Genesis 47:23

‘YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE’

‘Behold I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh.’

Genesis 47:23

The R.V. translates the song of the elders thus: ‘Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood, men of every kindred’ (Revelation 5:9); but the Greek word might be rendered, ‘Thou didst buy for God.’ It is the same word as is used in 2 Peter 2:1, ‘denying the Lord that bought them.’ ‘Ye are not your own,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘for ye were bought with a price.’

I. It was a great stroke of statesmanship, which vastly added to the stability of Pharaoh’s throne, when all Egypt became his, and the very lives of the people. It must have been little short of a revolution, introducing conditions like those which obtained in England in the old feudal times. But how great the revolution which happens in a man’s life, when he realises that by the death of the Cross Jesus purchased us, all we are, and all we stand for, to be for God! We were bought for God.

II. When once we realise this, we are set free as by a great deliverance. We are free of all men, because we are the bond-slaves of God. We cry with Paul: ‘Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus’ (Galatians 6:17, r.v.). We see that time, talents, money, position, are all His purchased acreage, which we must cultivate for our Master; so that the revenue of the crops may be made over to Him who owns all. Food, sleep, recreation, are attended to, not as ends in themselves, but as the proper care due to that purchased possession which we are expected to preserve on Christ’s behalf (Ephesians 1:14).