Too Little, Too Late - Reflections on Genesis 45:1-15, Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Wednesday, June 17, 2026

         I know all too well how much many readers and preachers love this text from Genesis. Here is the commentary from the New Interpreter’s Study Bible by way of example: “The conflict between Joseph and his brothers is finally resolved when Joseph, who has gained the power to determine the outcome of events, chooses not to take revenge for past injustices but makes peace with those who mistreated him and thereby reunites the family” (p.76). This sweet interpretation of what occurs in Gen.45 could be seen as acceptable, if it existed earlier in the Joseph story. If he had acted like this in Gen.42, it might well be possible to say that “Joseph chooses not to take revenge for past injustices.” But because we can and must read Gen.42-44, the lovely portrait of a forgiving Joseph simply will not stand. Joseph gets his revenge, and he gets it with real cruelty and a deep sense of vengeance. How else can we hear the chapters that precede any other way? It is telling that the lectionary collectors avoid those chapters entirely. We, if we are fair to the text we have been given, cannot.

         Due to a famine in Israel, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt, the world’s breadbasket, to find food. They go and are ushered into the presence of the secretary of agriculture of the land, a man dressed sumptuously, and speaking fluent Egyptian. But then events take a very dark turn. Key lines are found in Gen.42:7-9: “Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he played the stranger to them, spoke harshly to them, ‘Where do you come from?’ They replied, ‘From the land of Canaan to buy food.’ Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. Then Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them, and said to them, ‘You are spies! You have come to see the land’s weakness!’” All of this is very telling. Joseph from his lofty perch as vizier of Egypt, knew immediately who these visitors were; they are his brothers. But, of course, the very last person they imagine this powerful man to be is Joseph, their long-lost brother who they assume is dead, lost in the grinding maw of Egyptian slavery.

         But instead of revealing himself to them, Joseph simply cannot resist playing a game with his desperate brothers, who are clearly not spies but supplicants, seeking food from the ample bounty of Egypt. But Joseph apparently has no intention of helping these men until he gets his revenge against them for throwing him into that desert pit to die. Hence, he speaks in fury to them, demanding that they tell him where they are from—he of course knows the answer to that fatuous question, since he is from there, too. But after they claim to have come merely to buy food, “he remembers his dreams” of power, of how they would bow down to his superiority. Well, they have now done so. Is that not enough to satisfy the arrogant boy? No, it is not! He accuses them of spying, of seeking to observe the land’s weaknesses in order to return and perhaps bring an army to defeat the Egyptians. It is an absurd accusation in every part, driven by a man’s certain desire to get even for a past slight. Joseph may eventually attempt reconciliation with his family, but he does not make any such attempt here.

         And if that is not enough, in the succeeding scenes, he proceeds to send them home with food, for which they have paid, but places the money they brought back in their sacks. He then sends his servant after them who finds the hidden money, accuses them of theft, and demands that they be dragged back to Egypt! Surely that will be game enough. Not so! When Benjamin, the new youngest son of Jacob, returns with the brothers to Egypt, once again to confront the merciless vizier, that cruel man again sends them home, but first hides his own sacred divining cup in Benjamin’s sack. Again, a servant is sent, finds the hidden cup, accuses the innocent Benjamin of theft, and drags all the brothers again back to Egypt.

         All during these cat and mouse games, Joseph goes off to weep, three times in fact silently. Why all this weeping? Is he sorry he is playing this game of revenge? Why can he not simply reveal who he is to his puppet-like brothers? Well, he finally does reveal his identity, at which the brothers are struck silent; “so shocked were they at his presence that they could not answer him” (Gen.45:3). Indeed! The very last person on earth they expected this vizier to be was their own brother! Joseph then says this: “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for Elohim sent me before you to save life… it is not you who sent me here, but Elohim” (Gen.45:7-8). Joseph tries in these pious speeches to do two things: to assuage his brother’s astonishment at his presence among them, and to insist that all of this was God’s doing. But surely we must ask: was it God’s doing to exact filthy revenge on these desperate brothers, not to mention the aging father left behind? How much revenge is too much revenge? 

         It just will not do, as much as Joseph seems to think it will, to sweep all that cruelty of Gen.42-44 under the biblical rug, by mouthing certain simple pieties about God’s intentions for Joseph and his brothers. It is unsatisfactory, and it is not enough to avoid what cruelties Joseph has enacted in his story. The fact that these brothers are not reconciled to their brother even at the end of the story in Gen.50 makes it all too clear that his pitiless games at their expense have driven a wedge between them that easy pieties cannot begin to bridge. We simply must admit that easy phrases are not in and of themselves enough to close serious wounds that we humans tend to inflict on one another. I can blithely say, “I forgive you,” but unless I am willing to take with the greatest seriousness the genuine pain I may have inflicted on another, or they on me, I cannot expect a real reconciliation between us. Joseph should not have such an expectation in Gen.45, and he does not receive it, despite the many sermons that suggest he did. Joseph, like us, cannot deny his own cruelty, and must continue the hard work of reconciliation before he ever may expect to be rejoined to his own brothers. His pious words of Gen.45 are simply too little, too late. The hard work of community-building is still to be done, and is perhaps not completely finished even as the pages of Genesis end.