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Context No. 842 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 45:21-28: in context

21The sons of Israel did so. Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. 22He gave each one of them changes of clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of clothing. 23He sent the following to his father: ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and provision for his father by the way. 24So he sent his brothers away, and they departed. He said to them, “See that you don’t quarrel on the way.” 25They went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan, to Jacob their father. 26They told him, saying, “Joseph is still alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt.” His heart fainted, for he didn’t believe them. 27They told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them. When he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob, their father, revived. 28Israel said, “It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”

For more than twenty years Jacob has believed his son Joseph is dead. He had mourned him inconsolably, refusing every comfort, carrying the grief like a stone. Now his other sons come back from Egypt with news that is simply too large for him to hold. Joseph is still alive, they tell him, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt. And the text says his heart fainted, for he did not believe them. The good news does not lift him at first; it stuns him, numbs him. A grief held that long has become the shape of his heart, and joy this size cannot get in.

What finally reaches him is not the words but the wagons. Joseph had sent carts loaded with the good things of Egypt to carry his old father down, and when Jacob's eyes fell on them, something turned. The spirit of Jacob their father revived, the passage says. Seeing the evidence, the tangible sign that it was real, brought him back to life. And then he says the line of a man who has been given the one thing he never dared hope for: it is enough; Joseph my son is still alive; I will go and see him before I die. Everything else, the years of mourning, his own age, the long road to Egypt, shrinks beside that single fact. Sometimes the hardest thing is not to endure the loss but to believe the restoration when it comes, to let a heart that has settled into grief be startled back into hope.

Jacob could not believe his son was alive until the sight of the wagons revived him. Is there a hope so long buried in me that I would struggle to believe it if the good news actually came, and has my heart settled into grief as if that were the end of the story?

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