Commentaria in Genesim
Joseph was unwilling to avenge himself; for he knew that the pleasure of vengeance is momentary, but that of mercy everlasting.
Verse 19. FEAR NOT: CAN WE RESIST THE WILL OF GOD?—Therefore, says Melanchthon, the betrayal by Judas and the selling of Joseph is as much the work of God as the calling of Peter. So also Calvin.
I answer: first, the Septuagint renders, Fear not, I am God’s, namely his servant; and the Chaldee, Fear not, I fear before the face of God, as if to say: Far from me, who am a servant and imitator of God, be any appetite for vengeance and desire of revenge. So St. Chrysostom and Bellarmine, book 2 On the Loss of Grace, chapter 11. So also Suarez explains our version: “Can we resist the will of God,” namely that by which he wills that I should spare you?
But for the understanding of our version note: God, by an absolute will, had decreed before all things to send Joseph into Egypt, whether by himself or by his brethren, and to exalt him there, and by him to provide for the common famine. Then he foresaw that a fit means to this would be the malice of his brethren, if he permitted them to carry out the hatred which they had conceived against Joseph. God therefore decreed wisely to permit it, and to order it to the end already stated.
Note secondly, God has with regard to sins a twofold will and providence: first, a permissive one, but not one that sends sin in, as Calvin will have it; and secondly, an ordering one, by which he orders sin to a just punishment, or to some other common or private good; neither will of God can man properly resist. For both lie in God alone, and in God’s freedom.
Wrongly, therefore, did Cicero, in order to defend the freedom of the human will, deny that it is subject to God and ruled by him; hence St. Augustine rightly said of him, City of God, book 5, chapter 9: “Cicero, to make us free, made us sacrilegious.”
You will say: Then man cannot resist sin either; for this follows necessarily from the permissive will of God. I answer: From this will of God sin does not follow necessarily, but infallibly, just as it follows from God’s foreknowledge; for sin does not follow the will of God, but precedes it: for it is its object. And so, before God wills to permit sin, he foresees it, and sees that it will be, if he himself should will to permit it. For the cause per se and positive of sin is the will of man; but the will of God is only the permissive cause of sin, which is merely a cause without which it would not be.
Note thirdly, Joseph here, to show that he has forgotten the injury of his brethren, and to lighten it, and to console his brethren, after the manner of the pious and the holy, refers this sin of the brethren to both wills of God; hence the Hebrew is, “Am I in the place of God?” that is, am I God? I who have said and ordained all these things so conveniently and fittingly, as if to say: Since God, governing and ordering all things by his nod, (for this is Elohim in Hebrew) decreed to send me into Egypt and to set me over it, for my good as well as yours, indeed for the common good of all, namely to relieve the public famine; and to this end permitted your crime, by which you sold me into Egypt, and used it as a means to this my prefecture: far be it from me to punish those whose crime has turned out to me the highest good, and whom God wills to be saved. Rather, over so happy an outcome, which by the will and providence of God has come to me and to you from your crime, we must rejoice, and all these things must be ascribed and submitted to the will of God, both permitting and ordaining. That this is the sense is plain from what follows and from chapter 45, verses 5 and 8. So the Interpreters and doctors, and especially St. Chrysostom, homily 64, and Ambrose, On Joseph, chapter 12, and from them Ludovicus Molina, part 1, Question 19, article 9, disputation 2. So the Apostle to the Romans 11, to move the Gentiles to compassion, that they be not indignant but sympathise with the unbelief of the Jews, says that their unbelief and offence is the salvation of the Gentiles: because the preaching of the Gospel, and the heralds of the Gospel, namely the Apostles, being rejected by the Jews, turned aside to the Gentiles and brought them to faith, salvation and grace. And the Apostle adds that God hath concluded, that is, permitted to be concluded, all under sin, that he may have mercy on all; as if to say: Therefore you also, O Gentiles, imitate God, and as God has had mercy on you, so do you have mercy on the Jews (1).
Thus the Saints, resigning all things to the will of God, excused the faults and afflictions inflicted on them by others, and received them with a quiet and serene mind: as David, who referred the cursing by Semei to the will of God, wishing to punish his sins, and therefore would not have him punished. And the Machabees, who took their great torments as coming from God and from divine chastisement. Sophronius records an Abbot, to whom a disciple through carelessness set bitter herbs at table; the Abbot pretended not to notice; the disciple, afterwards tasting of the same, recognised his error and begged pardon. The Abbot said to him: “It was the will of God that you should set such before me. For if God had willed otherwise, he would have brought it about that you set other before me.” For this is an act of great humility, resignation and conformity with the divine will, in which human and angelic perfection consists.
The Gentile Pythagoras saw this as through a shadow, who among the Golden Verses of his ethics and precepts places this among the first:
Whatever afflictions the gods send upon mortals, bear them patiently as your lot has brought them, and do not refuse; yet a remedy is not to be despised.
Verse 20. YOU THOUGHT EVIL AGAINST ME.—“You thought” only, because your machinations against me, as the machinations of men, you could not bring to completion, God protecting me.
Verse 21. GENTLY AND MILDLY.—In Hebrew it is, he spoke to their heart. Let the faithful see here, and let princes see and imitate, the clemency and meekness of Joseph, indeed of Christ, who says: “Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart.” Alexander Severus the Emperor was clement; his mother and wife reproached him with this, and said: “You have made the dignity of the empire softer and more contemptible for yourself”; he replied: “But more secure and more lasting.”
The Emperor Constantius had banished into exile the abductors of a certain virgin; her parents were indignant that they had not been punished with death. Then he said:
“Let them blame the laws of clemency thus far; but it becomes the Emperor to excel others by laws of the mildest spirit.”
So Charlemagne, when his daughter had fornicated with his secretary Eginhard, did not punish the two, though both guilty of death, with death, but joined them in marriage. Lipsius relates the matter at length, book 2 of the Political Admonitions, chapter 13.
The Emperor Rudolph of Austria, who from being more severe became milder, said: “I have sometimes repented of having been severe and harsh; of having been gentle and placable, never.”