They Never Actually Said It and He Wept Anyway

There is a thing that happened at a table nine years ago and nobody has mentioned it since.

Everybody was there. Everybody heard it. It is not in dispute in any factual sense, and if you asked any of the eleven people present they would remember the sentence and probably remember who was sitting where.

And it has never been raised. Not once. There has been no apology, no acknowledgment, no oblique reference, and the person it was said to has been at every Christmas since and has passed the food and been passed the food.

That is a particular condition and it is worse than a feud. A feud is at least a shared understanding that something happened. This is a situation where the wrong is entirely real and has no official existence, and the person carrying it starts, after about the fourth year, to wonder whether they have got it out of proportion, because nothing in the room's behavior confirms that anything occurred.

Genesis 50 has a family in exactly that condition seventeen years after the fact.

The apology may not have been real

Read what the brothers actually do, because the detail is uncomfortable and it is deliberate.

Their father has died, and they are frightened, and they send a message.

And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin. (Genesis 50:16-17, King James Version)

Thy father did command before he died. They are quoting Jacob. And there is no record anywhere in Genesis of Jacob saying this, and Jacob had years and every opportunity to say it directly, and the text simply does not contain it.

Most readers conclude they made it up. And notice what they do with the request even so: they put it in a dead man's mouth and they send it by messenger rather than coming themselves.

That is not an acknowledgment. That is a frightened negotiation, seventeen years late, delivered by proxy, using a quotation that may not exist.

You are looking at a family that could not do it, and Scripture recorded that they could not. Genesis 50:16 has the request arriving by messenger with a possibly invented quotation, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who guides into what actually happened rather than into a tidier version.

He wept before he said anything

And then one clause, and it is the hinge of the chapter.

And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. (Genesis 50:17)

He weeps first. Before the speech about God meaning it for good, before the reassurance, before anything he is famous for saying.

Nobody in the text explains why. Given what has just been described, there are only unhappy options: because they were still afraid of him after seventeen years of being fed by him, because they had to invent a dead man's instruction to approach him, because this was the closest thing to an acknowledgment he was ever going to get and it was not one.

What matters is that Scripture puts the weeping in. It does not present a man who has processed this and arrived somewhere serene. It presents a man in charge of Egypt crying at a message.

You are allowed to weep at the shape of an apology that never arrived. Genesis 50:17 records the weeping before the reassurance, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, who helps our infirmities, that what a person cannot say is carried anyway.

What he says is not that it was fine

Then the famous sentence, and both halves of it need reading.

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. (Genesis 50:20)

Ye thought evil against me. He says it out loud, to their faces, seventeen years later, and he does not soften one word. The account of what happened stands exactly as it was.

That is worth having, because a great deal of what gets preached about forgiveness sounds like an instruction to revise the account, and Joseph does not revise anything. The evil is named as evil by the man it was done to, in the same sentence where he releases them.

But God meant it unto good. And the second half is not about them. It is about a third party who was working on something else the entire time, which is what lets the first half be said accurately without it being a charge.

You are able to say exactly what happened and release somebody in the same sentence. Genesis 50:20 does both without softening either, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who makes a person able to hold an accurate account without it curdling.

Where the acknowledgment actually goes

The practical question is what to do with an acknowledgment that is never coming, and Paul answers it in a way that is usually misread as passivity.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

Vengeance is mine. People hear that as a restriction. It is a transfer, and it is a transfer of the whole matter rather than only of the punishment.

Because what a person is actually holding, in the nine-years-of-nothing situation, is not usually a desire to hurt anybody. It is a case file. It is the accurate record of what happened, held carefully, because if they put it down nobody else in the world is holding it and it will be as though it never occurred.

That is what the verse addresses. The record does not cease to exist when it is put down. It is being held by somebody with better standing, and the release is not an erasure, it is a transfer of custody.

You are transferring custody rather than erasing a record. Romans 12:19 says vengeance is mine, I will repay, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person is assured of standing while a case is out of their hands.

Somebody has been keeping the record all along

There is a verse in the Psalms that says something almost unbelievably specific about that record.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8)

Put thou my tears into thy bottle. The image is of tears being collected and kept, and are they not in thy book, which is a rhetorical question expecting yes.

That verse is the answer to the fourth-year doubt. A person who has begun to wonder whether they have got it out of proportion, because nothing in the room confirms it, is being told that a record exists and is being kept accurately by somebody who was present.

And if what happened is something that is still happening, or if carrying it has reached the point where you are not safe or do not want to be here, say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust. In the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour, and nothing in this article asks anybody to raise an old wound with a person it is not safe to raise it with.

You are on a record kept accurately by Somebody who was in the room. Psalm 56:8 has the tears collected and the book asked about, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, in a knowing that does not depend on anybody's admission.

What he does after is ordinary

The last thing in the chapter is not a reconciliation scene.

Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. (Genesis 50:21)

Spake kindly unto them. Literally, spoke to their heart.

There is no ceremony. Nobody makes a speech. He goes on feeding them, which he had been doing for seventeen years, and the thing that changes is the register of how he talks to them.

That is a very small outcome for a chapter this size and I think it is honest. The family never acknowledges anything, in the text, ever. What Joseph does is speak kindly, which is a thing available to a person on a Thursday without anybody's cooperation.

You are able to do the small ordinary thing without anybody's cooperation. Genesis 50:21 ends on speaking kindly rather than on a reconciliation, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is gentleness rather than a decision a person makes about somebody.