Genesis 37:35

37:31-36 When Satan has taught men to commit one sin, he teaches them to try to conceal it with another; to hide theft and murder, with lying and false oaths: but he that covers his sin shall not prosper long. Joseph's brethren kept their own and one another's counsel for some time; but their villany came to light at last, and it is here published to the world. To grieve their father, they sent him Joseph's coat of colours; and he hastily thought, on seeing the bloody coat, that Joseph was rent in pieces. Let those that know the heart of a parent, suppose the agony of poor Jacob. His sons basely pretended to comfort him, but miserable, hypocritical comforters were they all. Had they really desired to comfort him, they might at once have done it, by telling the truth. The heart is strangely hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Jacob refused to be comforted. Great affection to any creature prepares for so much the greater affliction, when it is taken from us, or made bitter to us: undue love commonly ends in undue grief. It is the wisdom of parents not to bring up children delicately, they know not to what hardships they may be brought before they die. From the whole of this chapter we see with wonder the ways of Providence. The malignant brothers seem to have gotten their ends; the merchants, who care not what they deal in so that they gain, have also obtained theirs; and Potiphar, having got a fine young slave, has obtained his!

But God's designs are, by these means, in train for execution. This event shall end in Israel's going down to Egypt; that ends in their deliverance by Moses; that in setting up the true religion in the world; and that in the spread of it among all nations by the gospel. Thus the wrath of man shall praise the Lord, and the remainder thereof will he restrain.

And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him,.... His sons must act a most hypocritical part in this affair; and as for his daughters, it is not easy to say who they were, since he had but one daughter that we read of, whose name was Dinah: the Targum of Jonathan calls them his sons wives; but it is a question whether any of his sons were as yet married, since the eldest of them was not more than twenty four years of age; and much less can their daughters be supposed to be meant, as they are by some.

Genesis 37:35 . All his sons and all his daughters — Namely, Dinah and his daughters-in-law, for several of his sons were married; rose up to comfort him — In this his excess of sorrow to which he had imprudently and sinfully abandoned himself. He refused to be comforted — Resolving to go down to, the grave mourning, And yet there was no foundation for all this sorrow. Joseph, whose supposed premature and violent death he thus deeply and inconsolably lamented, was still alive and in health; and God was preparing him for, and conducting him to, a state of felicity and glory much beyond what Jacob could reasonably have expected or desired for him. Nay, and God by these very means, which had deprived Jacob of him for a time, was pursuing the measures which his infinite wisdom had devised to make Joseph the instrument of preserving Jacob and all his family from perishing by famine! Thus do we often mourn, with the bitterest anguish, those very ways and acts of Providence, which are designed to be productive of the greatest good to us; and consider as the greatest evils those things which God intends to be real and lasting blessings! Let us then learn to resign ourselves and all our affairs to the disposal of that infinitely wise and gracious Being, who is engaged, by promise, to make all things work for good to them that love and trust in him.

(35) Into the grave. —Heb., Sheol, which, like Hades in Greek, means the place of departed spirits. Jacob supposed that Joseph had been devoured by wild beasts, and as he was not buried, the father could not have “gone down into the grave unto his son.” (Comp. Note on Genesis 15:15 .)

35 . his daughters ] Either a different version from that in chap. 30 where Dinah is his only daughter; or referring to his sons’ wives. the grave ] Heb. Sheol , the name of the abode of the dead, answering to the Greek ᾅδης , e.g. Acts 2:27 . Sheol , as the region of the dead, is, according to Hebrew ideas, the locality beneath the ground, where the disembodied spirits led a shadowy existence. See Isaiah 14:9-20 . Jacob thinks that he will arrive in Sheol , as he had been on the earth, in mourning for his lost son. See Genesis 42:38 . The shade of his son will there recognize the signs of his father’s grief for his sake. “To bring a man’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave” (here and Genesis 42:38 , Genesis 44:29 ; Genesis 44:31 ) does not, therefore, only mean “to bring a man prematurely aged to his grave,” but also “to bring an old man to the place of departed spirits in a state of lamentation for bereavement.”

All his daughters; Dinah, and his daughters-in-law, and his sons’ daughters. The grave; this Hebrew word sheol is taken sometimes for hell, as Job 11:8 Proverbs 15:11 , but most commonly for the grave, or the place or state of the dead, as Genesis 42:38 44:29,31 Psa 6:5 16:10 , &c. And whether of those it signifies, must be determined by the subject and the circumstances of the place. Here it cannot be meant of hell, for Jacob neither could believe that good Joseph was there, nor would have resolved to go thither; but the sense is, I will kill myself with grief, or I will never leave mourning till I die. Unto my son; or, for my son: so the preposition el is oft used for al, as 1 Samuel 1:27 4:19,21,22 2 Samuel 21:2 .

Verse 35. - And all his sons - the criminals become comforters (Lange)- and all his daughters - either Jacob had other daughters besides Dinah (Kalisch, Gerlach, 'Speaker's Commentary'), or these included his daughters-in-law, the word being employed as in Ruth 1:11, 12 (Willet, Bush, Murphy), or the term is used freely without being designed to indicate whether he had one or more girls in his family (Augustine) - rose up to comfort him (this implies the return of Jacob's brethren to Hebron); but he refused to be comforted; and he said (here the thought must be supplied: It is vain to ask me-to be comforted), For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning - or, retaining the order of the Hebrew words, which is almost always more expressive than those adopted by our translators, I will go down to my son mourning to, or towards, in the direction of, Sheol. The term שְׁאֹל - more fully שְׁאול , an inf. absol, for a noun, either (1) from שָׁאַל = שָׁעַל , to go down, to sink (Gesenius, Ftirst), signifying the hollow place; or, (2) according to the older lexicographers and etymologists, from שָׁאַל , to ask, and meaning either the region which inexorably summons all men into its shade, the realm that is always craving because never satisfied (Keil, Murphy, Lange), or the land that excites questioning and wonder in the human heart, "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns" (T.

Lewis) - is not the grave, since Jacob's son had no grave, but the place of departed spirits, the unseen world ( Ἅδης , LXX.) into which the dead disappear, and where they consciously exist ( 2 Samuel 12:23 ). Thus (literally, and) his father (not Isaac) wept for him. Genesis 37:35