The archers] The Archers (as this verse sheweth) were those that hated him, and they that hated him were his brethren who sold him, and would have killed him, Gen. 37. and the wife of Potiphar who falsly accused him, entitling his name to her owne crime, and Potiphar himselfe who thereupon imprisoned him, and it may be the Magicians of Egypt who were by him put downe in their art of divination, and the Courtiers of Pharaoh who envied to see a stranger advanced to such honour in their Countrey; whose arrowes were such as David complaineth of, They whet their tongues like a sword, they bend their bowes to shoot their arrowes even bitter words, Psalms 64:3. these were slanders proceeding out of the bitternesse of their owne spight, and tending to make him of an unsavourie relish with others, especially with Pharaoh, whose chiefe favourite he was: and because these Archers are in the Originall called masters of arrowes (which terme implieth a skilfulnesse in shooting: See Annot. on Chap. 14. vers. 13.) it is like that some of them were very subtle in their malicious suggestions against him, and their words were as venomed arrowes, Psalms 64:3. shot by those who bend their tongues like their bowes for lies, Jeremiah 9:3. sorely grieved him] He was sore grieved when his brethren stript him of his coat and cast him into a pit, Genesis 37. vers. 23, 24. for then he besought them in the anguish of his soule to spare him, but they would not heare, Chap. 42. 21. and it could not but sorely grieve him when he was sent to prison as guiltie of a rape upon his Mistresse, (in his endeavour, though not in effect) which his soule abhorred; yet that which sore grieved Joseph, may much comfort others, in that in him they may observe, that sore griefe from the wicked, and great love from God, may meet together in the same man.