90 Joseph's Brothers Fear Him

The funeral had been completed. The private internment for the family at the cave of Machpelah ended so they family and entourage went back to Egypt. They were now going to begin life without Jacob. The ten brothers who had been so cruel to him so many years ago began to think that it was Jacob who had protected them from Joseph’s vengeance. They still had not learned fully that Joseph loved God and wanted His ways more than anything in this life. Looking back on the seventeen years that Jacob had lived in Egypt with his sons they had never sought forgiveness from Joseph for all the crimes they perpetrated against him. In fact since Joseph revealed himself to them and reconciled with them (Genesis 45) they never asked him to forgive them. They must have lived for those seventeen with some degree of anxiety that some day Joseph would get his vengeance for what they did to him. So now that Jacob was dead thy brothers began to think their wall of protection had fallen and powerful Joseph would now bring retributive harm to them. The full realization of what they had done, never asking forgiveness and Jacob’s death struck them as likely Joseph would harbor a grudge and seek to harm them.