Genesis 37:18 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 37:18

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As Joseph eventually finds the brothers and approaches them, a plot was never hatched so quickly. They see afar the distinctive coat of many colours, and recognise the gait of their younger brother, and they conspire against him to kill him in those minutes. That is the hatred in their hearts. ‘What an opportunity we've got,’ they say. ‘We far from home. This thing can be concealed, and no one will know what we've done all this way out here.’ Seventy-five miles is nothing to us in modern times, but it was an awful long way in those days, and so they feel they can do this terrible thing and get away with it. They are scornful of him: ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh.’ This individual who dreams of supremacy: we’ll see where his plans and his ideas go now. ‘Come therefore, let us slay him and cast him into some pit and claim he has been destroyed by some beast.’ They are callous to the core, and ready to set aside all brotherly sympathy, although they see just how much anguish they are causing him by treating him in this way. Joseph, we know, appealed to their mercy but they shut their ears and hardened their hearts. Many years later they said to one another: ‘We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us’ (Genesis 42:21). They knew at the time, and they still knew many years later, that their cruelty to Joseph had gone beyond all bounds, and they rightly judged that God was visiting their wickedness upon them. Even while they had been forming this murderous plan, their consciences had been at work, telling them that what they were about to do was utterly evil. Joseph’s dreams have caused great offence. The brothers are cynical about them, but they half believe them. They think however that they can prevent them coming to pass.

Application

How much unbelieving men and women underestimate the Lord! It is too easy for them to tell themselves something false about him that sets their minds at rest. So in the weakness of their thinking they imagine that they can get the advantage over God and use the little they know to thwart his purposes, to frustrate Joseph’s dreams. ‘He dreamed of being superior to us. We will soon put a stop to that. We will see what happens to his dreams when we have killed him out here far from his father’s doting sight.’ But the very means they used to hurt him were going to ensure the dreams were fulfilled. God uses the worst that his enemies do to hurt him as the means to bring his secret will to pass. Who can fight against God? Who can overcome him who has surrounded us with his knowledge from eternity past to eternity future? He turns the sword of the wicked against themselves. No wonder Paul says, ‘For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth’ (2 Corinthians 13:8). Sinful men and women imagine they are free from God’s control, but he has out-thought them at every step. Though the brothers were so sure of themselves, this plan was to change a number of times and they would approve each change as God nudged them into his intended path. The Lord is sovereign over the righteous and the wicked and the free will of man cannot take one step outside of his plan. How foolish are those who think that man’s freedom is beyond the control of the Lord. Who can fight against God? Who can overcome one who has surrounded us with his knowledge from eternity to eternity? To prove his complete and utter superiority to all his enemies, the Lord gives them total freedom to do their worst and still overcomes them with ease. So Peter told the Jews, ‘[Christ] being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain’ (Acts 2:23), and yet this was to bring about the salvation of a multitude which no man can number. God’s wisdom triumphs over Satan’s best strategies.

Joseph was a pitiful sight, but cruelty found a way of silencing all pity. Even the murderer knows that he is a murderer. Conscience is never so beaten down that it does not see what we are doing and testify against us. Man has within him a witness which will not be fully silenced; it is God’s policeman to warn us that however far we go, we will be called to account.

The brothers of Joseph had such hatred in their hearts; they had murdered strangers before and now hatred led them to want to murder their own brother. We have to be very careful for our thoughts. Nature itself can be overthrown by hatred warns Bishop Hall: ‘The savagest robbers could not have been more merciless: for now, besides (what in them lies), they kill their father in their brother. Nature, if it once degenerates, grows more monstrous and extreme, than a disposition born to cruelty.’ If you hate enough it can do this; it can cause detestation. Something irrational happens.

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Genesis 37:18 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Genesis 37:18