Commentaria in Genesim
Chapter Forty-five. Synopsis of the Chapter
Joseph makes himself known to his brothers, and, verse 17, sends them back with gifts to their father, that they may bring him to himself; Jacob, verse 26, is beside himself with joy.
1. Joseph could no longer refrain himself before many that stood by: and therefore he commanded that all should go out, and no stranger be present at the acknowledging of each other. 2. And he lifted up his voice with weeping, which the Egyptians and all the house of Pharaoh heard. 3. And he said to his brethren: I am Joseph; is my father yet living? His brethren could not answer him, being struck with exceeding great fear. 4. And he said to them mildly: Come nearer to me. And when they were come near him, he said: I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. 5. Fear not, and let it not seem to you a hard case that you sold me into these countries: for God sent me before you into Egypt for your preservation. 6. For it is two years since the famine began to be upon the land, and five years more remain, in which there can be neither ploughing nor reaping. 7. And God sent me before, that you may be preserved upon the earth, and may have food to live upon. 8. It was not by your counsel that I was sent hither, but by the will of God: who has made me as a father to Pharaoh, and lord of his whole house, and governor in all the land of Egypt. 9. Make haste, and go up to my father, and say to him: Thus says your son Joseph:
10. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen: and you shall be near me, you and your sons, and your sons’ sons, your sheep and your herds, and all that you have. 11. And there I will feed you (for there are yet five years of famine remaining), lest both you perish, and your house, and all that you have. 12. Behold, your eyes, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, see that it is my mouth that speaks to you. 13. You shall tell my father of all my glory, and all things that you have seen in Egypt: make haste and bring him to me. 14. And falling upon the neck of his brother Benjamin, he embraced him and wept: and Benjamin in like manner wept also on his neck. 15. And Joseph kissed all his brethren, and wept upon every one of them: after which they dared to speak to him. 16. And it was heard of, and the fame was spread abroad in the king’s court: The brethren of Joseph are come; and Pharaoh with all his family was glad. 17. And he said to Joseph that he should give orders to his brethren, saying: Load your beasts, and go into the land of Canaan, 18. and take your father and kindred, and come to me: and I will give you all the good things of Egypt, that you may eat the marrow of the land. 19. Command them also to take wagons out of the land of Egypt, for the carrying of their children and wives; and say: Take up your father, and make haste and come. 20. Leave nothing of your household stuff, for all the riches of Egypt shall be yours. 21. And the sons of Israel did as they were bid. And Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and provisions for the way. 22. He also commanded to bring out two robes for every one: but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver with five of the best robes: 23. sending as much money and raiment to his father, adding moreover ten he-asses to carry of all the riches of Egypt, and as many she-asses, carrying wheat and bread for the journey. 24. So he sent his brethren away, and at their departure he said to them: Be not angry in the way. 25. And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan to their father Jacob, 26. and told him, saying: Joseph your son is living: and he is ruler in all the land of Egypt. Which when Jacob heard, he awaked as it were out of a deep sleep, yet did not believe them. 27. They on the contrary related the whole order of the thing. And when he saw the wagons, and all that he had sent, his spirit revived, 28. and he said: It is enough for me, if Joseph my son is yet living: I will go and see him before I die.
Verse 3. I AM JOSEPH.—This unexpected word, like a thunderbolt, says Rupert, struck the brothers, and made them astonished, speechless and as if out of their minds; for from the formidable power of Joseph they expected nothing but the death their crime deserved.
Allegorically St. Ambrose, in the book On Joseph, chapter What else, he says, did he then cry out but “I am Jesus,” when he said to Pilate: “You say that I am a king”? “Come near to me; for I have drawn near to you, that by taking flesh I might make myself a sharer of your nature.” And much more when after the resurrection he showed himself to the disciples, saying: “Fear not, it is I. All power is given to me in heaven and on earth.” This is St. Ambrose. See also Cardinal Hugh.
Joseph, who had been wronged even to the point of death, avenged his injury partly by oblivion and silence, partly by caresses, embraces, kisses, tears and sighs, and partly by a kindly and perpetual maintenance of his brethren. “He kissed them one by one, and wept over each, and bathed the necks of the trembling men with streaming tears, and so washed away the hatred of his brethren with the tears of charity,” says St. Augustine, sermon 83 On the Season. Learn from Joseph that the most effective love-charm, “if you would be loved, is to love.” Truly says St. Chrysostom, homily 13 to the People: “Do you wish to be praised? Praise another. Do you wish to be loved? Love. Do you wish to obtain first place? First yield it to another.”
This love-charm St. Gregory Nazianzen impressed upon his Catholics of Constantinople.
For when, under the orthodox Emperor Theodosius, they were thinking of repaying them in kind and visiting them with equal troubles, Nazianzen said to them: “This, my flock, Christ does not ask of us, nor does the Gospel so teach us. An opportunity is now offered us of converting those who have been led astray by error. Let them, being instructed, acknowledge their faults, let them fall down before the Lord, confess their impiety, and mingle with our flock. Let this be my revenge, that those who have done us injuries may attain salvation, and profess to be glorious the things which they formerly persecuted. Be gentle in your minds, my sons. He whose mind is mild and patient is strong in prudence. Do good to those who pursue you with hatred, and forgive them their faults altogether. But if the mind boils violently, and will not suffer itself to be restrained by anger, then do the next best thing: leave these matters to Christ, and reserve them for the future tribunal. For vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” With these words he appeased the people and drew them to his opinion, as Gregory the priest relates in the Life of Gregory Nazianzen. So St. Martin refused to deprive the priest Brictio, his slanderer, of his office, saying: “If Christ endured Judas, why should I not endure Brictio?” as Sulpicius Severus testifies, Dialogue 3.
By this charm the Martyrs often converted their executioners, when by their prayers they restored to health those struck by God; as is clear from the Life of St. Agnes, who raised the Prefect’s son who had attacked her; from the Life of Saints John and Paul, who delivered from a demon the son of the Prefect Terentianus; from the Life of Saints Laurence and Pergentinus, who by praying restored vigour to their executioners when they had grown stiff; from the Life of St. Sabinus, who healed the governor Venustianus, struck with pain in his eyes; from the Life of St. Potamiaena, St. Christina, St. Anatolia, St. Eugenia, Daria and very many others.
Note secondly with St. Chrysostom: Joseph here lifts up the sin of his brothers, not through fate or the Homeric Ate, that is, the goddess who was believed by the Gentiles to bring evils and harms, but through the providence of God, who ordained their crime to the glory of Joseph and to their own and the common good. Hence Joseph comforts them and exhorts them not to grieve or afflict one another on this account, he himself not grieving but rejoicing; hence he says:
5. GOD SENT ME—as if to say: God, through your crime by which you sold me, sent and directed me hither, that I might provide for the hunger of you and of others; wherefore your wickedness against me is not so much to be condemned as the providence and mercy of divine wisdom to be proclaimed. So St. Chrysostom.
6. THERE CAN BE NEITHER PLOUGHING—except in a few fields lying beside the Nile; for the rest will be barren, because the Nile, which is to Egypt like rain, will not, as is its custom, overflow and fertilise the fields.
IT IS TWO YEARS.—From this it is clear that this happened, and that the brothers and the father Jacob went down into Egypt, in the second year of the barrenness, when Jacob was 130 years old and Joseph 39; for in the thirtieth year of his age Joseph was raised to the principality; then followed seven years of plenty and two of barrenness; so in this second year of barrenness he was 39 years old; and consequently he was born in the 91st year of Jacob; for subtract 39 from 130, you will have 91, as I said above. This is the basis and knot of the chronology of this age: hence it must often be repeated.
8. NOT BY YOUR COUNSEL, BUT BY THE WILL OF GOD, WAS I SENT HITHER.—By the “will,” namely, of God foreordaining my exaltation, and, as for my being sold, only permitting it, that through it I might be exalted: so Suarez and others generally. Hence he does not say, “You sent me,” because you sinned in sending; but, “I was sent,” because God is the author of my suffering and of my patience, by which I underwent and bore your crime; but He is not the author of your action, for that was sin. So of Christ Peter says, Acts 2:23: “This same, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have afflicted and slain by the hands of the wicked.” For God had decreed the Passion of Christ, but not the crucifixion by the Jews. For, as the theologians say, “the action (of the Jews) displeased, the passion (of Christ) was pleasing” to God.
WHO HAS MADE ME AS A FATHER TO PHARAOH.—“Father,” that is, ruler, counsellor, governor. For Joseph so ruled all Pharaoh’s affairs by his counsel and prudence as if he had been his father. So Vatablus. Again, he took care of the grain and provisions for the whole court, indeed for the whole kingdom of Pharaoh, as if he had been the father of the family of the whole kingdom. Thus the king of Tyre calls his innermost counsellor, namely Hiram, his father, 2 Paralipomenon 2:13. And Aman is called the father of Artaxerxes, Esther 13:6. This, then, was “father of the king,” a title of honour and of first dignity in the courts of Tyre, Egypt and Persia, as among the Spaniards, Italians and French is the steward, whom they call the Mayordomo, who takes care of the court’s provisions and other necessaries, as the father of a family takes care of his house. So Pineda, book 5 On Solomon, page 197. Beautifully says St. Chrysostom, homily 64, in the person of Joseph: “That slavery,” he says, “won me this principality; that sale raised me to this glory; that affliction was for me the occasion of this honour; that envy gave birth to this renown for me. Let us not only hear these things, but imitate them, and so console those who have afflicted us, not imputing to them what they have done against us, and bearing all great things with kindness, as that admirable man did.”
9. HE COMMANDS—it signifies, announces, desires: for Joseph neither could nor would properly give orders to his father.
lest you be reduced to poverty, that is, lest you perish through want and distress, and so perish. So the Chaldee and Vatablus.
22. TWO ROBES.—In Hebrew it is, changes of garments: that is, at least two, so that they might change one for the other. For the plural number among the Hebrews includes the dual.
Note: Changes of garments are called by the Hebrews fine and excellent ones, such as we put on on feast days, when we exchange our cheaper everyday clothes for more honourable ones: hence our version has “robes.”
THREE HUNDRED PIECES OF SILVER.—Three hundred Brabant florins; for the silver shekel, or stater, was worth and weighed four Spanish reals. On which more at Exodus 30:13.
I remember, namely hurling at one another the crime committed against me and reproaching one another with it. As Reuben had begun to do a little before, saying: “Did I not say to you: Do not sin against the boy, and you would not hear me? Behold, his blood is required.”
Morally, St. Ambrose, book On Joseph, chapter 13: “He teaches,” he says, “that above all on the road discord is to be shunned, where the very company of travellers ought to be inviolable and to enjoy a pleasing fellowship.”
He was struck dumb and stupefied, so that he could neither speak nor understand or conceive so great a thing; for such are those who awake suddenly. In the Hebrew it is, his heart grew faint; that is, he received so great a consolation that for joy and wonder his heart almost failed, the vital spirit ceased, and so he fell as it were into a swoon of the mind.
27. HIS SPIRIT REVIVED.—Like the flame of a lamp, which, dying when the oil fails, revives when oil is poured in, says St. Chrysostom. Hence he reads from the Septuagint, “the old man was rekindled” (that is, he says, “from an old man he was made young”), “though decrepit, looking upon the earth.” In like manner Jacob, whose heart had before grown faint with wonder at so unexpected and incredible a matter and so joyful a message, verse 26, now seeing the wagons and all the equipment sent to him by Joseph, came to himself, believed so joyful a message of Joseph’s survival, and so as it were revived; the Chaldee translates, the Holy Spirit rested upon Jacob their father; because, as the Hebrews explain, the Holy Spirit does not abide in men who are sad, sorrowing and melancholy, and therefore sluggish and slothful, but in the alert, the joyful, the vigorous and the ready, such as Jacob here became: and accordingly he received the spirit of prophecy, as is clear in the following chapter, verse 4, of which he had been deprived while mourning. So they say, with whom the credit lies.
Verse 20. Others interpret the Hebrew: Let not your eye spare your vessels; do not hold your costly and dear household goods so precious that you think they cannot be left behind, especially if something cannot conveniently be carried away.
28. IT IS ENOUGH FOR ME.—In Hebrew, it is much for me; as if to say: I rejoice abundantly; this message is so joyful that it surpasses my wishes and hopes; there is nothing more that I could desire or wish. “Now that young man has raised my mind, and driven away the infirmity of old age, and strengthened my reason,” says St. Chrysostom, homily 65.