the flowing tide by a word, or make some mighty river like the Amazon or the St. Lawrence run upward to its fountain, as check, divert, or even retard the purposes of the Eternal. He will work, and none can hinder: and the grand moral of Joseph’s touching story is just this,—Man and devils may combine to oppose the [37] cause of God, but on that cause advances, resistless because he is the Almighty. ”

“ Let misery be heaped upon misery, yet men will not be diverted from their iniquity.
But wicked as their deeds were, and an outrage at once against a father and a brother, and, above all, against their God, he who makes the wrath of man to praise him employed that wrath remarkably to work out his purposes in this case. ”

“ They might see their aged father pining nearer and nearer to the grave from day to day, on account of the loss of Joseph. They might have some compunctions, and we can scarcely suppose that conscience would be altogether silent; it would be a rare case, indeed, had they succeeded in stifling entirely the voice within. But we are told of no repentance, no confession of sin, no humiliation for murder designed, for falsehood told, for a brother hated, and a father, reduced to life-long anguish, passing on unsoothed [38] to the grave! ”

“ Were that remembered, surely it would tend to check man’s proneness to sin, unless he were prepared openly to conflict with Omnipotence. True, nothing but God’s almighty grace can subdue our wayward hearts, or make his will our law; yet could we remember Joseph’s brethren, as we are directed to remember Lot’s wife, it would be well with us: the Spirit of God would bless it for our [56] good; and both young and old—both viceroys like Joseph and shepherds like his brethren—would be wiser and happier men. ”

“ And who could not quote a hundred such examples as that of Joseph from the history of the past? Nay, may not every man who has had wisdom to watch the ways of God in dealing with his own soul, single out examples of similar wisdom in the providence of the Holy One? It may be for retribution on the guilty, or for encouragement to the men who fear God; but whatever be the design, many signal examples are recorded, to show that God [46] watches over all human plans, guiding and controlling them, so as to promote the good pleasure of his will. Man proposes, but God disposes ”

“ It is not so absolutely certain that the sun will rise on any given day, as that man may die any moment or any breath. Yet who is moved by that conviction to prepare for [83] dying? Who is stirred up by all the funerals which he sees, or all the open graves which he visits, to prepare for meeting God? ”

“ The patriarch would have been nearer the truth—he would have uttered the very truth—had he said the reverse of what he here declares. And the same is true of us all. We are ever prone to misinterpret the ways of God. ”

“ In other words, Joseph’s dream is now fulfilled,—his brethren do obeisance to him—they are prostrate in the Oriental manner at his footstool! All their machinations could not turn aside the purposes of Jehovah; and neither their projected murder of Joseph, nor his being sold into Egypt, nor his being a prisoner for years, could interfere with the onward march or the ceaseless flow of purposes formed in heaven. It cannot be too strenuously enforced, for it is the burden of the whole Bible, that every wish of [51] man, every word and deed of the creature, must bend before the will of God. ”

“ In short, wherever man is not hardened into callousness by the power of the world, or chilled by conventional usage, he will be as prompt to weep with them that weep as to rejoice with them that rejoice. ”

“ Happy the man who has his soul washed in the Lamb’s blood preparatory to that day! We should never forget that there is to be a resurrection of our deeds as well as of our bodies, and should live so as to be ready to render our account with joy. ”

“ And in concluding these sketches, we may glance again at the mode in which the mighty God brought good to all nations and all times out of the misdeeds of the sons of Jacob. In our world there is much to perplex and bewilder us in studying the ways of Providence, and it is not always easy—for us, at least—to “justify the ways of God to man;” ”

“ He might have to wear chains, or carry burdens heavier than he could bear; but what of all that, if their hatred was indulged, and Joseph put out of their sight! Till then they could not be at ease. His deportment was a rebuke to them. He seemed holier than they, and because of that he must suffer; they [20] must contract guilt upon guilt. Now, is not this, in spirit, the very same kind of sin as that which led Satan to tempt and ruin man? ”

“ But we may notice here, in passing, the question of Pharaoh, and the answer of Jacob, at their interview. “How old art thou?” was the monarch’s inquiry; and Jacob’s reply was a picture in words of the weary life of man: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the [81] days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage” (Gen. xlvii. 9) . ”

“ In that sin there was spite, and that against a brother. We have seen that there is reason to believe (Gen. xxxvii. 2) that Joseph had formerly blamed some of the practices in which his brethren indulged while they were from under their parent’s eye, and that had provoked their antipathy: “They hated him” when they saw that his father loved him. And here again we see one reason why men have always ranked envy among the vilest and the meanest of the sins. ”

“ Man seeks to withdraw himself and his affairs entirely from the control of the Supreme; but he bridles, fetters, or gives liberty, according to his pleasure; and blessed are they who are his willing people. ”

“ According to the calmer temperament of Western nations, where self-command in such cases is more studied, such affection may appear excessive in a high and mighty ruler; it may seem weak or womanish thus to dissolve into tears, even in the retirement of one’s chamber. ”

“ Truth is never presented in abstract forms, such as only the studious or the learned can comprehend. On the contrary, it is embodied in life, now to awe us, and anon to allure; [58] at one time a beacon to warn, at another a signal to encourage or guide.
But there are many facts mentioned, or customs referred to, in Scripture, with which we are now but little acquainted. The next incident in Joseph’s history to which we refer belongs to this class. His brethren were returning the second time from Egypt with sacks of corn ”

“ CHAPTER IV. JOSEPH INTERPRETING PHARAOH’s DREAMS.
“Seest thou a man diligent in business? he shall stand before kings: he shall not stand before mean men” (Prov. xxii. 29) . Such is one of the sayings of the wisest man, and we see it fulfilled to the letter in Joseph’s case. In the house of Potiphar, in the prison where he was unjustly immured, and everywhere, he did what was just and right, and now we see him (in our Engraving) literally standing before a king. In many a passage of Scripture God is urgent with us to do with [32] diligence what he appoints us to do ”