This is Joseph _as_ in resurrection. I say _as_ in resurrection. For the thing itself--resurrection from the dead--had to wait for the day of the Son of the living God, who was to be, in His own person, alive from the dead. But though we could not have "the very image" of this great mystery, yet we have "shadows" of it, both in certain ordinances of the law, and in certain histories of the elect. The dead and the living birds of Leviticus xiv., and the two goats of Leviticus xvi., are among such ordinances; and such historical scenes as the unbinding of Isaac from the altar on Mount Moriah, or Jonah’s deliverance from the whale’s belly, set forth the same. And so does this season in Joseph’s history, being the day of his power and authority in Egypt after his sore troubles in the pit and in the prison. It is Joseph _as_ in resurrection. The Spirit of God, in chap. xlix., using Jacob as His oracle, looks back at Joseph in this condition, and celebrates him accordingly. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall: the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." And having spoken this of Joseph, the Spirit uses it as a figure of a Greater than Joseph; for Jacob adds, "From thence is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel." We have Christ in Joseph. The risen Christ is seen as in a figure here. All power is now in Him, in heaven and on earth. He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. His title to the resources of creation is sure, sealed by the dignity of the place He now fills. And the resources which He now _owns_, by-and-by He will _use_ for Israel and for the whole earth, after the pattern of this mystery of Joseph. This we are now about to see. The famine begins, and the opening of Joseph’s storehouses begins, at the close of chap. xli. But the scene is then changed for a season; and the story of the brethren’s repentance and acceptance is let in, as a kind of episode. But there is wonderful beauty in this. Because the restitution of all things waits, as we know, for the repentance and fulness of Israel. So that this introduction of the new matter, by way of an episode, in chapters xlii.-xlvi., is full of beauty and meaning; and the scene in Egypt, and the full opening of Joseph’s stores for that land and the whole earth, are resumed in due season afterwards, in chapter xlvii. For, "what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" asks the apostle, tracing, under the Spirit, the story of Israel. Rom. xi. "If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness?" So that we are prepared for this repentance of the brethren going before the full blessing of the earth.