Genesis 42:1

How often God chooses to use hard times for His own purposes and in His ways! It is for the good of all, saints and sinners alike. So it is here. The pinch of want fell on Jacob and his sons; "for the famine was in the land of Canaan."

God produced grief of heart, and exercises of conscience, in a most wonderful way. Years rolled on, and these brothers might have wrongly imagined that all was well. But then came "seven years of plenty, and seven years of scarcity!" What did they mean? Who sent them? And what were they designed for? Admirable providence! Unsearchable wisdom! The famine reaches Canaan. The calls of hunger actually bring the guilty brothers to the feet of the injured Joseph!

Under the stress of famine Jacob has to say to his sons, "Why do you look at one another?" They are in a desperate plight. This much they realise: there is no help in one another. If help is to come, it must come from someone outside themselves. So the ten brothers come to Egypt and present themselves before Joseph.

They heard that there was grain in Egypt. They heard that there was deliverance to be had if only they could get it, and they were perishing. They heard there was salvation. They felt their need, and felt they would like to be saved. But they could not get salvation without going to the saviour. They could not get deliverance apart from the deliverer. In their hunger they could get food only from Joseph. He was the despised one, the one they had hated, the one they had cast out and sold. Yet he was the one whom God had raised up to hold every resource in his power, and everything that could meet their need.

The famine reaches Jacob's land. God makes him and his sons feel the distress of famine until they hear that Egypt has plenty of food available for sale. So Jacob orders his sons to take a trip there to buy food (v. 2). Joseph's ten brothers then "went down" (v. 3), showing that God must humble Israel before He gives His blessing.

He was now highly exalted among the Gentiles and acting as saviour of the world, but his brothers needed his bounty as much as anyone else. But by their own wicked actions they had shattered all the links that once bound them to him. Only severe dealings could rightly restore those links — dealings very painful in nature, yet suited to work real repentance in them. The terrible famine, whatever else it might do, was designed to play a part in bringing about that desirable end. Jacob sent all his sons except Benjamin to buy grain in Egypt, and as a result we begin to see Joseph's dreams fulfilled.

All this speaks plainly of things to come. A time is coming fast: "the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth" (Rev. 3:10). For the Jew it will be the time of "great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world" (Matt. 24:21). "Alas!" says the prophet Jeremiah, "that day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob" (Jer. 30:7). And in that day of trial like no other, the one resource will be the exalted Christ. In the days of His humiliation, Jew and Gentile rejected Him and crucified Him.