Genesi 44:4

Genesi 44:4 [And] when they were gone out of the city, [and] not [yet] far off, Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good?

Ver. 4. Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good?] This, blind nature saw to be the sum of all sins. Ingratum dixeris, omnia dixeris. Some vices are such as nature smiles upon, though frowned at by divine justice; not so this. Hercules is much condemned by the heathens for killing his schoolmaster Linus; Alexander, for doing the like by his friend Clitus; Nero, by his tutor Seneca: Muleasses, king of Tunis, is cried out on, for torturing to death the Manifet and Mesnar, by whose means especially he had aspired to the kingdom.

a Philip, king of Macedonia, caused a soldier of his, that had offered unkindness to one that had kindly entertained him, to be branded in the forehead, with these two words; Hospes ingratus. Unthankfulness is a monster in nature, a solecism in manners, a paradox in divinity, a parching wind to dry up the fountain of further favour. Benjamin's five fold mess was no small aggravation to the theft here laid to his charge. b

a Turk. Hist., fol. 642.

b Manlii, loc. com.