Following immediately upon the pardon and justification illustrated in Gen. 43 we find the discipline and intercession in chap. 44.; and this is the natural order of events. Discipline and intercession characterize the period which lies between the forgiveness of sins and the public recognition, or the adoption, as it is termed in Rom. 8, in which chapter we have, whilst waiting for the said adoption, the intercession of the Spirit. Of course the Spirit may use human instruments; and it is an impulse of the Holy Ghost that Christians should intercede for one another. No one however was so fit and strong an intercessor amongst Israel's sons as Judah. He stood there as the head of the family (Reuben, &c. having been set aside) and as the voluntary surety: so Christ “bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
Pray observe how an illustration easily removes a difficulty. Many find it difficult to understand why there should be any occasion for intercession with God, when He is in an attitude of perfect love towards us. Well, here Joseph was in an attitude of perfect love towards these forgiven sinners, and had fully made up his mind, from the beginning, to save and bless them: and yet how natural, how fit and comely, how beautiful and pathetic is Judah's noble, generous, and sublime intercession. It did not alter the final issue (though it may have hastened it), but it altered everything else. The reason Joseph recalled the men was to test if they were ready to give up Benjamin now in the same heartless way in which they had formerly given up their other brother; or if they were changed. Judah's speech is a complete answer to that: it showed that Joseph's patient disciplining and handling of them had been perfectly successful. By his generosity Joseph was saving his brethren; by his self-restraint and wise dealing with them he has changed their disposition. And now what takes place is calculated to awaken the finer and nobler instincts in all of them—to strengthen their mutual sympathy and deepen their mutual affection.
Judah's appeal is no empty rhetoric; he offers to give himself up to save Benjamin. This spirit of self-sacrifice characterizes all true intercession. “Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book,” said Moses. “I could wish myself accursed,” said Paul. “Let me be slave instead of Benjamin” (in effect), says Judah. All these professed what they were willing to do: the wounds of Christ show what He has done. When Aschylus was being condemned at Athens, his brother Amynias came forward to advocate the cause of the prisoner. He bared his scarred chest and mutilated arm, the hand of which had been lost in the service of the state at Salamis.
When intercession is not a result of nobility of spirit, it is a cause of it and will tend to produce it. It is hardly possible to pray sincerely to God for another whilst continuing to hold hard or unworthy feelings toward the one for whom the prayer is made. The three kindred offices of intervention are thus distinguished. Mediation is “between God and men “—the Creator and the sinful creature. Intercession is on behalf of the reconciled man to God. Advocacy is exercised with the Father in the case of some definite failure.
When the men returned and told Jacob that Joseph was still alive, though he had before him the cumulative evidence of the eleven (besides, doubtless, many servants) “his heart failed and he believed them not” —even when they told him “all the words of Joseph.” But when “he saw the wagons,” his spirit revived, and he said, “It is enough, I will go.” Those rude wooden conveyances were visible and tangible evidences of a brightened horizon and a new and glorious world, as yet unknown and unseen; and the sight of them confirmed his wavering mind, as Columbus and his companions were encouraged in their belief in that new unknown world which they sought through the weary waste of the wild Atlantic, when the “table board and carved stick” were drifted to the bow of the Santa Maria.
How true this is in the life of an “unbelieving believer “; that he is more confirmed by some slight and inconsequent outward evidence, some tangible and material gift from the Lord, than by the cumulative testimony of the eleven Apostles and all their followers. It is not creditable to us that such should be the case, when some passing providential physical gift, or answer to prayer, should confirm and encourage us more than the sacred words of Christ Himself; it indicates a low spiritual condition. That is the difference between faith and credulity. Faith reposes on the strongest evidence which the universe affords—the word of God (attested as being His word by overwhelming and cumulative testimony); but credulity, whilst not receiving that, will swallow any preposterous dogma that is accompanied by a geologist's chip of stone, or a priest's tonsure—anything from an ape-man to a monk's miracle. Faith floats, resting only on the waters of life; credulity grasps at a straw, and sinks.
Further on, we read that “Israel bowed himself on the staff.” (This would appear to be the correct reading of Gen. 47:3131And he said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head. (Genesis 47:31). The LXX have it thus, as also the Apostle in Heb. 11. The difference is simply in the vowel points, which would alter the word from mittah to matteh.) A great contrast with the wagon is the staff, which is an emblem of the word of God, as the support and defense of the soul. There must be importance in this apparently slight action of Jacob's, or we should not have had it twice recorded. The staff is connected with the rod in Psa. 23, “Thy staff and Thy rod they comfort me:” that is, not only is the supporting staff comforting, but the chastening rod is so-being a proof of a Father's love and care. The fact is that now Jacob returns to the simplicity of entire dependence on God. In the midst of his prosperity he had said that with only his staff he had set out and crossed Jordan, and that since then he had got great wealth. Now he is going to leave it all and come back to the bare staff; leaning on that alone he worships God. As Antaeus, when brought to the ground, uprose with increased vigor received from its contact; so Jacob, now brought down to the staff, receives an exaltation of spiritual power which closes his troubled and pathetic life in lofty praises and far-reaching prophecies.