Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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Their obedience to these orders, Ge 42:3. They went down to buy corn; they did not send their servants, but very prudently went themselves, to lay out their own money. Let none think themselves too great nor too good to take pains. Masters of families should see with their own eyes, and take heed of leaving too much to servants. Only Benjamin went not with them, for he was his father's darling. To Egypt they came, among others, and, having a considerable cargo of corn to buy, they were brought before Joseph himself, who probably expected they would come; and, according to the laws of courtesy, they bowed down themselves before him, Ge 42:6. Now their empty sheaves did obeisance to his full one. Compare this with Isa 60:14, Re 3:9.
6 And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that sold to
all the people of the land: and Joseph’s brethren came, and Bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.
7 And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself
strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.
We may well wonder that Joseph, during the twenty years that he had now been in Egypt, especially during the last seven years that he had been in power there, never sent to his father to acquaint him with his circumstances; nay, it is strange that he who so often went throughout all the land of Egypt (Ge 41:45, 46) never made an excursion to Canaan, to visit his aged father, when he was in the borders of Egypt, that lay next to Canaan. Perhaps it would not have been above three or four days' journey for him in his chariot. It is a probable conjecture that his whole management of himself in this affair was by special direction from Heaven, that the purpose of God concerning Jacob and his family might be accomplished. When Joseph's brethren came, he knew them by many a satisfactory token, but they knew not him, little thinking to find him there, Ge 42:8. He remembered the dreams (Ge 42:9), but they had forgotten them. The laying up of God's oracles in our hearts will be of excellent use to us in all our conduct. Joseph had an eye to his dreams, which he knew to be divine, in his