And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I spake unto you, saying, Ye are spies: Hereby ye shall be proved: By the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither. Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be kept in prison, that your words may be proved, whether there be any truth in you: or else by the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies. (Gen. 42.14-16)
The best men may slip in their language by following the customs of the multitude around them. We are accountable for every word that we utter, and like Joseph in Pharaoh's court, we in our society today live amongst much unsanctified speech, and need to join with the prayer of the Psalmist who said, "Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips" (Ps. 141.3), and, particularly, to guard against minced oaths and other violations of the third commandment. Swearing by creatures, especially those to whom others credit divinity, as the Egyptians did Pharaoh, is unlawful, and thus, Joseph's speech here is a warning to us, not an example to be emulated.
Matthew Henry writes:
He charged them with bad designs against the government (v. 9), treated them as dangerous persons, saying, You are spies, and protesting by the life of Pharaoh that they were so, v. 16. Some make this an oath, others make it no more than a vehement asseveration, like that, as thy soul liveth; however it was more than yea, yea, and nay, nay, and therefore came of evil. Note, Bad words are soon learned by converse with those that use them, but not so soon unlearned. Joseph, by being much at court, got the courtier's oath, By the life of Pharaoh, perhaps designing hereby to confirm his brethren in their belief that he was an Egyptian, and not an Israelite. They knew this was not the language of a son of Abraham. When Peter would prove himself no disciple of Christ, he cursed and swore.
Fisher's Catechism:
Q. 55.19. Is it a taking of God's name in vain, to swear by the creatures; such as, by heaven, by our life, soul, conscience, or the like?
A. Yes; because swearing by any of his creatures, is interpretatively a swearing by God the Creator and Preserver of all things, Matt. 23:22 -- "He that sweareth by HEAVEN, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon."
Q. 55.20. Did not Joseph, who was a good man, swear repeatedly "by the life of Pharaoh"? Gen. 42:15, 16.
A. The goodness of the man did not excuse the sinfulness of the action: we are not to "do evil, that good may come," Rom. 3:8. For, though it may be alleged, that to say, "By the life of Pharaoh," is no more than to say, "As sure as Pharaoh lives;" yet the words themselves being in the form of an unlawful oath, which it would seem was commonly used by the Egyptians, they ought not, for this reason, to have been uttered.
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