Joseph has reconciled with his brothers. Now he needs them to deliver a message — quickly.
"Make haste, and go up to my father, and say to him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, The Lord hath set me for a chief over all the Mizraee; come down to me, delay not" (Genesis 45:9). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the urgency. Ocheyu — hurry. Lo te'achar — do not delay.
The message has a specific theological frame. Joseph does not say, Pharaoh made me ruler. He does not say, my dream interpretation earned me the post. He says, Adonai — the Lord — hath set me. The credit goes to the Holy One of Israel, not to Egypt. In the Targum's Aramaic, shanyani Adonai l'rabba — the Lord has set me as chief. Joseph wants Jacob to know that the son he thought was swallowed by the Egyptian wilderness has, in fact, been held in the hand of the God of his fathers the whole time.
The haste matters too. Joseph has just learned that the famine has two years left to run (Genesis 45:6). Canaan cannot survive those years. The only way to keep the family alive is to bring them down into Mizraim, under his protection, where he can allocate grain by executive order.
The sages also note a quieter reason for the urgency. Joseph has not seen Jacob in twenty-two years. His father is old. If there is any window left at all, it is narrow. Every delayed hour is an hour of a reunion that may not come.
"Come down to me, delay not." A son's command to his father. A viceroy's command to a patriarch. Either way, love drives the imperative.