The Grace of Goshen: Jacob's Joy

Jacob, like his son Joseph, probably wondered whatever happened to that blessing that set the tone of his youth--that blessing promised before he was even born that he would be stronger than his brother and that his brother would serve him. Strong? A feeble, broken, limping shell of a man he was now, lamenting just a few days ago, "All these things are against me" (Genesis 42:36). He probably wondered whatever happened to Isaac's blessing upon his life or whatever became of God's blessing at Bethel or Peniel. Long ago--thirty-three long years ago--he had wrestled the Angel of the Lord and had prevailed. But in all those years since, nothing but loss and reversal seems to have filled his days--those blank, lackluster days weighted with unresolved grieving without Joseph. His steps had become slow and crooked, his movements, futile. To grieve the loss of a child was crushing enough, but to grieve without closure made each day's sorrow a little heavier than the last, for the hope that had not yet died refused to give comfort. Jacob wrestles his sorrows night after night and year after year, and who could be so cruel as to mock him that he has prevailed?

Esau. Yes, he had reconciled with Esau, but he was no traveling companion, and they had gone separate ways. Shechem. What a terrible mistake--and Dinah's ruined, tragic life, poor, beautiful woman that she was--caught in a dream that turned into a nightmare, a woman with a shame-filled past and no future. Simeon and Levi, cruel butchers that they were. Who would believe that grandsons of mild, peaceable Isaac could be so cold-blooded and malicious? They couldn't be trusted to this day. Did they know more about Joseph than they let on? Perhaps he always wondered but was afraid to bring it up. Didn't something wicked glint in their eyes whenever he mentioned Joseph's name? Rachel. His idol who died for her idols. The love of his life for whom he had slaved fourteen years. Joseph. If only the pain could be numbed a little, but Benjamin looked enough like him--but that's not fair to Benjamin. Fair? Whoever accused Jacob of being fair? Jacob doesn't want to question God, but the leaden feeling all around his heart makes life a burden, not a blessing.

God had tested Abraham with the sacrifice of Isaac, but he got him back in three days. Isaac probably felt like he lost two sons when Jacob fled and Esau was known as a would-be murderer. But they both came back in peace before he died. But Jacob really did have to lose his son--the best one of the tribe and the only one who truly loved God. It didn't make any sense at all. Jacob's eyes are dull with depression and weariness. When he has the strength even to look back on his life, perhaps he wonders why he ever tricked Esau out of his blessing and why he thought risking his life for this blessing was a good idea. His whole life has played out the pain of his own trickery over and over and over. And Peniel left him with a permanent limp. What did any of it even mean?

And yet on a calm night when the wind suddenly picks up with a strange thrill, I like to think Jacob remembers as vividly as if it were yesterday what God promised him at Bethel over fifty years earlier, "And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go" (Genesis 28:15). I can see Jacob's eyes flood with tears. Yes, this is what he needed. He needed to cry, to be weak. To let his soul bleed out this bitterness and apathy. "I will be with you," over and over it echoes through his mind as if bouncing off the shadowed hills in the far off horizon. Those promises just like the circle of the earth that define the shape of life and yet can never be touched with one's fingers. "Faith, Jacob. You must live by faith." How heavy the word must sound to his ears, but his thoughts clear and he lifts his sagging chin with new dignity as the healing tears run down his beard. Worshiping tears. Thankful, so thankful, Jacob finds his soulful heart still tender towards his God.

I wonder how long the boys will be gone this time? Jacob hasn't been all alone since he can't remember when--since that night at Peniel when he put his family ahead of him across the ford. Even Benjamin is in Egypt. And then perhaps sudden fear grips his heart. "Faith, Jacob." Yes, I wonder if Jacob feels his God nearer than when he first believed and that the ladder to heaven seems not as far away even as the horizon. And then suddenly one morning before daybreak, he hears the squeaking of wagon wheels and the plodding hoofbeats of donkeys. His heart begins to thump in his ears. Benjamin--! Jacob straightens his stiffened legs and staggers to meet his sons.

I picture Judah as the first to embrace him. His voice sounds different. The guarded tone is gone, a lilt of victory in its place. "Joseph is still alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt" (Genesis 45:26). Jacob's heart stands still. He doesn't believe it. "Faith, Jacob." Does he gaze deeply into Judah's eyes that shine even in the darkness? Those usually cold, sarcastic eyes? I picture all his sons gathering around Jacob, eager to bury their long-suppressed guilt in this strange new joy. What is this? What's going on? A spirit of grace and gentleness has beknighted each son. Perhaps as if seeing them for the first time, Jacob marvels. Just look at them! Eleven handsome men, brilliant. Shrewd. Does his heart constrict with new pain as he sees how unfair to them he has been all these years? I think something about them compels him to listen to their story as each adds new details forgotten by the other. Truth. Jacob's spirit revives, and with what trembling richness his voice breaks, "It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die" (Genesis 45:28).

The story of Jacob is almost more amazing than the story of Joseph. And we can be sure Jacob thinks of all those years--those seventeen short years with Joseph that turned into twenty-two long years without him. So Joseph is 39 years old. Think of it! A stranger to his own father! What does he even look like now? His noble young lad, so unlike his brothers. And wouldn't all those brutal imaginings of his precious boy being eaten by some wild boar begin to fade from the tortured eyes of Jacob's soul as he dares to remember Joseph the way he looked that last morning? The way the sun caught his coat of many colors when he smiled his radiant, "Goodbye!"? Perhaps he reflects, Joseph must have known, must have felt some new and daring destiny calling his name. Oh, sweet indeed are the promises of God. It all rushes over him--this one divine moment kisses away all the years of tears and senseless confusion and wondering. Governor of Egypt? Leave Canaan? If Joseph is in Egypt, to Egypt Jacob must go!

Jacob knows that he cannot leave Canaan without first revisiting his hometown in Beersheba to offer sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac (Genesis 46:1). Home--where he staged his charade as Esau more than half a century ago, where he last saw his attentive mother Rebekah, where his aloof father Isaac finally blessed him, by faith passing on Jacob's rightful blessing of Abraham. Nostalgia with its achingly sweet pain, its panorama of memories and panoply of emotions! But Jacob's journey is not complete. He will not die in the Promised Land. And as Jacob calls out to the God of his life, God answers him with promises both old and new, anchoring his emotion-tossed soul to reality. Jacob must not fear going down to Egypt, for God shall surely bring his people back again, just has He had shown Abram so long ago (Genesis 15:12-16). God will be with Jacob in Egypt, "And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes" (Genesis 46:3-4)--those eyes that have wept so long without him--Joseph, whose own eyes looked beyond the strange Providence of pain as seeing Him who is invisible, "for the word of the Lord tried him" (Psalm 105:19).

Can we even fathom this reunion? It is almost as if we must look away as Joseph embraces his father--about whom he had asked his "spy" brothers three times, "Is he still alive?" (Genesis 43:7, 27; 45:3). And whose wonder is greater--Joseph's, that his father is still alive, or Jacob's, that his son is still alive? And Joseph "fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while" (Genesis 46:29). Nothing can replace those stolen years, and yet somehow they are all stored up in that one embrace. And God wipes away the tears as Joseph promises his father the best of Egypt, Goshen in the land of Rameses, God's grace even here in this pagan land.

Jacob meets Pharaoh and blesses him, also saying, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (Genesis 47:9). Jacob is here 130 years old, and he will live in Goshen another seventeen years--nothing like those first seventeen years with Joseph in Canaan. How time has flown! Now, at 147 years old, Jacob is about to die, not having reached his father Isaac's 180 years or his grandfather Abraham's 175 years, but how much glorious color and meaning the Lord painted into the sunset of Jacob's life, such that on his deathbed he speaks to Joseph almost the reverse of what he said to Pharaoh seventeen years earlier. "The blessings of your father have excelled the blessings of my ancestors, up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers" (Genesis 49:22-26). Could there be a more eloquent legacy than that?

Joseph weeps on his father's face as Jacob dies and orders that his body be embalmed. No doubt he thinks of how bittersweet were his words as he had blessed Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, "Behold, I am dying, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers" (Genesis 48:21). Joseph's sons had never seen the land of their fathers, and Joseph himself has not seen those hills of Canaan for almost forty years. How full his heart must have been as he watches his father's miles-long funeral procession wend its way from Egypt to Canaan, to the cave of Machpelah, to be buried with Leah, Rebekah, Isaac, Sarah, and Abraham--all those bones awaiting the trumpet call for the day of resurrection where there are no tomorrows, no yesterdays, only one long glorious Today in God's land of Goshen, where every pain is healed and every promise fulfilled. Jacob's joy is that of a faith held by a thread because that thread was cabled fast to his wonderful Lord. Jacob's quest has been fulfilled in the land of eternal blessing, and this blessing he poured on Joseph's head as a crown greater than anything Egypt had to offer him.