And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors—i.e. his coat of ends, or coat of pieces (vide on Genesis 37:3)—that was on him.
And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. Cisterns when empty, or only covered with mud at the bottom, were sometimes used as temporary prisons (Jeremiah 38:6; Jeremiah 40:15). And—leaving him, as they must have calculated, to perish by a painful death through starvation, with exquisite cold-bloodedness, paying no heed to his piteous outcries and appeals (Genesis 41:21)—they sat down (the callous composure of the act indicates deplorable brutality on the part of Joseph's brethren) to eat bread (perhaps with a secret feeling of satisfaction, if not also exultation, that they had effectually disposed of the young man and his dreams): and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, Behold, a company—orchath, from arach, to walk; a band of travelers, especially of merchantmen; a caravan; συνοδία ὁδοιπόροι (LXX.; of. Job 6:19)—of Ishmaelites—Arabs descended from Ishmael, who occupied the district lying between Egypt and Assyria (Genesis 25:18), and, as appears from the record, carried on a trade with the former country. That Ishmael's descendants should already have developed into a trading nation will not be surprising (Bohlen) if one reflects that Ishmael may have married in his eighteenth or twentieth year, i.e. about 162 years before the date of the present occurrence, that four generations may have been born in the interval, and that, if Ishmael's sons had only five sons each, his posterity in the fifth generation (not reckoning females) may have amounted to 15,000 persons (Murphy). But in point of fact the Ishmaelites spoken of are not described as nations—simply as a company of merchants, without saying how numerous it was (Havernick, 'Introd.,'§ 21)—came (literally, coming) from Oilcad (vide Genesis 31:21) with (literally, and) their camels bearing spicery— נְכאת, either an infinitive from נָכָא, to break, to grind (?), and signifying a pounding, breaking in pieces, hence aromatic powder (Gesenius); or a contraction from נְכָאוֹת (Ewald), meaning that which is powdered or pulverized. Rendered θυμιαμάτα (LXX.), aromata (Vulgate), στύραξ (Aquila), it was probably the gum tragacanth, many kinds of which appear in Syria (Furst, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Keil, Kalisch, Lange, Murphy), or storax, the resinous exudation of the styrax officinale, which abounds in Palestine and the East (Aquila, Bochart, Bush, 'Speaker's Commentary,' Inglis)—and balm— צֱרִי (in pause צרי, after vau of union צְרִי), mentioned as one of the most precious fruits of Palestine (Genesis 43:11), rendered ῥητίνη (LXX.) and refina (Vulgate), and derived from צָוָה, to flow, to run (hence, literally, an outflowing, or out-dropping). was unquestionably a balsam, but of what tree cannot now be ascertained, distilling from a tree or fruit growing in Gilead, and highly prized for its healing properties (Jeremiah 8:22; Jeremiah 46:11). Vide Lexicons (Gesenius and Furst) sub voce; Michaelis, 'Suppl.' p. 2142; Kalisch in loco—and myrrh,— לֹט, στακτή (LXX.), stacte (Vulgate), pistacia, was more probably ladanum (Gesenius, Furst, Rosenmüller, Keil, Kalisch, et alii), an odoriferous gum formed upon the leaves of the cactus-rose, a shrub growing in Arabia, Syria, and Palestine—going—the caravan route from Gilead crossed the Jordan in the neighborhood of Bersan, and, sweeping through Jenin and the plain of Dothan, joined another track leading southwards from Damascus by way of Ramleh and Gaza—to carry it down to Egypt. At that time the land of the Pharaohs was the chief emporium for the world's merchandise.
HOMILETICS