Genesis 45:15 Meaning He Kissed All His Brothers

Forgiveness offered to one is not truly offered until it reaches all, and so the embrace widens to include every part that had condemned. A mind cannot keep some of its brothers guilty and call itself at peace, and here love touches each of them alike, withholding from none.

Only after this does speech return, because communication was never blocked by the wrong done but by the guilt kept over it. Once no one is held guilty, the frightened silence ends and the mind can speak freely with itself again.

Joseph: the loving self that extends the same welcome to every part, forgiveness that excludes no one Brethren: all the once-condemning aspects of the mind, now met with tenderness and freed to communicate again

Avera: Freedom from enmity Avera is the absence of hostility toward another. His arms go around the same men who stripped him and sold him to a passing caravan, and none of that debt is collected here. Hatred repaid with hatred keeps both sides tied to each other, and he has let his end of the rope go.

Mettā: Loving-kindness Mettā is the wish for another's welfare. A kiss for each of them, given before any apology has been offered or asked for, is that wish taking bodily form. It goes to all of them alike, with no sorting of the ones who argued for the pit from the ones who argued against it.

Karuṇā: Compassion Karuṇā is the heart moved by another's pain. His tears fall on their shoulders while they stand frozen, sure that the Egyptian lord holding their lives is about to settle accounts. He weeps over their terror rather than his own lost years, and the weeping is what reaches them first.

Kukkucca: Remorse Kukkucca is worry over a wrong already done, the kind that stirs the mind and blocks it. From the moment he said his name they have not managed a word back; the pit they threw him into has closed their throats. Guilt like that keeps turning the old deed over and leaves nothing free for speech.

Sāmaggī: Concord Sāmaggī is harmony among those who were divided. Talking is the last thing to come back, after the kissing and after the weeping, because for more than twenty years these were men who could not speak peaceably to him. Now they can say anything: the famine, the road back, their father's face when he hears.