CHAPTER I.
JOSEPH CAST INTO THE PIT.
When Jesus would inculcate some of the deepest lessons which he ever taught, he took a little child and set him in the midst of his disciples (Matt. xviii. 2–4), and made that child his text. Truth thus found an inlet into the mind which even the Great Teacher might have attempted in vain to impress, without some material illustration of his spiritual lessons.—Let us endeavour to imitate the Saviour’s wisdom, and seek some lessons to guide us in the touching history of Joseph.
It is well known, then, that on a certain occasion that youth obtained permission to visit his brothers at a part of Canaan somewhat distant from their father’s home. But, previous to that time, he had given them great offence; and their anger only waited for a fit occasion to break forth in violence against him. And we should not fail to notice what caused that anger. First, Joseph was a great favourite with his father, who testified his partiality to the boy by the gift of a coat of many colours, and thus unwisely laid a foundation for feuds and divisions in his family (Gen. xxxvii. 3, 4). Moreover, Joseph had dreamed certain dreams which gave great offence to his brothers; for they indicated that the time would come when the other children of Jacob would do homage to Joseph, who was one of the youngest (Gen. xxxvii. 5–11). The feelings which rankled in the bosoms of his brothers before, now rankled more and more, and were ripened by irritation for a violent outbreak at last. It appears, further, that Joseph had, at least on one occasion (ver. 2), complained to his father regarding the misdeeds of his brothers; and all these things made him “hated by them, so that they could not speak peaceably to him.”—All this suggests to us the strange lesson, that there are some men who “hate him that rebuketh them, and abhor him that speaketh uprightly” (Amos v. 10). Men are so wedded to their own ways, even when they lead down to death, that we become their enemy if we tell them the truth. How often did scribe, Pharisee, priest, and people break out in violence against Jesus for his truthful warnings!
No sooner, then, did they see Joseph approaching Dothan, where they fed their flocks, than his brothers thought the time had come at length for humbling their father’s favourite. The first proposal was to put him instantly to death; but Reuben interposed, and their sentence was, to throw Joseph into a pit, and leave him to perish unpitied there! Blinded by envy, or goaded by rage, they trampled on every tender feeling, and evil became their chief good.
In the good providence of God, however, the youth was taken from that pit, in which he was to have been buried alive, and sent to a distant country, there to be the saviour of not a few, in a temporal sense. To cover their wickedness, his brothers next resolved to show to their father Joseph’s coat of tartan, dipped in the blood of a kid, as if he had been devoured by ravenous beasts.—Their brother might become a slave; their father’s heart might be torn with anguish; their own souls might be deeply stained with sin piled above sin;—but what of all these, when men are bent on indulging their evil and malignant passions? Let misery be heaped upon misery, yet men will not be diverted from their iniquity.
But wicked as their deeds were, and an outrage at once against a father and a brother, and, above all, against their God, he who makes the wrath of man to praise him employed that wrath remarkably to work out his purposes in this case. And he is doing the same at this hour. Think of the miseries, spread over many years of agony, inflicted by fierce persecutors on the Christians of Madagascar in our day, and then mark how they increase in number notwithstanding. Think of the bloody massacres in India, the martyrdoms of native Christians there, with the butchery of all who wear the Christian name; and yet mark how that is overruled to rouse the churches to spread the truth in that dark-souled land. Think, above all, of the Cross of Jesus,—of the woes which were there endured, with all the malignant passions which nailed the Redeemer to the tree; and then see how God can make our wickedness promote his own glory,—can bring joy out of anguish, and life out of death, and blessings unutterable out of the very curse (Gal. iii. 13).
