But as for you, ye thought evil against me
That must be said and owned, that their intentions were bad; they
thought to have contradicted his dreams, and made them of none
effect, to have token away his life, or however to have made him
a slave all his days:
[but] God meant it unto good;
he designed good should come by it, and he brought good out of
it: this shows that this action, which was sinful in itself, fell
under the decree of God, or was the object of it, and that there
was a concourse of providence in it; not that God was the author
of sin, which neither his decree about it, nor the concourse of
providence with the action as such supposes; he leaving the
sinner wholly to his own will in it, and having no concern in the
ataxy or disorder of it, but in the issue, through his infinite
wisdom, causes it to work for good, as follows:
to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people
alive;
the nation of the Egyptians and the neighbouring nations, as the
Canaanites and others, and particularly his father's family: thus
the sin of the Jews in crucifying Christ, which, notwithstanding
the determinate counsel of God, they most freely performed, was
what wrought about the greatest good, the salvation of men.