Joseph’s concluding profession in
50:20 plumbs the depths of divine forgiveness and divine sovereignty: “You
intended evil to me, but God intended it for good in order to keep many people
alive at this time” (similarly 1 Sam 12:20; 24:17). Of Joseh’s response, Gerhard von Rad writes
that “true forgiveness is not simply a human-to-human matter, but something
that reaches deeply into the relationship of humans and God.” The powerful use
of the Hebrew verb khashab (“intend,” “reckon”) occurs only twice again
in Gen (15:6; 38:15), most important in 15:6, where God reckons or accounts
Abraham’s faith as righteousness. The paradox of divine sovereignty is nowhere made
more simply and clearly than in Joseph’s declaration to his frightened
brothers. Human plans and intentions—even evil plans and intentions—are penultimate;
divine grace alone is ultimate. Events that are wrenched from human hands
remain secure in God’s hands. God does not need human good to make the divine
best. The divine image cannot be so defaced and disfigured in humanity that it
cannot be redeemed; malevolent human plans and intentions can be reshaped by
and for divine benevolence. What humanity intends for death God can redeem for
life. This truth, like all divine truths, is not simply an ontological truth
but an operative reality, a truth that forgives and heals the brothers’ past
actions, a truth that dispels and consoles their fears, a truth that sets their
lives on a new course. The “now” of grace liberates from the “then” of sin. “Now
do not fear, I will sustain you and your children. And he consoled them and
spoke to their hearts” (50:21). (James R. Edwards, In the Beginning:
A Commentary on Genesis and Its Reception in the New Testament [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Pillar Books, 2026], 606)
