Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

Sure enough, the land teems with plenty; such crops were never before seen in the valley of the Nile.
Joseph has granaries built in all the land to store the surplus corn. Everything full and running over.
The seven years of plenty have come and gone. The seven years of famine set in. Dearth prevails,
nothing is raised. The people all come to Joseph for bread. He has plenty. What a glorious emblem
of Christ, dispensing the bread of life! There is famine in the land of Canaan. Jacob hears there is
corn in Egypt. Sends his ten sons. Joseph meets them. It has been twenty years since they sold him
to the Ishmaelites. He is so covered with the royal robes and the beard on his face, as to preclude all
possible recognition; meanwhile he recognizes his older brothers, several of whom were grown when
they sold him. He feigns incognito. Speaking to them through an interpreter, though he understood
the Hebrew which they spoke, he asks about their family and country. They say, We are all the sons
of one old man living in the land of Canaan; we also have a little brother at home and one dead
(having lied so much about Joseph, they think it is true). The Latin history I read when a boy says
they were unutterably surprised at the gushing tears flowing from the eyes of the king as they spoke
of their father and little brother. He accused them of coming to spot out the land, detained Simeon,
and exacted from them a promise to bring Benjamin, certifying they never shall see his face unless
they bring Benjamin. They all find their money in their sack’s mouth, on the road home. Jesus gives
us the bread of life like Joseph, his type, without money and without price. The old man is awfully
shocked when he hears that the king of Egypt arrested and detained Simeon. “Thus I am deprived
of my children. Joseph is dead, and now Simeon is gone.” When they tell that Benjamin must go if
they get any more bread, he positively refuses. Time rolls on! The bread is out and famine stares
them all in the face. Oh, how reluctantly the old man consents for Benjamin to go! but concludes he
would better lose Simeon and Benjamin along with Joseph, already dead, than for them all to starve
to death in a pile. So they all go again. On arrival they meet Simeon, looking better than they ever
saw him. They wonder again why the king of Egypt cries so when he sees their little brother. The
king entertains them with a rich feast. To their unutterable surprise he sits them down in the order
of their ages. He puts on Benjamin’s plate five times the usual amount. God grant to you, reader, a
Benjamin mess while you read this book. After dinner Joseph puts all of the Egyptians out of the
room and now speaks in the Hebrew language, which they thought he did not know, as he spake to
them through an interpreter: “I am Joseph, whom you sold to the Ishmaelites twenty-two years ago.”
They are all stunned, appalled and panic-stricken. They all fall down before him and beg his pardon.
“Oh,” says he, “no need of that. God sent me before you to Provide bread and keep you all from
starving to death.” He goes around, embraces and kisses each one of them. They almost swoon away
under the shock. Old Pharaoh in his palace hears the loud crying, sends for Joseph, who confesses
his brethren have come. Pharaoh nobly says:
“The best of the land is at your option; send wagons and bring them all down. Regard not
their stuff, for I will supply them.”
When they return with Simeon and Benjamin and tell Jacob that Joseph is still alive and ruler over
the land of Egypt, he faints and can’t believe it. Finally when he sees the wagon his spirit revives and
he ventures to believe it. Convalescing finally from the shock, he says: “Then my Joseph is yet alive;
I will go down and see him before I die.” Jacob lived seventeen years after the migration into Egypt.
The old Pharaoh who had made Joseph his prime minister, committing to him the burdens and
responsibilities of the kingdom, soon passed away, leaving the sole incumbent of the throne to reign
over Egypt sixty-one years, precisely the period of Queen Victoria at the present date. The striking