And God sent me before you
This he repeats to impress the minds of his brethren with a sense
of the good providence of God in bringing him to Egypt before
them, to make provision for their future welfare, and to
alleviate their grief, and prevent an excessive sorrow for their
selling him into Egypt, when by the overruling hand of God it
proved so salutary to them: to preserve you a posterity in
the earth;
that they and theirs might not perish, which otherwise, in all
human probability, must have been the case; and that the promise
of the multiplication of Abraham's seed might not be made of none
effect, but continue to take place, from whence the Messiah was
to spring: and to save your lives by a great
deliverance;
from the extreme danger they were exposed unto, through the
terrible famine, and in which deliverance were to be observed the
great wisdom, goodness, power, and providence of God.