In today's passage Joseph comes face to face with ten of his brothers.
It's been a long time since Joseph's family has seen him. He was seventeen when his brothers sold him into slavery. Thirteen years passed between entering the land of Egypt and beginning his employment for the king of Egypt. Seven years of abundance went by after that and now the nation and the territories surrounding it are experiencing the famine. Joseph is at minimum thirty-seven years old by the time we arrive at Chapter 42 but he's probably thirty-nine or forty since the famine is beginning to become severe. His brothers are about to travel the Egypt to buy grain and they won't recognize their long lost brother. But he will recognize them.
"When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, 'Why do you just keep looking at each other?' He continued, 'I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die.'" (Genesis 42:1-2) This family is feeling the effects of the famine quite sharply by now. Jacob and his sons have probably been out hunting or fishing or gathering berries, doing anything they can to put food on the table, but even that type of food becomes scarce when everyone in the region is competing for it. They are probably going to bed hungry most nights. When Jacob hears there is grain in Egypt to be bought, he shares the news with his sons who make no move to pack up and head to Egypt. Instead these men (all but Benjamin) glance guiltily at each other at the mention of Egypt. I think Egypt is the one place they've tried not to think about for over twenty years. I believe they've tried to pretend Egypt is a place that doesn't exist. They sold their brother to some traders who were on their way to Egypt and they know Joseph has been a slave in that country for all these years---or worse. For all they know, he's already died either from daily forced hard labor or due to harsh treatment by a cruel master. Egypt is the last place these men ever want to go, so when their father mentions going there to buy grain, they don't hop on their camels and ride out. Jacob is annoyed and perplexed by their behavior and asks, "What are you waiting for? Don't just stand there staring at each other. Do something before we all starve to death!"
"Then ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with the others, because he was afraid that harm might come to him. So Israel's sons were among those who went to buy grain, for there was famine in the land of Canaan also." (Genesis 42:3-5) Benjamin is the youngest of Jacob's children and the only full brother of Joseph. Jacob keeps him close to his side even though Benjamin is a grown man by now. Some scholars estimate that he was about ten years old when Joseph was sold into slavery and that means he'd be at least thirty by the time Jacob sends the others to Egypt. But Jacob is fearful for his because he's already lost his other son by Rachel and he doesn't want to lose this one too. He is still showing his ten other sons that he's more partial to the children he had with his most-loved wife. I feel like he'd rather lose all ten than to lose Benjamin. Jacob loves the Lord but he's not perfect. He makes mistakes, sometimes big ones, and the dysfunction he caused in the family by showing so much favoritism to the sons of Rachel is one of those mistakes.
"Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the person who sold grain to all its people. So when Joseph's brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground." (Genesis 42:6) This is the fulfillment of Joseph's first dream in Genesis 37, the dream in which he and his brothers were binding sheaves of grain and suddenly his sheaf stood upright all by itself while the sheaves of his brothers bowed before his sheaf.
Joseph is unrecognizable to them. When they last saw him he was a teenager and now he's a grown man at or near the age of forty, not wearing a beard like his brothers but clean shaven like the Egyptians, dressed in fine robes and sitting on a throne that is rivaled only by Pharaoh's. Naturally they don't know him looking like this. On top of that, he's the last person they ever expected to see again and it never enters their minds that they would encounter him in the governor's palace or that he himself is the governor. Joseph is unrecognizable to them but he knows who they are. They haven't changed as much as he has. These brothers were already grown men the last time he saw them and they look the same, only older. "As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them." (Genesis 42:7a) Imagine what an unexpected turn of events this must have been for him. He came to work that morning just as he does every day and suddenly he's face to face with men who once hated him so much they wanted him dead. They settled instead for selling him into slavery and profiting by his disappearance, but as far as he knows they still hate him. As far as he knows, they feel no guilt or remorse for what they did and they'd do the same things all over if they had the chance. These family members are men he expected to love and support him and stand behind him no matter what, but instead they betrayed him terribly. I think all sorts of emotions bubbled up inside him when he sat down on his throne to meet with this group of ten from Canaan and realized who they were.
How is Joseph going to handle such a meeting? He's in a position to send them away empty handed and let them starve to death. He's even in a position to have them arrested and imprisoned by claiming they broke laws while in Egypt. He is the only person with any power during this meeting and they are completely at his mercy. He could repay them for their cruelty toward them. He could get even with them for the loss of his freedom during the years he worked for Potiphar, for the false accusations brought against him by Potiphar's wife, and for being imprisoned in a dungeon for years before the Lord miraculously and magnificently brought him out and made him second-in-command to the king. I think, after being released from prison, Joseph could have returned to Canaan if he'd wanted. It tells us a lot about his wounded heart that he didn't do so. I think he could have accepted his freedom for interpreting Pharaoh's dreams but that he might have been able to turn down the governorship of Egypt. Or, once he had plans for surviving the famine in place for the Egyptians, he could have said "so long" to the king and to the people and headed home. But he didn't. He likely didn't feel he'd be welcome there. He probably didn't see how he could make a life shepherding sheep with his older brothers. He's dead to them, in a way. Although it must have hurt him to know that his father actually believes he's dead, it appears as if he was content to leave things like that. It may have seemed to him that Jacob would grieve more knowing what scoundrels and liars ten of his sons are than to keep dealing with a grief that's already more than twenty years old. On top of that, he can't be certain his father is still living. If he returned to Canaan to find no one but his brothers present, what would be the point of that? They never wanted him anywhere near them in the first place.
Join us tomorrow when Joseph speaks to his betrayers for the first time in over twenty years. Let's study together what God has done in Joseph's heart and in his brothers' hearts during that time. Contrary to what a popular saying tells us, time does not "heal all wounds". Some wounds fester and grow worse over time. That's the reason for another popular saying that goes, "Revenge is a dish best served cold". The passage of twenty years doesn't guarantee that anyone's feelings have changed. But even though time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds, God has the ability to heal wounds, even our deepest ones. He is going to use everything that's happened in all these men's lives to make a dysfunctional family functional.
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