What Does Genesis 50:18 Mean?

His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants." The brothers who sent a message (v.16) now come themselves: they approach Joseph directly and fall down before him. "Fell down before him" is the prostration of Joseph's original dreams: "your sheaves bowed down to my sheaf" (Genesis 37:7), "the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me" (Genesis 37:9). The dreams that launched the narrative are now fulfilled, one final time, with full consciousness and voluntary submission by the brothers themselves. They are bowing; Joseph is standing. The dream's resolution is complete.

"We are your servants": the brothers offer themselves as Joseph's servants, the formal statement of subordination. This is the submission they have enacted since Genesis 42 (bowing before the prime minister without knowing who he was), but now it is stated explicitly and with full knowledge: we know who you are; we know what we did to you; we offer ourselves as your servants. The voluntary submission is the brothers' acknowledgment that they deserve whatever Joseph's power might bring them and that they are entrusting themselves to his mercy.

The falling down and servant-declaration by the brothers in verse 18 is the final fulfillment of Joseph's youthful dreams. The dreams in Genesis 37 were the source of the brothers' hatred: "Do you intend to reign over us? Do you intend to rule over us?" (Genesis 37:8). The answer, at the end of the book, is: yes. But the reigning and ruling came through the path of slavery, false accusation, and prison: not through the direct assertion of the dreamed-of authority. The brothers bow before the authority they once rejected, and the authority responds with the opposite of domination.