Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days.
Jacob's sons hand him Joseph's torn coat, and he draws the conclusion they intended. What follows is not a passing moment of grief. It is a way of life: torn clothes, sackcloth, and mourning that runs on for many days.
The signs he put on
The clothes Jacob tore were his main outer garment.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe other main garment was the simlah, a cloak or wide outer mantle, worn by men and women, who wrapped themselves in it at night… The simlah is the garment that was torn in grief. Genesis 37:34; Genesis 44:13; Joshua 7:6.
Then he put on sackcloth. This was not a gesture made once and set aside. It was a rough covering worn against the skin, day and night.
Morrish Bible DictionaryA rough cloth made of hair, used for sacks and coarse clothing. Anyone who put it on as a symbol of sorrow or repentance wore it next to the skin, and did not take it off at night. It was often used together with ashes.
A garment for a garment
Fine clothing is what deceives Jacob here. Years before, he had used fine clothing himself to deceive his blind father.
F. B. HoleIn Genesis 27 we read how Jacob, by wearing Esau's garment, deceived his blind father, Isaac. Esau's garment is called "fine clothing." As he was the elder, it may have been something very similar to Joseph's coat of many colours. By fine clothing Jacob deceived his father; by fine clothing his sons deceived him. As he measured out, so it was measured back to him. God's government of His people works with great precision.
The gap between the two deceptions was long.
Hamilton SmithThirty years before, Jacob had deceived his father with "the skins of the young goats." Now, after long years, his own sons deceive him with "a young goat." There may be long years between the sowing and the reaping, but at last the reaping time comes.
Sorrow that had no resource in God
Later, Jacob faces another loss, and he answers it in a very different way.
The Bible TreasuryIn the first instance he tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his body, and refused to be comforted. "For," he said, "I will go down to the grave to my son, mourning." But in the last he says, "If I am bereaved, I am bereaved" — in other words, "I submit." What a difference! What desolation, when the heart is wrenched and there is no resource in God! But what a contrast, when the Almighty God is a refuge… This is simple submission to the will of God, and it does for us what God so much desires — that we should find our resources in Him. The soul brought to this is never unsatisfied.
A believer whose grief stopped at the grave
Jacob was a man of real faith. Yet another grieving father in Scripture met the same loss in the opposite way.
Hamilton SmithJacob says, "I will go down to the grave to my son, mourning"; but of David we read that he "arose… and went into the house of the LORD and worshipped." Both men stand in the presence of the death of a child. One says, "I will go down to the grave mourning." The other says, "I will go up to the house of the LORD and worship." Yet both were true saints. One looked no further than death and the grave. The other looked beyond death to resurrection.
The father's loss as a shadow of a greater one
Joseph suffered as an innocent man, sent out by a father who loved him. Commentators see a larger picture behind that.
William KellyThis is heartlessness toward the innocent sufferer, and toward the father who had sent him in love. Yet in the middle of it rises the foreshadowing of Him who was to come, one infinitely greater than Joseph. He too was the Beloved of His Father, and was sent as Son of Man to seek the lost.
What the mourning could not see
Every day of those "many days" Joseph was alive. He mourned a death that had not happened.
An Outline of Sound WordsEverything seemed to be against Jacob. But little as he knew it, the very things he thought were against him were working for the richest blessing, both for him and for his children… God used the loss of Joseph to preserve Jacob and his house, and also to preserve the lives of many more.
Summary
- Sign — Jacob tore his outer cloak and put on hair-cloth next to his skin. These were the marks of a man in mourning, not a passing gesture.
- Sowing — the garment that deceived Isaac came back as the garment that deceived Jacob. Thirty years passed, but "God's government of His people works with great precision."
- Sorrow — grief that refuses comfort has no refuge in God. Later the same man says, "If I am bereaved, I am bereaved." That is submission, and it finds its resource in Him.
- Sight — Jacob looked no further than the grave and went down mourning. David lost a child too, and went up to worship. He looked beyond death to resurrection.
- Shadow — a beloved son, sent by his father in love and lost to him, points ahead to One infinitely greater. And while Jacob mourned, the son he wept for was alive, and God was using him to preserve his father's house.