45:1 could not refrain himself. This scene is surely the most dramatic confrontation and reunion in all literature, but it is far more than literature. This was the event which established the miracle nation of Israel. This was the founding of that unique people through whom would be given to the world the Scriptures and of whom one day the Saviour would come. Had this scene not occurred, the children of Israel would soon have scattered and merged with the other peoples of the Middle East. It had been a long time in preparation, but God had a long-range goal.

45:1 known unto his brethren. There is a great similarity here to another dramatic confrontation that will come at the end of this age, when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to meet His brethren of the house of Israel, those who rejected Him and even urged His crucifixion, and who have continued to deny Him through all the centuries since. “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10). It is largely because of this striking parallel that many have taken Joseph to be a type of Christ, even though the New Testament writers nowhere speak explicitly of Him in such a comparison.