Like many parents, I told stories to my children when they were young, made-up stories that I would often conclude with a cliff-hanger so that my child would wonder what would happen next and I would answer by saying, “Find out next time!”

Now, no one would probably find my stories very beautiful, given that they were the result of my spontaneous imagination and lacked any real structure. But the story we’ve been studying here in Genesis, centered around the life of Joseph, is a beautiful story. We’ve seen Joseph’s story so far in three great acts—Potiphar’s house, the Prison, and before Pharaoh—and in each act Joseph succeeds due to God’s presence with him. The next part of Joseph’s story also comes in three acts, centered around three different journeys to Egypt.[1]

Joseph is already in Egypt, of course. But Joseph’s story is not merely about Joseph. It is about Joseph and his brothers, the sons of Jacob, the children of Israel. The attention now shifts from Joseph to include his brothers who have been separated from him for 20 years and with Joseph presumably dead from their perspective.

The first five verses of this chapter give us a picture of Jacob highlighting the indecisiveness of his sons who are standing around pointing fingers at each other. And that’s because in this chapter, the brothers “will be forced to confront one another over their past actions.”[2] The sins of the sons of Jacob must be discovered so that they can be properly dealt with. Why? Because so much is at stake, so much is on the line with these descendants of Abraham through whom God’s salvation was promised to come to the world. This chapter demonstrates that God convicts his people of their sin in order to genuinely transform them into the people he wants them to be. And in the story we find in this chapter, we see Joseph confront his brothers, challenge them, even as he shows compassion to them.

Joseph Confronts His Brothers

First, Joseph confronts his brothers. With Jacob’s command to his sons in verse 2, the story is underway. He tells them to go to Egypt and get some food so “that we may live and not die.” He sends his ten remaining sons to Egypt, keeping his youngest son, Benjamin, at home, afraid “that harm might happen to him.”

Verse 6 reminds us that Joseph was “governor over the land” and the “one who sold to all the people” the food they needed to survive the famine. Among those who came to buy food were Joseph’s brothers, and we get the satisfying picture of poetic justice as we see them bow “before him with their faces to the ground.” The confrontation has begun.

Recognition

The narrator signals something to us when he tells us that “Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them” in verse 7. Notice he says that again in the very next verse—the repetition is a feature of Hebrew narrative that tells us something of the narrator’s intent. This verb recognized was used in Genesis 37, when Joseph’s brothers tricked their father, presenting Joseph’s special robe dipped in robe to him and asking him to “identify [recognize] whether it is your son’s robe or not.” Now it is Joseph’s turn to play the trick on his brothers. He identified them alright, but “he treated them like strangers,” not letting on that he knew who they were. He recognized them, but they do not recognize him.

This theme of recognition was also highlighted in Genesis 38, where Judah’s signet, cord, and staff were the identifying markers of his own identity and that which proved his guilt in the matter of his treatment of his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

So, the confrontation begins with recognition. Joseph recognizes his brothers, and that is the moment in which all that the brothers had done and hoped they would get away with, hoped would go unrecognized, was now being plainly revealed, publicly exposed.

Remembrance

The confrontation proceeds from recognition to remembrance. Verse 9 says, “And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them.” Seeing his brothers brought back a flood of childhood memories. He remembered his dreams. Those dreams. The ones that had been so vivid, those dreams the meaning of which was obvious and needed no interpretation. Those dreams which had been left dormant for all these years.

Joseph’s dreams in chapter 37 had only gotten him into trouble, brought him much suffering. So, after his life circumstances were dramatically reversed in chapter 41, Joseph said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house” (Gen 41:51). Why go on holding on to dreams that never really panned out when another line of opportunity had opened up?

So, when verse 9 says, “And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them,” we might suppose that Joseph’s remembrance here was not something that delighted him. Seeing his brothers and remembering his dreams might have been a rather triggering experience. He might have preferred to never remember, but there’s something important about going back to those formative moments of childhood, and, with the help of a good therapist or pastor, remembering again.

Rough Speech

Not only does Joseph recognize his brothers and remember his dreams, but in this confrontation between the siblings, verse 7 says that Joseph “spoke roughly to them.” He accused them of being spies.

Do you find fault with Joseph here? Is he pushing the demand of justice too far by giving his brothers such a rough time, or do they deserve this and much more? Here we note that the storyteller does not give us the divine perspective on how Joseph treats his brothers, why the recognition of his brothers and remembrance of his dreams causes him to level this accusation. We are left to speculate about what Joseph is thinking, feeling, and doing so that we can see Joseph in a more multidimensional image.[3] And here’s one reason why that is important. As we’ve mentioned a few times in this series, Joseph is a type, a prefiguring if you will, of Jesus. In many ways we are to see Jesus reflected in Joseph, and in Jesus we see God the Father reflected, too. And there is a dimension to God, to Jesus, that is much like this multi-dimensional character we see in Joseph.

Does Jesus, does God, ever “speak roughly”? I’m concerned with how that question can stir up different emotions in different people. We might suspect that Joseph’s “rough speech” is his attempt to “get even” with his brothers, after all he has been through because of them. But what we are seeing here is a shift in the Joseph story. The two previous chapters were about what could be known about the future; this chapter is about what can be known about the past, “a way of coming to terms with one’s moral history, a way of working toward psychological integration.”[4] As this story goes, Joseph and his brothers being confronted with their past is critical to the story’s success.

It is not grace-less to be confronted with our sin, not if the goal of such confrontation is healing, reconciliation, and restoration. That is, in fact God’s goal in confronting us with our sin, too. God, who wants to bless the world through his people, has an intense concern that his people are prepared, shaped for that purpose. So, he confronts us, corrects us, all because he wants to use us to bring his blessing into the world.

Joseph Challenges His Brothers

Let’s keep going with the story. After Joseph confronts his brothers, he next challenges them. He gives them a test.

Spies at Heart

Joseph has accused his brothers of being spies. While we might suspect that he just wants to get even, the narrator of this story may well want us to think of this differently. The brothers deny that they are spies in verse 10, but the accusation is repeated in verse 12. Remember, repetition is important in Hebrew narrative. In this case, we see the accusation of Joseph and the denial of the accusation by his brothers repeated three times between verses 9-14. Joseph suggests that they are spies who have come to Egypt under the pretense of seeking food while their real mission is to “see the nakedness of the land.” He means, of course, that as spies from another country their purpose of being here is to find out where Egypt was unprotected and weak, but this literal expression is a bit odd, since everywhere else in the Old Testament where such an expression is used it is explicitly sexual, either referring to incest or to some other shameful sexual exposure. Perhaps Joseph wants to spotlight the shameful effects of what his brothers have done to him and through him to their own father.[5]

It seems fairly clear, as the story goes along, that Joseph is not doing this purely out of retaliation. His motives appear to be more positive. The narrator hints in this direction, even in his report of the brothers’ rebuttal of the accusation. “We are all sons of one man,” they say in verse 11. “We are honest men. Your servants have never been spies.”

Now that’s true, right? They have never been literal spies. But what they have been, in fact, is spies at heart. What do I mean? What is one of the most important skills for a good spy? Deception. To be a spy, you have to be able to deceive people. Are you a CIA agent? Your whole life’s work—what might in fact be good, honest work from one perspective—it all depends on you being great at being dishonest.

Joseph’s brothers insist in verse 11 that they have never been spies. They are “honest men,” not very good at games like Secret Hitler. But we remember how they took Joseph’s special garment and dipped it in blood and tricked their father into thinking that Joseph had been slaughtered in order to cover up their betrayal of him (Gen 37:31-32).

A Test of Honesty

Joseph intends to challenge them on this point, to find out who they are at the very center of their identity. In verse 15, he announces a test. “By the life of Pharaoh, you shall not go from this place unless your youngest brother comes here.” He says that one of them will be allowed to return home while the rest are kept in custody.

But the test begins by putting all ten of the brothers in custody for three days (v. 17). I can only imagine the conversations they must have had, the soul searching that took place while they were kept for three days in close quarters in an Egyptian dungeon.[6] How would they respond to the test? Whom would they select to go back to their father and try to convince him to let Benjamin go back to Egypt with him, while the fate of the others remained unknown?

Joseph’s challenge is to determine, as verse 16 says, “whether there is truth in you,” or as verse 19 says, “if you are honest men.” They have made a claim, that they are not spies, but the sons of one man. Joseph has set up a test to see if they can verify their claim.

This test will unfold over the next two chapters, showing that a lot more is going on here than we might have first understood. What we will see (spoiler alert!) is that Joseph’s brothers will be put back into the same situation as they had been in chapter 37 and in which they had previously proven their true, dishonest identity.[7] Joseph’s test would not really be useful as a test of espionage, because they could be telling the truth about a brother back home and still be in Egypt collecting intelligence. But “the test has a profound logical function in the oblique interrogation of brothers.”[8] The test is for them. It is there to make them confront their past. It is there to lead them to repentance, to overcome the dishonesty that has fractured the chosen family for so many years.

Do This and Live

When Joseph brings them out of custody on the third day, he has revised the test somewhat. “Let one of your brothers remain confined . . . and let the rest go . . . and bring your youngest brother to me” (vv. 18-20). He says in verse 18, “Do this and you will live.” Joseph’s test is not designed to make his brothers fail. He wants them to live. His hope is that they will succeed.

I’m struck by those words, “Do this and you will live.” We find those same words on the lips of Jesus, in Luke 10:28, and they are immediately followed by the parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable was a test, wasn’t it? It was a test given to a certain lawyer who “desiring to justify himself,” asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” As the parable so clearly brings out, your neighbor is anyone to whom you really must show mercy. Must. This isn’t optional. “You go, and do likewise,” Jesus says at the end of the parable (Lk 10:37). And it was all in answer to the lawyer’s question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25).

We, of course, might be tempted to correct Jesus’s theology here. “Come on, Jesus. Don’t you know that you can’t do anything to inherit eternal life?”

Right. And since we know that, as Dallas Willard observed, we can’t seem to think of any reason why one should bother trying to live obediently either. I agree with Willard, that how to combine faith with obedience is “the essential task of the church” in the twenty-first century.[9] We must be confronted with our sin and our shame so that we can see the mercy, the love, and the grace that has been shown to us. But then what? What will we do with this mercy, this love, and this grace? Will we keep it to ourselves, celebrate how good and gracious God has been to us, theologize about it. Or will we extend it outward, to one another, to the world? “No church, no Christian, can remain content with easy definitions which allow us to watch most of the world lying half-dead in the road.”[10]

The message of the gospel is indeed about the lavish mercy, love, and grace of God in Christ for sinners. But it was never meant to promise blessing to God’s people without it then be extended through God’s people to the rest of the world.

Joseph Shows Compassion to His Brothers

Finally, after Joseph confronts his brothers and challenges them, we see Joseph’s compassion for them.

The Brothers’ Guilt

After the test is announced, at the end of verse 20, we are told that the brothers “did so.” That is, they did not resist the test. They realized it was fair.[11] They accepted the challenge.

And notice their dialogue in verses 21-22. “Then they said to one another, ‘In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen.’” The brothers have picked up on the parallel between what they did to Joseph back in chapter 37 and what is now being played out here, with one brother thrown into a pit and the rest being sent back to explain it all to their father.

Chapter 37 did not tell us anything about how Joseph felt during that whole ordeal, but here we learn that although they saw his distress and his pleas for mercy, they, like the priest and the Levite in Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, “passed by on the other side.”

Yes, they are guilty. They are getting what they deserve.

Joseph’s Tears

Joseph is listening in as his brothers realize their guilt and are confronted by their shame. “Then he turned away from them and wept.” His tears are no doubt caused by how deeply he is moved at the signs of what the Apostle Paul calls a “godly grief.” That kind of grief “produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret” (2 Cor 7:10). Conviction of sin that only produces excuses from us, or that makes us wallow in our shame, is not what God is after.

God convicts us of our sin in order to genuinely transform us into the people he wants us to be. God is drawn to sinners, not repelled by them. He has compassion for them, especially once they begin to feel the weightiness of their sin and the damage it has done.

He will not leave us there, but like the “Good Samaritan” that he is, he will bind up our wounds and seek to restore us. He will do all that he can to set us up for success, lavishing us with mercy and grace, just as Joseph here filled the sacks of his brother with grain, put the money they had brought with them back into it, and gave them “to go” boxes for their journey back home.

Joseph’s generosity was so lavish and so unexpected that, when the brothers stopped for some rest on the way home and found their money in their packs, it was downright terrifying. “What is this that God has done to us?” (v. 28). That is what the grace of God is all about. It is when such grace comes to the most underserving that we see it for the life-giving power it truly brings.

A Jewish Rabbi, commenting on Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, notes that their subsequent banishment from the Garden indicates the difficult and troubled world they now would have to inhabit. A world of their own making, we might say. And yet, God’s decision to provide them with clothing, apparently unnecessary in Eden, would give them “the wherewithal to make it in this journey of their own choosing.”[12] Such is the lavish grace of God. Such is the grace he calls us to receive and then to extend to the world.

Reuben’s Sacrifice

Our chapter ends with Joseph’s brothers arriving back in Canaan and reporting to Jacob everything that had happened. As this scene ends, it is unclear if the test will be passed successfully. Jacob is upset, unaware of God’s grace at work in whole thing.

And then there’s Reuben. He is intent on passing the test, vowing to sacrifice his own two sons if he fails to bring the new favored son, Benjamin, back to Jacob again.

Will Reuben’s vow be the breakthrough the story gives us? Find out next time!

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[1] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 403.

[2] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, Revised and Updated (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 200.

[3] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 406.

[4] Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 203.

[5] Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 204.

[6] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1B, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 779.

[7] Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, 777.

[8] Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 206.

[9] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), 140.

[10] Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2004), 129.

[11] Bruce K. Waltke and Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 547.

[12] Rabbi David Forhman, The Beast that Crouches at the Door: Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, and Beyond, 3^rd ed. (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2007), 75.