Page:The Story of Joseph and His Brethren.djvu/88

represented as coming riding on a white horse, "clothed with a vesture dipped in blood" What this vesture means we can be at no loss to understand; for it is there said that His name is called "the Word of God." The Lord came as the Word, that is. He came spiritually by opening His Word, enabling men to see, and know, and receive Him. Now if, as we have seen, the literal sense of the Word is meant by the Lord's garment, then some particular condition of the Word must be meant to be described, when the Lord, as the Word, is said to be clothed in a garment dipped in blood. This representation means, that at the end of the church, when the Lord should come to raise up a new church. His Word would have suffered violence. Bloody men are spoken of in the Word in the strongest terms of condemnation and abhorrence, and it is even said that "the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man." (Psa. v.6.) When, therefore, it is recorded that Joseph's brethren dipped his coat in blood, we have a representation of what the Jews did to the Lord and His Word; they did violence to them,