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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3
desire to increase their embarrassment by censuring them. He felt that
they had suffered enough for their cruelty to him, and he endeavored
to comfort them. He said to them, “Now therefore be not grieved, nor
angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither, for God did send me
before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been
in the land, and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither
be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a
posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So
now it was not you that sent me hither, but God; and he hath made me
a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout
all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto
him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me Lord of all Egypt.
Come down unto me, tarry not. And thou shalt dwell in the land of
Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou and thy children, and thy
children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast.
And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine;
lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty.
And, behold your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that
it is my mouth that speaketh unto you.
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And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye
have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. And he
fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept, and Benjamin wept
upon his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon
them, and after that his brethren talked with him.”
They humbly confessed their wrongs which they had committed
against Joseph, and entreated his forgiveness, and was greatly rejoiced
to find that he was alive; for they had suffered remorse, and great
distress of mind, since their cruelty toward him. And now as they
knew that they were not guilty of his blood, their troubled minds were
relieved.
Joseph gladly forgave his brethren, and sent them away abundantly
provided with provisions, and carriages, and every thing necessary for
the removal of their father’s family and their own to Egypt. Joseph
gave his brother Benjamin more valuable presents than to his other
brethren. As he sent them away he charged them, “See that ye fall not
out by the way.” He was afraid that they might enter into a dispute, and
charge upon one another the cause of their guilt in regard to their cruel
treatment of himself. With joy they returned to their father, and told