Humiliation and Exaltation in Egypt: Genesis 50:18
“His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. ‘We are your slaves,’ they said.”
Joseph’s brothers must have very sore backs by now. Since they first came to Egypt looking for food they have repeatedly bowed low, even prostrated themselves before their brother. They hated his prophetic dreams, but they cannot escape their fulfilment. If it’s possible to overfulfil a prophecy, then somehow they manage to do so!
None of us like being suppliants. Jacob didn’t. Though favoured from the womb, he would rather grasp by guile and graft than receive God’s blessings by grace. And so God brought him to his knees, begging for blessing.
And Joseph’s brothers? They too were proud and rebellious. Like Cain before them, they chose rather to harm a brother than learn, in humility, how to please God in righteousness. And so God brought them low. Again, and again, and again.
Joseph, on the other hand, rises from the pit to the palace, from slavery to mastery over Egypt. But none of the regalia or power went to his head. He feared God. “Am I in the place of God?” (50:19) he asks his brothers when they fear that, contrary to his previous words of reassurance in 45:3-11, he may now exact his revenge.
This great reversal—his exaltation, and his brothers’ humiliation—was a recipe for sweet revenge. But Joseph knew something sweeter still: the unfathomable goodness and wisdom of the God who chose to raise him and seat him on high, and whose grace and favour he now got to extend to others.
