Genesis 42 "What God Has Done" Scott Hoezee

Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt. In a time of famine, that was good news, but it was not exactly what Jacob viewed as very personal news. In one sense hearing someone say, "You can buy grain in Egypt" was a little like someone's saying to you, "There's a sale at Sears." If you need the kind of things Sears sells, you might just drive over there for a look around. In Jacob's case, since they were hungry, and since his sons were apparently doing no more than sitting around feeling sorry for themselves, Jacob's finding out about Egypt's grain sounded like a good opportunity to secure some victuals. Beyond that, Jacob didn't perceive any personal import in Egypt's having grain for sale.

The irony is that this tidbit about global grain commerce contained, unbeknownst to Jacob, news of his long-lost son, Joseph. Yes, there was grain in Egypt all right--enough to feed throngs of people from many nations. There was grain in Egypt, but ultimately that was true because of just one reason: the work of God in the life of Jacob's son, Joseph. Once upon a time God promised Abraham that the day would come when all nations would be blessed because of Abraham's offspring. Now the hungry from many lands were being saved from starvation because of the savvy business sense of Abraham's great-grandson.

Eventually in Genesis Jacob will come to learn this precious truth. But not yet. For now in Genesis 42, a great many truths remain cloaked. Dramatic tension is built up verse by verse as we readers savor the knowledge of Joseph's true identity even as we watch these hapless brothers flounder on a sea of ignorance and misperception and deception. In a real sense, what we see happening in Genesis 42 is a relatively rare biblical instance of sweet revenge as Joseph torments the brothers who had hated him enough to sell him into slavery.

Joseph may finally have landed in the gravy in Egypt, but he had never forgotten the horror of that well pit into which his brothers threw him that terrible day. He could not blot from his mind the demeaning shock of being sold to a bunch of swarthy mercenaries. He could still smell the dankness of that dungeon in which he eventually landed. Joseph the dreamer must surely have had nightmares now and again about all that past abuse.

Genesis 42 brings those events back into Joseph's present moment in a dramatic way. But the power of the past is such that in the course of this story we will see that the brothers themselves had been haunted by what they had done. That boozy plot to sell off their little snot-nosed brother had been nearly twenty years ago already. But some deeds cast very long shadows into the future. Tonight, let's see what happens when the past and future meet.

Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt. So he sends his ten oldest sons hoofing across the Sinai to purchase some. But Benjamin stays behind. Joseph and Benjamin had been the only two children Jacob had ever conceived with his most beloved wife, Rachel. Joseph had already died, and so Jacob could not bear the thought of losing also Benjamin.

So the ten brothers travel to and arrive in Egypt. Then, in what must have been a prior arrangement of God's providence, Joseph not only manages to see his brothers, but he also recognizes them. Presumably someone in Joseph's lofty position did not personally approve every last grain customer in the land. Near as we can tell, throngs of foreigners were streaming into Egypt on a regular basis. Jacob's ten sons could easily have been lost in the crowd. Yet somehow Joseph picks this one group out of all the others.

So Joseph makes sure to have these ten fellows come before him. But they had no chance of recognizing their little brother! The scrawny little fellow they'd sold two decades before was now bronzed by the Egyptian sun and he wore all the typical folderol of the Pharaoh himself. The haircut was Egyptian, the jewelry and head piece were in the Egyptian style, and on top of all that, Joseph very cleverly spoke through an interpreter. This man was apparently a native speaker of the Egyptian language but not of the dialects of Canaan.

As the brothers bow down before him, Joseph remembered not just the nightmares of the abuse they had heaped on him but also the dreams that had incited all that abuse. "Do you think we'd ever bow down before the likes of you, you little brat" Simeon had once said to Joseph across the breakfast table, little bits of cornflakes sputtering from his lips as he sneered hatefully at his little brother. But now there was Simeon, his forehead repeatedly making contact with the floor as he bowed in abject humility before this strange governor of Egypt. Joseph remembered the dreams. And then he decided to enjoy himself.

One commentator I read this past week claimed that the explanation of Joseph's actions lies not in vengeance but rather in fear. Maybe Joseph worried that his brothers would still hate him if they were to discover who this governor really was. Maybe Joseph was just playing it safe, in other words. Joseph quite desperately wanted to see his father and brother, Benjamin, again, but perhaps he fretted that this wouldn't happen if he simply identified himself. After all, if Jacob and Joseph ever met again, the true story of what the brothers had done would at long last be revealed to Jacob. And who knew what steps these ten men might take to prevent that truth ever from coming to father Jacob?! So, some think, Joseph decides to keep his identity hidden just to be safe.

But the story doesn't read that way, does it? There is no hint that Joseph is worried about any further threats. Given his position of nearly supreme power in all of Egypt, it seems unlikely that these brothers could lay a hand on Joseph now. His secret service bodyguards would be all over these brothers in a heartbeat if they so much as looked cross-eyed at the governor.

In verse 9 we are told that as soon as Joseph remembered his dreams, that was when he launched into a full use of his mighty powers to deceive, rough up, frighten, and just generally get revenge on these desperately guilty ten men before him. "So you're from Canaan you say, eh?" Joseph sneered through his interpreter. "I say you're spies! You say you've come for grain? Bah! You've come to scout out our national defense!" "No, no, no, my lord," they plead, "we're honest men." Well, that was the wrong thing to say to Joseph! Honest these ten were not, and no one on earth knew that better than Joseph! So even though the brothers keep pleading their innocence through fast and furious protests, Joseph keeps shouting out in his best Egyptian, "Spies, spies, spies!"

Joseph then throws them in prison, telling them as they are led away in chains to think something over: nine would remain in jail while one returned to fetch the last remaining brother. If there really were another brother to fetch after all, that would prove their story. And lest we think this was all a momentary fit of vengeful fury, Joseph then leaves these brothers in jail for three whole days. If Joseph even for a second thought better of what he was doing during those 72 hours, we're not told about it in the text.

The only change after three days is that Joseph decides to reverse the scenario: as it turns out, one brother would remain in prison while the other nine would go home. If the brothers were hoping for a reprieve, they hadn't gotten one. So Simeon somehow becomes the designated prisoner, bound and gagged before their very eyes (and Joseph maybe thought, "Remind you of anyone else, my brothers!"). The remaining nine then leave with the sacks of grain sacks they had purchased with father Jacob's hard-earned silver.

Soon enough, however, they discover that in addition to the grain, the silver they had paid (they thought!) was back in the sacks, too! Now it looked like they were guilty of theft on top of everything else! Clearly God was getting them back for all their past cruelties. Things didn't improve when they got home. Jacob was decimated all over again by this new turn of events and quickly becomes likewise convinced that the whole world, and God above all, was against him.

Once again in Genesis we see the old trickster Jacob now himself being tricked. As most of you know, this will all continue throughout the next chapter when the brothers, plus Benjamin, return to Egypt and are again subjected to Joseph's grand charade. The entire matter will climax in chapter 44 in the incident of the silver cup, which we'll think about specifically next month when we return to and wrap up this extended series on Genesis.

But for this evening, we can ponder a bit Joseph's actions. What are we to make of this? Should we take pleasure at seeing him wreck this kind of revenge on these men? Was it right for Joseph to exploit his advantage and wield his substantial power in just this way? Did God approve? Was God working through this in order, as the brothers themselves suspected, to pay them back for their own evil?

These are difficult matters to parse. If nothing else, this story illustrates a very common human tendency of letting the past shape the present and the future. We can talk until we are blue in the face about how necessary it is to "forgive and forget," but most of us know by experience that although the "forgive" part of that equation is excessively difficult, the "forget" part is nigh unto impossible. We never really forget. Even if by God's grace we have managed to forgive, we still do not ever forget.

At the very least this persistence of bad memories diminishes our relationship with the one who did the deed that hurt us. Yes, perhaps we do still have a relationship, and that's well and good, but it's not the same. We just can't forget what happened the last time we trusted him that way, and try though we may to scrub out that stain of memory, we often find the stain persists. That is the bare minimum effect of remembering past hurts. More dramatically, of course, this persistence of bad memories leads us to plot reckless courses of revenge. As we lay in a hammock staring up at a deep blue sky, we suddenly find our lips curling into a wicked little smile as we fantasize about giving it right back to old so-and-so. That's where we find Joseph in Genesis 42, and it's hard on one level to blame him. It's hard to deny that just maybe these fellows were getting no more than they had coming to them, and maybe even God approved.

Maybe. Of course, those of you who have been paying attention to this series have perhaps already tumbled to a curious wrinkle between last week Sunday evening and tonight. Last week I celebrated with you the glory of God's exceedingly rich and all-encompassing memory. When Joseph was forgotten by the Pharaoh's cupbearer, that forgetfulness kept Joseph dead. But when he was at long last remembered, he was resurrected to a new life.

Last Sunday I used that incident as the springboard to reflect on the marvelous, life-giving power of memory--especially of God's memory. Ironically, however, tonight we're seeing the downside of having a good memory. Sometimes the remembrance of things past involves recalling bad things. We can remember someone's evil deed toward us like it was yesterday (even if really it was a half-century ago) and so that living memory determines our today and our tomorrow. There are some things one should not forget because making sure that certain folks continue to feel the sting of the consequences is only right.

Joseph exhibited for some weeks this very human tendency. In the end, though, he couldn't live with himself for treating his brothers as badly as they had treated him. Joseph could not live in a world where the past's evil is the only factor that shapes our now. In the long run, none of us can. As they say, that old law about "an eye for an eye" sooner or later leaves everyone blind. If the past's hurts and evils become the sole guiding and shaping force for our future, then we none of us have a very bright future. Certainly that is true in our relationship with God, but it applies to our human interactions as well. We know that Jesus did not recommend any tit-for-tat way of living.

So how do we deal with the persistence of bad memories? There are any number of past things we will simply never be able to forget. But is there a way to remember them without at the same time allowing them to dictate our lives? Well, if there is a way to do that, then it comes only by the grace and power of God. Perhaps one way to at least attempt finding a more healing way to deal with the past is to remember something else that exists in our collective past: the cross of Jesus Christ. Does it help to recall that the evil once done to you has itself already been taken up into God through the suffering of Jesus for all sins? This is not going to erase your memory; it may not, in this life at least, eliminate every twinge of pain or every temptation to take revenge, but perhaps it helps to remember that someone bigger, better, stronger, and more gracious than you has dealt with your hurts and will continue to deal with them until that day when at long last it really will be true that every tear will be wiped from our eyes, every old enemy will be reconciled, and every bad memory will be deprived of its power to hurt any more.

The power of the past is undeniably strong. Last week we thought about how nice it is to know that God remembers each person and each thing. But even for God there are things in the divine memory bank that are not at all lovely or pleasant. How does even God deal with that entire universe of past evil without just lashing out at every last one of us once and for all? Perhaps because God, too, holds in memory the cross of the Son. But perhaps it is more radical than even that.

Here and there in the New Testament there are a number of striking verses that say something to the effect that Jesus, the Lamb of God, had been slain "before the foundation of the world." There is a theological motif in Scripture that somehow the divine determination to deal graciously and healingly with evil is so strong, and has been so persistent in God, that it actually "pre-dates" the cross and perhaps even the creation itself. I have no clue as to how to make sense of that, but maybe one thing that it means is that for God at least, there is no time or place in the past to which his memory can turn without constantly being aware of the oldest cosmic memory of them all--a memory that pre-dates and so somehow trumps every subsequent memory. And that is the memory of grace, the persistence of mercy, the triumph of good over evil even before evil as we now know it was on the scene. Goodness is that much stronger, that much more long-lasting. It will have the last word.

At one point in tonight's story the brothers ask themselves, "What has God done?" Their thinking at that point was that God was punishing them for their past evils. But thanks be to God we, as New Testament people, now know that the answer to the question "What has God done?" was available already before the foundation of the world. What God has done is bring into his very Self every past hurt, every bad memory, every nightmare that haunts our sleep. God has brought them all to himself, defanging the power of the past to wound us forever and opening up instead a future that, one day at least and maybe a little bit already now as well, will be filled only with good memories and sweet dreams, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.