Scripture Daily

Context No. 3219 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 42:18-25: in context

18Joseph said to them the third day, “Do this, and live, for I fear God. 19If you are honest men, then let one of your brothers be bound in your prison; but you go, carry grain for the famine of your houses. 20Bring your youngest brother to me; so will your words be verified, and you won’t die.” They did so. 21They said to one another, “We are certainly guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we wouldn’t listen. Therefore this distress has come upon us.” 22Reuben answered them, saying, “Didn’t I tell you, saying, ‘Don’t sin against the child,’ and you wouldn’t listen? Therefore also, behold, his blood is required.” 23They didn’t know that Joseph understood them; for there was an interpreter between them. 24He turned himself away from them, and wept. Then he returned to them, and spoke to them, and took Simeon from among them, and bound him before their eyes. 25Then Joseph gave a command to fill their bags with grain, and to restore each man’s money into his sack, and to give them food for the way. So it was done to them.

Joseph, testing his brothers who do not recognize him, keeps Simeon bound and sends the rest home with grain, demanding they return with Benjamin. And there, in his hearing but thinking he cannot understand, the brothers confess to one another: we are truly guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw his distress when he begged us, and we would not listen. Joseph turns away and weeps.

After twenty years, the brothers' buried guilt surfaces. Facing hardship, they say to one another, we are guilty concerning our brother. Old, unconfessed sin does not simply disappear; it waits, and rises up in a crisis. And notice Joseph, who understands every word though they do not know it: he turns aside and weeps, and secretly returns their money. The one they wronged is moved to tears by their remorse, and mercy is already flowing toward them before they know who he is. God was at work, drawing the brothers toward repentance and Joseph toward forgiveness, long before the reconciliation was complete.

Does buried, unconfessed guilt still wait in me to be dealt with, and can I trust that the one I wronged, and God himself, may be moved toward mercy even before I know it?

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