Deeper Reflection
Joseph could have held a grudge. His brothers certainly thought so (v.15). Sure, Joseph was partly at fault for his brothers’ jealousy. But it was not easy to forget the personal betrayal and rejection, the loneliness and pain of separation from family, the grief that his father had to go through, and the hard years spent in prison suffering the loss of freedom. Not even when Joseph became the second most powerful man in all of Egypt (Gen 41:41-44).Yet Joseph chose to forgive his brothers. However, Joseph’s remarkable response was not merely a matter of “Oh it’s all ok, look at where I am now!”, “Let’s just let bygones be bygones”, “We’re still family after all” or “I’ll be nice to you to honour the memory of our dead father”. Instead, Joseph realised that despite human sin and the messiness of all that had happened, God continued to remain in careful control not just over Joseph personally and over Jacob’s family, but over the “many lives” (including Egyptian) that have been saved by Joseph’s coming to Egypt.Joseph’s confidence in God’s sovereignty and promises led him to ask the Israelites to swear an oath that they would carry his bones from Egypt back to the promised land of Canaan. In God’s orchestration, Egypt would not be Joseph’s final resting place. Despite the splendour, power and generations that Joseph enjoyed in history, he knew that his destiny lay elsewhere, because “God will surely come to your aid” (vv.24, 25 NIV). History, according to Joseph and from the perspective of the sovereign God, remains the theatre of destiny.