Commentaria in Genesim
Secondly, Pererius answers that Joseph does not lie here but jests, and speaks in jest and pretence.
Thirdly, and best, St. Thomas answers that Joseph speaks not assertively but by way of testing and proving, as judges allege a crime while they question the accused by probing, to elicit the truth. In like manner here Joseph probes his brethren, so as to compel them to tell the truth when he inquires of them about his father and his brother Benjamin.
Moreover, Joseph did his brethren no injury by casting this calumny upon them and striking fear into them, since they had deserved far graver things, and Joseph, as prince of Egypt, could have punished them with death for the parricide and kidnapping committed against him. Ruben, even if innocent of the sale of Joseph, yet because he was mingled with his guilty brethren, is therefore afflicted with them. For if Joseph had excepted him, he would have been recognised by his brethren. So Abulensis. Thus God, and also a prince, in the common calamity of war involves and punishes the innocent with the guilty.
Let prelates note here what measure they ought to keep in correction, and learn it from Joseph. Piously and prudently St. Gregory, hom. 91 on Ezech.: “His mind (Joseph’s) was overcome by piety, when his brother seemed innocent, but harshness remained in the show, that the guilty brethren might be purged. The cup is hidden in the younger one’s sack, the inquiry about the theft is raised after them: it is found in the sack of the younger; Benjamin is brought back; all the brethren follow, afflicted. O torments of mercy! He torments, and loves. Thus the holy man both forgave and avenged the crime of his brethren: thus in severity he held clemency, so that toward his offending brethren he was neither merciful without punishment, nor strict without mercy. Behold, this is the mastery of discipline, to know both how to spare faults with discretion, and to cut them away with piety.” So far St. Gregory.
14. THIS IS IT THAT I SAID: YOU ARE SPIES.—As if to say: You pretend to be twelve brethren, and to have another brother at home: hence I gather that you pretend the rest also, and that you are spies; to show the contrary, therefore, bring your youngest brother to me, that I may see him, and so know that you have spoken truly. Again, Joseph says this not assertively but by way of testing; and that he may learn what has become of Benjamin: for he feared lest the brethren had done the like to Benjamin (as to his own uterine brother, and the son of Rachel, whom Jacob loved above Lia) as they had perpetrated against himself. So St. Chrysostom.
16. OTHERWISE, BY THE HEALTH OF PHARAO, YOU ARE SPIES.—You will ask first whether “by the health of Pharao” is an oath, and whether it is lawful? Calvin denies it to be an oath, and adds that it is merely a Gentile phrase, savouring of Egyptian idolatry. For so the Romans swore by the genius of Caesar, to flatter Caesar in this way, and as it were to equal him to the gods. Secondly, Hamer answers that this is not an oath, because it is not made expressly by calling God to witness. I say first, “by the health of Pharao” is an oath. It is plain, because in Hebrew it is “Pharao lives,” which among the Hebrews is a form of swearing, just as when they say “God lives”; this also our translator signifies when he renders “by the health of Pharao”; for in like manner we swear “by my soul.”
I say secondly, this oath is lawful. The reason is, that he who swears by creatures is held, by the common usage of nations and by the tacit intention of the swearer, to swear by their Creator, as Christ explains, Matt. 23:21. Joseph therefore swears not in jest, as Hamer will have it, but seriously, by the health of Pharao, as by his beneficent king, to be reverenced and loved in return; and as in Pharao reverencing God, and at the same time the royal power given to him by God. Therefore “by the health of Pharao” is the same as if he should say: By God, who is the author and preserver of the life and health of Pharao. So St. Thomas and others.
You will say: Joseph seems here to perjure himself; for though the brethren did not bring Benjamin, they were not therefore spies.
I answer: Joseph does not swear that his brethren are spies, but says: “Otherwise you are spies,” that is, you will be with me, will be held, I shall presume you to be spies, as if to say: Unless you bring Benjamin, and so show your words to be true, I shall hold you as spies, treat you so and punish you. So St. Augustine.
You will ask secondly, what kind of oath this is: whether it is an oath by the “health,” or life, of Pharao? I answer First: it can be assertory, if you understand it thus: “By the health of Pharao,” that is, I swear by God, who is the author and guardian of the life and health of Pharao, my most beloved king. For as when the Hebrews say, The Lord liveth, the sense is: I call to witness the living God: so true is what I say as it is true that God lives, whom I call to witness and by whom I swear. Secondly, and rather, this phrase by common usage of speech signifies an execration, by which one devotes himself or his relations; this oath therefore seems rather to be execratory, so that the sense is, “by the health of Pharao,” that is, I swear, I call to witness and I beseech God to take from Pharao my most dear king health and life, unless I hold you as spies and punish you, if you bring not Benjamin to me. For in like manner and sense we swear by the soul. So St. Thomas, II-II, Question 89, art. 6. For as we can bind our own person, so also another joined to us, to God, that he may punish us in that person if we deceive, saying and swearing: “By the life of my father; by the life of my wife; by the health of the king.”
You will say: This is to call down evil on a father, a wife and a king: but this is against charity. I answer: It is against charity if we swear falsely; but if what we say is true, it is not against, but rather according to charity: for we show how much we make of the king, or the father, and thus honour him, and we call down not only evil, if we deceive, but also good, if we do not deceive. Thus “by the health of Pharao” is the same as if you should say: So may God save, or not save, Pharao. May he save him, if I speak true, or if I perform what I say; may he not save him, if I deceive: for both are included, as our Lessius shrewdly and learnedly observes, in the treatise On Oaths, doubt 9.
17. SO HE PUT THEM IN PRISON THREE DAYS.—That so they might pay for their threefold crime: first, of death intended; secondly, of casting him into the cistern; thirdly, of the sale of Joseph; and that as he had been three years in prison, so they should be three days, says Delrio, and others.
18. DO AS I HAVE SAID, AND YOU SHALL LIVE: FOR I FEAR GOD—as if to say: Fear not, because I shall do nothing unjust, nothing faithless, nothing inhuman with you, but shall faithfully perform what I have said: for although I am a prince, yet I fear and revere God, the Prince of princes, knowing that I shall be judged by him, and shall render him an account of all my deeds.
21. WE DESERVE TO SUFFER THESE THINGS.—From the Hebrew you may render: truly we are desolate, namely alone and destitute of all help, on account of our brother, whom we desolated, and sold alone to strangers. Note here with St. Chrysostom how great is the force of conscience, before whose eyes all sins at once present themselves and flow together when we see and feel the avenging hand of God: for no mention of Joseph was made here, and yet the memory of him and of the wrong done to him twenty-three years before at once presents itself to the minds of all the brethren when they augur that they are being chastised on account of it. “As a drunken man, he says, when he swallows much wine, feels no harm from the wine, but afterwards feels how great the harm is: so sin, until it is consummated, darkens the mind, and like a thick cloud corrupts the mind; then conscience rises up, and gnaws the mind more heavily than any accuser, showing the absurdity of the deed”; surely, “punishment opens the eyes which guilt closes,” says St. Gregory; surely, “conscience is a thousand witnesses”; and, as St. Gregory Nazianzen says, “Conscience is a domestic and a true tribunal.” For, as Wisdom 17:10 says: “A troubled conscience always presumes grievous things.” On the contrary, Ecclus. 13:30: “Good, he says, is the substance in which there is no sin in the conscience”; and 2 Cor. 1:12: “For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of heart and sincerity of God we have conversed in this world”; and St. Jerome: “A good conscience flees the eyes of none,” being fearless and unafraid at all things.
acknowledge their crime. So Manasses, a most impious king, acknowledged his fault in prison, 2 Paral. 33. So Nabuchodonosor, most proud, after he was transformed into a beast, acknowledged his weakness and the power of God, “who is able to abase those that walk in pride,” Daniel chap. 4. So Antiochus, a most wicked king, struck with a deadly disease: “Now, he says, I remember the evils that I have done in Jerusalem. I know that for this cause these evils have found me, and behold I perish with great grief in a strange land,” 1 Mach. 6:13. So hunger taught the prodigal son to say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.” Rightly therefore the Psalmist imprecates upon the wicked, saying in Ps. 82:17: “Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek thy name, O Lord.”