The brothers had been estranged, separated for years. Joseph took the initiative to bring the family together again, and they came closer. Then he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. He had remembered what they had denied. But there would be no retribution.
Forgiveness is difficult, and the more one has been hurt or abused, the more difficult it becomes.
Joseph had not heard Jesus say, Love your enemies. Yet Joseph was able to do what we cannot. It is apparent that he was able to look at what had happened to him from an entirely different point of view. He seems to have known that without forgiveness, the evils that we do are final, fixed in time like tombstones, where they remain forever as irreparable injury and unrelieved resentment. Joseph was able to forgive his brothers because he was able to look at life from a point of view much, much larger than his own.