to send away · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
man
אִ֑ישׁ'Ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
before
לִפְנֵיהֶ֣םlif.nei.Hem
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
Joseph
יוֹסֵֽףyo.Sef
H3130
Joseph · proper noun, a man's name
sold
נִמְכַּ֥רnim.Kar
H4376
to sell · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
servant
לְ֝עֶ֗בֶדle.'E.ved
H5650
a servant · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Acts 7:9 And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him,
Genesis 37:36 And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, and captain of the guard.
Genesis 45:4-5 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…
Genesis 50:20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
Genesis 37:27-28 Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were c…
Genesis 39:1 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the…
Genesis 45:7-8 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 105:8-24
We are here taught, in praising God, to look a great way back, and to give him the glory of what he did for his church in former ages, especially when it was in the founding and forming, which those in its latter ages enjoy the benefit of and therefore should give thanks for. Doubtless we may fetch as proper matter for praise from the histories of the gospels, and the acts of the apostles, which relate the birth of the Christian church, as the psalmist here does from the histories of Genesis and Exodus, which relate the birth of the Jewish church; and our histories greatly outshine theirs. Two things are here made the subject of praise: -
I. God's promise to the patriarchs, that great promi…
He sent a man before them, even Joseph,.... Who, though but a lad of seventeen years of age when he was sold into Egypt, yet was a grown man when he stood before Pharaoh, and interpreted his dreams of plenty and famine to come; and advised him to lay up store in the years of plenty, against the years of famine; by which he appeared to be a wise man, as the Targum here calls him; see Genesis 37:3. Him God sent before into Egypt; before Jacob and his sons went down thither, to make provision for them, to support them in the time of famine, and preserve their lives. God is said to send him, though his brethren sold him out of envy; there being such a plain hand of Providence in this matter; and…
Psalm 105:16-19
16. And he called a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. 17. He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a slave. 18. They afflicted his feet in the stocks: the iron entered into his soul. 19. Until the time that his word came: the word of Jehovah tried him.
16. And he called a famine upon the land Here the inspired writer recounts a most illustrious proof of divine providence towards the chosen people, at the time when the covenant might seem to be void and disannulled. The inheritance of the land of Canaan (as has been stated above) was added, as an earnest or pledge for confirmation. The descent of Jacob into Egypt, which deprived his house of the…
The Church Fathers
He sent a man before them. He speaks of Joseph himself. Joseph was sold as a slave. A well-born and holy man is sold.
"But He had sent a man before them" [Psalm 105:17]. What man? "Even Joseph." How did He send him? "Joseph was sold to be a bond-servant." When this happened, it was the sin of his brethren, and, nevertheless, God sent Joseph into Egypt. We should therefore meditate on this important and necessary subject, how God uses well the evil works of men, as they on the other hand use ill the good works of God.
Not nature but foolishness makes the slave. Not manumission but learning makes a person free. Esau was born free, but he became a slave; Joseph was sold into slavery, but he was raised to power8 so that he might rule those who had purchased him. Yet he did not slight his obligation to work zealously; he clung to the heights of virtue; he preserved the liberty of innocence, the stronghold of blamelessness. So the psalmist beautifully says, "Joseph had been sold into slavery. They had bound his feet with fetters." "He had been sold into slavery," he says; he did not become a slave. They had bound his feet, but not his soul.How is his soul bound when he says, "The iron pierced his soul"? Although the souls of others were pierced with sin (iron is sin, because it pierces within), the soul of blessed Joseph did not lie open to sin but pierced through sin. He was not swayed by the beauty of his mistress's charms, and so he did not experience the flames of passion, for he was aflame with the greater flame of divine grace. Thus, it is said very aptly of him, "Because the word of the Lord burned him," and with this he quenched the fiery darts of the devil.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Afflicted Saints · Examples of afflicted Saints:: Joseph — Examples of afflicted Saints:: Joseph
Joseph · .His father’s partiality for, excites the jealousy of his brethren — .His father’s partiality for, excites the jealousy of his brethren
Predestination · 19:25; — 19:25;
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
"To call up a famine" is also a prose expression in Kg2 8:1. To break the staff of bread (i.e., the staff which bread is to man) is a very old metaphor, Lev 26:26. That the selling of Joseph was, providentially regarded, a "sending before," he himself says in Gen 45:5. Psa 102:24 throws light upon the meaning of ענּה ב. The Kerמ רגלו is just as much without any occasion to justify it as עינו in Ecc 4:8 (for עיניו). The statement that iron came upon his soul is intended to say that he had to endure in iron fetters sufferings that threatened his life. Most expositors take בּרזל as equivalent to בּבּרזל, but Hitzig rightly takes נפשׁו as an object, following the Targum; for ברזל as a name of an…
These verses tell the story of Joseph (see Gen 37–41).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 105:17
He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant:
He sent a man before them, even Joseph. He was the advance guard and pioneer for the whole clan. His brethren sold him, but God sent him. Where the hand of the wicked is visible God's hand may be invisibly at work, overruling their malice. No one was more of a man, or more fit to lead the van than Joseph: an interpreter of dreams was wanted, and his brethren had said of him, "Behold, this dreamer cometh." Who was sold for a servant, or rather for a slave. Joseph's journey into Egypt was not so costly as Jonah's voyage when he paid his own fare: his free passage was provided by the Midianites, who also secured his introducti…
