RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION

    ‘Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them
    that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go
    out from me. And there stood no man with him, while
    Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he
    wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh
    heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph;
    doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not
    answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And
    Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray
    you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your
    brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. 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. 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.’
    GENESIS xlv. 1-15.
If the writer of this inimitable scene of Joseph’s reconciliation with
his brethren was not simply an historian, he was one of the great
dramatic geniuses of the world, master of a vivid minuteness like
Defoe’s, and able to touch the springs of tears by a pathetic
simplicity like his who painted the death of Lear. Surely theories of
legend and of mosaic work fail here.
1. We have, first, disclosure. The point at which the impenetrable,
stern ruler breaks down is significant. It is after Judah’s torrent of
intercession for Benjamin, and self-sacrificing offer of himself for a
substitute and a slave. Why did this touch Joseph so keenly? Was it not
because his brother’s speech shows that filial and fraternal affection
was now strong enough in him to conquer self? He had sent Joseph to the
fate which he is now ready to accept. He and the rest had thought
nothing of the dagger they plunged into their father’s heart by selling
Joseph; but now he is prepared to accept bondage if he may save his
father’s grey head an ache. The whole of Joseph’s harsh, enigmatical
treatment had been directed to test them, and to ascertain if they were
the same fierce, cruel men as of old. Now, when the doubt is answered,
he can no longer dam back the flood of forgiving love. The wisest
pardoning kindness seeks the assurance of sorrow and change in the
offender, before it can safely and wholesomely enjoy the luxury of
letting itself out in tears of reconciliation. We do not call Joseph a
type of Christ; but the plain process of forgiveness in his brotherly
heart is moulded by the law which applies to God’s pardon as to ours.
All the wealth of yearning pardon is there, before contrition and
repentance; but it is not good for the offender that it should be
lavished on him, impenitent.
What a picture that is of the all-powerful ruler, choking down his
emotion, and hurriedly ordering the audience chamber to be cleared! How
many curious glances would be cast over their shoulders, by the slowly
withdrawing crowd, at the strange group–the viceroy, usually so calm,
thus inexplicably excited, and the huddled, rude shepherds, bewildered
and afraid of what was coming next, in this unaccountable country! How
eavesdroppers would linger as near as they durst, and how looks would
be exchanged as the sounds of passionate weeping rewarded their open
ears! The deepest feelings are not to be flaunted before the world. The
man who displays his tears, and the man who is too proud to shed them,
are both wrong; but perhaps it is worse to weep in public than not to
weep at all.
‘I am Joseph.’ Were ever the pathos of simplicity, and the simplicity
of pathos, more nobly expressed than in these two words?–(There are
but two in the Hebrew.) Has the highest dramatic genius ever winged an
arrow which goes more surely to the heart than that? The question,
which hurries after the disclosure, seems strange and needless; but it
is beautifully self-revealing, as expressive of agitation, and as
disclosing a son’s longing, and perhaps, too, as meant to relieve the
brothers’ embarrassment, and, as it were, to wrap the keen edge of the
disclosure in soft wool.
2. We have, next, conscience-stricken silence. No wonder his brethren
‘could not answer’ and ‘were troubled at his presence.’ They had found
their brother a ruler; they had found the ruler their brother. Their
former crime had turned what might have been a joy into a terror.
Already they had come to know and regret it. It might seem to their
startled consciences as if now they were about to expiate it. They
would remember the severity of Joseph’s past intercourse; they see his
power, and cannot but be doubtful of his intentions. Had all his
strange conduct been manoeuvring to get them, Benjamin and all, into
his toils, that one blow might perfect his revenge? Our suspicions are
the reflections of our own hearts. So there they stand in open-mouthed,
but dumb, wonder and dread. It would task the pencil of him who
painted, on the mouldering refectory wall at Milan, the conflicting
emotions of the apostles, at the announcement of the betrayer, to
portray that silent company of abased and trembling criminals. They are
an illustration of the profitlessness of all crime. Sin is, as one of
its Hebrew names tells us, missing the mark–whether we think of it as
fatally failing to reach the ideal of conduct, or as always, by a
divine nemesis, failing to hit even the shabby end it aims at. ‘Every
rogue is a roundabout fool.’ They put Joseph in the pit, and here he is
on a throne. They have stained their souls, and embittered their
father’s life for twenty-two long years, and the dreams have come true,
and all their wickedness has not turned the stream of the divine
purpose, any more than the mud dam built by a child diverts the
Mississippi. One flash has burned up their whole sinful past, and they
stand scorched and silent among the ruins. So it always is. Sooner or
later the same certainty of the futility of his sin will overwhelm
every sinful man, and dumb self-condemnation will stand in silent
acknowledgment of evil desert before the throne of the Brother, who is
now the Prince and the Judge, on whose fiat hangs life or death. To see
Christ enthroned should be joy; but it may be turned into terror and
silent anticipation of His just condemnation.
3. We have encouragement and complete forgiveness. That invitation to
come close up to him, with which Joseph begins the fuller disclosure of
his heart, is a beautiful touch. We can fancy how tender the accents,
and how, with some lightening of fear, but still hesitatingly and
ashamed, the shepherds, unaccustomed to courtly splendours, approached.
The little pause while they draw near helps him to self-command, and he
resumes his words in a calmer tone. With one sentence of assurance that
he is their brother, he passes at once into that serene region where
all passion and revenge die, unable to breathe its keen, pure air. The
comfort which he addresses to their penitence would have been
dangerous, if spoken to men blind to the enormity of their past. But it
will not make a truly repentant conscience less sensitive, though it
may alleviate the aching of the wound, to think that God has used even
its sin for His own purposes. It will not take away the sense of the
wickedness of the motive to know that a wonderful providence has
rectified the consequences. It will rather deepen the sense of evil,
and give new cause of adoration of the love that pardons the wrong, and
the providence that neutralises the harm.
Joseph takes the true point of view, which we are all bound to occupy,
if we would practise the Christian grace of forgiveness. He looks
beyond the mere human hate and envy to the divine purpose. ‘The sword
is theirs; the hand is Thine.’ He can even be grateful to his foes who
have been unintentionally his benefactors. He thinks of the good that
has come out of their malice, and anger dies within him.
Highest attainment of all, the good for which he is grateful is not his
all-but-regal dignity, but the power to save and gladden those who
would fain have slain, and had saddened him for many a weary year. We
read in these utterances of a lofty piety and of a singularly gentle
heart, the fruit of sorrow and the expression of thoughts which had
slowly grown up in his mind, and had now been long familiar there. Such
a calm, certain grasp of the divine shaping and meaning of his life
could not have sprung up all at once in him, as he looked at the
conscience-stricken culprits cowering before him. More than natural
sweetness and placability must have gone to the making of such a temper
of forgiveness. He must have been living near the Fountain of all mercy
to have had so full a cup of it to offer. Because he had caught a gleam
of the divine pardon, he becomes a mirror of it; and we may fairly see
in this ill-used brother, yearning over the half-sullen sinners, and
seeking to open a way for his forgiveness to steal into their hearts,
and rejoicing over his very sorrows which have fitted him to save them
alive, and satisfy them in the days of famine, an adumbration of our
Elder Brother’s forgiving love and saving tenderness.
4. The second part of Joseph’s address is occupied with his message to
Jacob, and shows how he longed for his father’s presence. There is
something very natural and beautiful in the repeated exhortations to
haste, as indicating the impatient love of a long-absent son. If his
heart was so true to his father, why had he sent him no message for all
these years? Egypt was near enough, and for nine years now he had been
in power. Surely he could have gratified his heart. But he could not
have learned by any other means his brethren’s feelings, and if they
were still what they had been, no intercourse would be possible. He
could only be silent, and yearn for the way to open in God’s
providence, as it did.
The message to Jacob is sent from ‘thy son Joseph,’ in token that the
powerful ruler lays his dignity at his father’s feet. No elevation will
ever make a true son forget his reverence for his father. If he rise
higher in the world, and has to own an old man, away in some simple
country home, for his sire, he will be proud to do it. The enduring
sanctity of the family ties is not the least valuable lesson from our
narrative for this generation, where social conditions are so often
widely different in parents and in children. There is an affectionate
spreading out of all his glory before his father’s old eyes; not that
he cared much about it for himself, since, as we have seen, elevation
to him meant mainly work, but because he knew how the eyes would
glisten at the sight. His mother, who would have been proud of him, is
gone, but he has still the joy of gladdening his father by the
exhibition of his dignity. It bespeaks a simple nature, unspoiled by
prosperity, to delight thus in his father’s delight, and to wish the
details of all his splendour to be told him. A statesman who takes most
pleasure in his elevation because of the good he can do by it, and
because it will please the old people at home, must be a pure and
lovable man. The command has another justification in the necessity to
assure his father of the wisdom of so great a change. God had set him
in the Promised Land, and a very plain divine injunction was needed to
warrant his leaving it. Such a one was afterwards given in vision; but
the most emphatic account of his son’s honour and power was none the
less required to make the old Jacob willing to abandon so much, and go
into such strange conditions.
We have another instance of the difference between man’s purposes and
God’s counsel in this message. Joseph’s only thought is to afford his
family temporary shelter during the coming five years of famine.
Neither he nor they knew that this was the fulfilment of the covenant
with Abraham, and the bringing of them into the land of their
oppression for four centuries. No shadow of that future was cast upon
their joy, and yet, the steady march of God’s plan was effected along
the path which they were ignorantly preparing. The road-maker does not
know what bands of mourners, or crowds of holiday makers, or troops of
armed men may pass along it.
5. This wonderfully beautiful scene ends with the kiss of full
reconciliation and frank communion. All the fear is out of the
brothers’ hearts. It has washed away all the envy along with it. The
history of Jacob’s household had hitherto been full of sins against
family life. Now, at last, they taste the sweetness of fraternal love.
Joseph, against whom they had sinned, takes the initiative, flinging
himself with tears on the neck of Benjamin, his own mother’s son,
nearer to him than all the others, crowding his pent-up love in one
long kiss. Then, with less of passionate affection, but more of
pardoning love, he kisses his contrite brothers. The offender is ever
less ready to show love than the offended. The first step towards
reconciliation, whether of man with man or of man with God, comes from
the aggrieved. We always hate those whom we have harmed; and if enmity
were ended only by the advances of the wrong-doer, it would be
perpetual. The injured has the prerogative of praying the injurer to be
reconciled. So was it in Pharaoh’s throne-room on that long past day;
so is it still in the audience chamber of heaven. ‘He that might the
vantage best have took found out the remedy.’ ‘We love Him, because He
first loved us.’
The pardoned men find their tongues at last. Forgiveness has opened
their lips, and though their reverence and thanks are no less, their
confidence and familiarity are more. How they would talk when once the
terror was melted away! So should it be with the soul which has tasted
the sweetness of Christ’s forgiving love, and has known ‘the kisses of
His mouth.’ Long, unrestrained, and happy should be the intercourse
which we forgiven sinners keep up with our Brother, the Prince of all
the land. ‘After that his brethren talked with him.’

World English Bible

Bible Verses About love – Hosea 11:1
When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

Bible Verses About love – Matthew 3:17
And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Bible Scriptures – John 14:6
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Bible Favorites

Bible Verses About love – Romans 16:9
Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved.

Bible Verses About love – Leviticus 19:18
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I [am] the LORD.

Bible Verses About prepare – Psalms 10:17
LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear:

Bible Verses About borrow – Deuteronomy 15:6
For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.

Bible Verses About argob – Kings-2 15:25
But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.

Bible Verses About temple – Acts 25:8
While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all.

Bible Verses About hare – Chronicles-1 2:51
Salma the father of Bethlehem, Hareph the father of Bethgader.

Bible Verses About lawyer – Luke 14:3
And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?

Bible Verses About razor – Isaiah 7:20
In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, [namely], by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.

Bible Verses About trembling – Corinthians-2 7:15
And his inward affection is more abundant toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling ye received him.

Bible Verses About ruled – Ruth 1:1
Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehemjudah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.

Bible Verses About writing – Ezekiel 13:9
And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I [am] the Lord GOD.

Bible Verses About captives – Chronicles-2 28:5
Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought [them] to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.

Bible Verses About stayed – Samuel-2 24:25
And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.

Bible Verses About greek – Romans 1:14
I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.

Bible Verses About afford – Psalms 144:13
[That] our garners [may be] full, affording all manner of store: [that] our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets:

Bible Verses About furrow – Hosea 10:4
They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.

Bible Verses About ashkelon – Zephania 2:4
For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.

Bible Verses About boards – Exodus 26:25
And they shall be eight boards, and their sockets [of] silver, sixteen sockets; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.

Bible Verses About safe – Mark 14:44
And he that betrayed him had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead [him] away safely.

Bible Verses About mariners – Ezekiel 27:9
The ancients of Gebal and the wise [men] thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.

Bible Verses About woe – Isaiah 17:12
Woe to the multitude of many people, [which] make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, [that] make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!

Bible Verses About love – Corinthians-2 9:7
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, [so let him give]; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.

Bible Verses About courage – Deuteronomy 3:28
But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see.

Bible Verses About water – Samuel-1 26:16
This thing [is] not good that thou hast done. [As] the LORD liveth, ye [are] worthy to die, because ye have not kept your master, the LORD'S anointed. And now see where the king's spear [is], and the cruse of water that [was] at his bolster.

Bible Verses About fear – Proverbs 14:16
A wise [man] feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

Bible Verses About marriage – John 2:1
And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

Bible Verses About struggle – Genesis 25:22
And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If [it be] so, why [am] I thus? And she went to inquire of the LORD.

Bible Verses About strength – Isaiah 33:23
Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail: then is the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame take the prey.

Bible Verses About visions – Joshua 11:23
So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war.

Bible Verses About giving – Corinthians-1 14:16
Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?

Bible Verses About lying – Psalms 109:2
For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

Bible Verses About life – Luke 14:26
If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Bible Verses About prayer – Isaiah 26:16
LORD, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer [when] thy chastening [was] upon them.

Bible Verses About salvation – Psalms 116:13
I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.

Bible Verses About women – Titus 2:3
The aged women likewise, that [they be] in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

Bible Verses About jealousy – Psalms 78:58
For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images.

Bible Verses About fathers – Jeremiah 11:5
That I may perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as [it is] this day. Then answered I, and said, So be it, O LORD.

Bible Verses About kindness – Psalms 92:2
To show forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,

Bible Verses About patience – Romans 5:3
And not only [so], but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

Bible Verses About health – Jeremiah 8:22
[Is there] no balm in Gilead; [is there] no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

Bible Verses About husbands – Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Bible in Basic English

Bible Verses About fathers – Jeremiah 16:3
For this is what the Lord has said about the sons and daughters who come to birth in this place, and about their mothers who have given them birth, and about their fathers who have given life to them in this land:

Bible Verses About visions – 1-Chronicles 26:1
For the divisions of the door-keepers: of the Korahites, Meshelemiah, the son of Kore, of the sons of Ebiasaph.

Bible Verses About salvation – Isaiah 63:1
Who is this who comes from Edom, with blood-red robes from Bozrah? he whose clothing is fair, stepping with pride in his great strength? I whose glory is in the right, strong for salvation.

Bible Verses About joy – Luke 1:44
For, truly, when the sound of your voice came to my ears, the baby in my body made a sudden move for joy.

Bible Verses About birth – Genesis 38:28
And while she was in the act of giving birth, one of them put out his hand; and the woman who was with her put a red thread round his hand, saying, This one came out first.

Bible Verses About dreams – Zechariah 10:2
For the images have said what is not true, and the readers of signs have seen deceit; they have given accounts of false dreams, they give comfort to no purpose: so they go out of the way like sheep, they are troubled because they have no keeper.

Bible Verses About husbands – Jeremiah 44:19
And the women said, When we were burning perfumes to the queen of heaven and draining out drink offerings to her, did we make cakes in her image and give her our drink offerings without the knowledge of our husbands?

Bible Verses About prayer – Job 21:15
What is the Ruler of all, that we may give him worship? and what profit is it to us to make prayer to him?

Bible Verses About giving – Luke 5:28
And giving up his business, he got up and went after him.

Bible Verses About tongue – Romans 3:13
Their throat is like an open place of death; with their tongues they have said what is not true: the poison of snakes is under their lips:

Bible Verses About curve – Acts 28:13
And from there, going about in a curve, we came to Rhegium: and after one day a south wind came up and on the day after we came to Puteoli:

Bible Verses About horon – Jeremiah 48:3
There is the sound of crying from Horonaim, wasting and great destruction;

Bible Verses About salem – Song-of-Solomon 1:5
I am dark, but fair of form, O daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

Bible Verses About bags – Genesis 44:13
Then in bitter grief they put the bags on the asses again and went back to the town.

Bible Verses About downfall – Jeremiah 3:25
Let us be stretched on the earth in our downfall, covering ourselves with our shame: for we have been sinners against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our earliest years even till this day: and we have not given ear to the voice of the Lord our God.

Bible Verses About facts – Luke 1:3
It seemed good to me, having made observation, with great care, of the direction of events in their order, to put the facts in writing for you, most noble Theophilus;

Bible Verses About soup – Ezekiel 24:10
Put on much wood, heating up the fire, boiling the flesh well, and making the soup thick, and let the bones be burned.

Bible Verses About sail – Acts 27:24
Saying, Have no fear, Paul, for you will come before Caesar, and God has given to you all those who are sailing with you.

Bible Verses About jordan – Mark 10:1
And he got up, and went into the country of Judaea on the other side of Jordan: and great numbers of people came together to him again; and, as was his way, he gave them teaching.

Bible Verses About ether – Psalms 133:1
<A Song of the going up. Of David.> See how good and how pleasing it is for brothers to be living together in harmony!

King James Bible

Bible Verses About elisha – Jeremiah 36:20
And they went in to the king into the court, but they laid up the roll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe, and told all the words in the ears of the king.

Bible Verses About breasts – Song-of-Solomon 4:5
Thy two breasts [are] like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

Bible Verses About yield – Revelations 22:2
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, [was there] the tree of life, which bare twelve [manner of] fruits, [and] yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree [were] for the healing of the nations.

Bible Verses About corn – Exodus 30:4
And two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it, by the two corners thereof, upon the two sides of it shalt thou make [it]; and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal.

Bible Verses About manifest – John 2:11
This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

Bible Verses About perverse – Isaiah 59:3
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

Bible Verses About slothful – Proverbs 22:13
The slothful [man] saith, [There is] a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.

Bible Verses About vineyard – Kings-2 19:29
And this [shall be] a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

Bible Verses About record – John-3 1:12
Demetrius hath good report of all [men], and of the truth itself: yea, and we [also] bear record; and ye know that our record is true.

Bible Verses About elias – James 5:17
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.

Bible Verses About declare – Revelations 10:7
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

Bible Verses About glorified – Matthew 9:8
But when the multitude saw [it], they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.

Bible Verses About liberty – Isaiah 61:1
The spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound;

Bible Verses About ishmael – Chronicles-2 19:11
And, behold, Amariah the chief priest [is] over you in all matters of the LORD; and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the ruler of the house of Judah, for all the king's matters: also the Levites [shall be] officers before you. Deal courageously, and the LORD shall be with the good.

Bible Verses About devour – Ezekiel 15:4
Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel; the fire devoureth both the ends of it, and the midst of it is burned. Is it meet for [any] work?

Bible Verses About prison – Isaiah 10:4
Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still.

Bible Verses About search – Ezekiel 34:11
For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, [even] I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.

Bible Verses About usury – Ezekiel 18:13
Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.

Bible Verses About temptation – Deuteronomy 7:19
The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.

Bible Verses About black – Lamentations 4:8
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

Bible Scriptures About rain – Jeremiah 14:10
Thus saith the LORD unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the LORD doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins.

Bible Scriptures About fools – Ecclesiastes 7:4
The heart of the wise [is] in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools [is] in the house of mirth.

Bible Scriptures About wind – Job 8:2
How long wilt thou speak these [things]? and [how long shall] the words of thy mouth [be like] a strong wind?

Bible Scriptures About whoredom – Hosea 6:10
I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel: there [is] the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.

Bible Scriptures About heart – Job 10:13
And these [things] hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this [is] with thee.

Bible Scriptures About heathen – Jeremiah 49:15
For, lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, [and] despised among men.

Bible Scriptures About incense – Chronicles-2 28:25
And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the LORD God of his fathers.

Bible Scriptures About possession – Genesis 50:13
For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.

Bible Scriptures About wicked – Jeremiah 23:11
For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the LORD.

Bible Scriptures About offering – Samuel-1 6:14
And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Bethshemite, and stood there, where [there was] a great stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the kine a burnt offering unto the LORD.