What depths there are in the corruption that is in us! As here, they dipped the favoured coat, the coat that the old father had put on Joseph, they dipped it in blood, and sent it to their father with these words: "This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no." This is the language of Cain: "Am I my brother’s keeper?" Cain was laying the burthen of Abel’s blood on the Lord, intimating by these words that the Lord should have been Abel’s keeper, seeing He had had such respect to him and his offering. So these words of Joseph’s brethren seem to lay the burthen of Joseph’s blood upon the aged father, who, if he loved him as well as this coat seemed to say he did, should have looked after him better than this blood seemed to say he had. What depths, indeed, in the revolted, corrupted heart of man! What discoveries of these depths temptation makes at times! They sinned, in all this, against their aged father, and against their unoffending brother, at a time when the love of the one had counselled, and the love of the other had undertaken, a mission to them of grace and blessing; as is said of a generation which they represent both morally and typically, "They please not God, and are contrary to all men." Dark deeds indeed! Joseph’s blood is upon themselves, let them seek to hide it as they may; and the day is before them when their sin shall find them out, and this blood upon Joseph’s coat shall be a swift witness against them. For the present they do but prosper in wickedness, that they may fill up their measure. The course of Joseph’s history is interrupted, that we might get this sight of them during Joseph’s separation from them. Chap. xxxviii. affords it to us. And it is indeed apostasy, full departure from "the way of the Lord," in which Abraham had walked, and in which he had commanded his children and his household after him to walk. Judah deals treacherously, marrying the daughter of Shuah. The way of the Lord is utterly despised and forsaken by Judah. Still grace gets pledge here. Pharez is a second supplanter. The hope of Israel is in the womb, a blessing is in the cluster; but truly it is such a cluster of a wild vine as might well be doomed to the sickle, if sovereign, abounding grace did not say, Destroy it not. Isa. lxv. 8; Matt. i. 3. And such is the sin of the nation of Israel, as of this, their own father Judah; and such the grace in which the nation shall stand in the latter day. Grace shall then reign in the story of Israel, as it now does in the person of every saint, elected in the sovereign good pleasure of God, and made a monument of the saving power of Christ.