Genesis 37:35

All his sons and all his daughters Namely, Dinah and his daughters-in-law, for several of his sons were married; rose up to comfort him In this his excess of sorrow to which he had imprudently and sinfully abandoned himself. He refused to be comforted Resolving to go down to, the grave mourning, And yet there was no foundation for all this sorrow. Joseph, whose supposed premature and violent death he thus deeply and inconsolably lamented, was still alive and in health; and God was preparing him for, and conducting him to, a state of felicity and glory much beyond what Jacob could reasonably have expected or desired for him. Nay, and God by these very means, which had deprived Jacob of him for a time, was pursuing the measures which his infinite wisdom had devised to make Joseph the instrument of preserving Jacob and all his family from perishing by famine! Thus do we often mourn, with the bitterest anguish, those very ways and acts of Providence, which are designed to be productive of the greatest good to us; and consider as the greatest evils those things which God intends to be real and lasting blessings! Let us then learn to resign ourselves and all our affairs to the disposal of that infinitely wise and gracious Being, who is engaged, by promise, to make all things work for good to them that love and trust in him. And let us be aware that great affection to any creature doth but prepare for so much the greater affliction, when it is either removed from us, or imbittered to us: inordinate love commonly ends in immoderate grief.