When is it permitted to tell a lie?

After the death of Jacob, Joseph's brothers were afraid.

Years earlier, when he'd revealed his true identity to them,

he appeared to have forgiven them for selling him as a slave.

But the brothers weren't wholly reassured.

Maybe Joseph didn't mean what he said.

Perhaps he still harbored resentment.

Mike, the only reason he had not taken revenge was respect for Jacob. There was a convention

in those days that there was to be no settling of scores between siblings in the lifetime of the

father. We know this from an earlier episode. after Jacob had taken his brother Esau's blessing.

Esau says, the days of mourning for my father are near. Then I will kill my brother Jacob.

So the brothers come before Joseph and say your father left these instructions before he died.

This is what you were to say to Joseph. I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and wrongs they've committed in treating you so

badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servant of the God of your father. When their message came to him,

Joseph wept. The text makes it as plain as possible that the story the

brothers told Joseph was a lie. If Jacob had really said those words, he would have said them

to Joseph himself, not to the brothers. The time to have done so was on his deathbed in the

previous chapter. The brother's tale was a white lie.

Its primary aim wasn't to deceive,

but to ease a potentially explosive situation.

Perhaps that's why Joseph wept,

understanding that his brothers still thought him capable of revenge.

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