In yesterday's study Jacob vowed never to allow his son Benjamin to go to Egypt. But the famine continues on and the food his older sons brought back from Egypt is gone. A choice has to be made even though Jacob doesn't want to make it.
"Now the famine was severe in all the land. So when they had eaten all the grain they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, 'Go back and buy us a little more food.'" (Genesis 43:1-2) I don't know how look it took them to eat the grain, but I wonder what Joseph and Simeon are thinking and feeling in Egypt. I feel like Joseph probably doesn't have any doubts they will return, since he knows the famine is going to last for seven years. He knows they won't be able to hold out that long without coming back for grain. Simeon, who is kept in what I imagine is quite comfortable custody upon Joseph's instructions, knows how overprotective his father is of Benjamin. Simeon almost certainly has doubts that Jacob will allow the men to return to Egypt with Benjamin. If they do not return with Benjamin, Simeon doesn't ever expect to have his freedom back or see his family again. Joseph (whom Simeon believes is an Egyptian governor) stated quite plainly that unless he sees the youngest brother he will not believe they aren't spies and he will not release Simeon from custody.
None of the brothers have forgotten the governor's words, but their father seems to be in denial about what the man in Egypt said. Judah, his third born son, reminds him. "But Judah said to him, 'The man warned us solemnly, 'You will not see my face again unless your brother is with you.' If you will send our brother along with us, we will go down and buy food for you. But if you will not send him, we will not go down, because the man said to us, 'You will not see my face again unless your brother is with you.'" (Genesis 43:3-5) No one can buy grain in Egypt without meeting with Joseph. That's Pharaoh's rule. If the men go to Egypt and one of Joseph's servants tells him they are there without Benjamin, he will refuse to meet with them. This means they won't be sold any grain and their trip will be for nothing. When Jacob behaves as if they can go and buy grain without taking Benjamin, Judah puts his foot down and states that they will not go unless Benjamin goes too. I don't think in a case like this he's being disrespectful to his father when he refuses to obey him; I think he's being the voice of reason, just as his brother Reuben was the voice of reason in yesterday's passage. Jacob needs to face the facts and someone has to be reasonable but firm with him to get him to face the facts.
"Israel asked, 'Why did you bring this trouble on me by telling the man you had another brother?'" (Genesis 43:6) Just as he did in Chapter 42, Jacob blames his sons for their predicament. In their nervousness and in their eagerness to prove they were honest men, they told extra details about their family while standing in front of the governor of Egypt. They babbled a lot in the presence of this fearsome man, blurting out that they had one dead brother and one brother at home with their father. Jacob is saying, "This is all your fault! That Egyptian wouldn't even know Benjamin exists if you hadn't told him!"
Here's the thing though: Jacob is the one who deserves the most blame for their predicament. If he hadn't shown such overwhelming favoritism to Joseph, his ten older sons wouldn't have come to resent and despise Joseph. If they hadn't resented and despised Joseph, they wouldn't have sold him into slavery and pretended he was dead by showing their father his robe with animal blood on it. But at the same time, we can see from this story that God is able to use a person's mistakes and weave them into the tapestry of His plans for their lives and for the lives of their descendants. If Joseph hadn't been sold into slavery, he wouldn't now be the governor of Egypt. If he weren't the governor of Egypt, he wouldn't be in a position to save the lives of all his family during the severe famine. Because he is the governor of Egypt, his family will end up moving to Egypt, fulfilling a prophecy the Lord gave to Abraham that his descendants would spend 430 years in a foreign land. No one in this story has lived a perfect life, not even the godly Joseph, yet the Lord somehow transforms even their failures into the fulfillment of their destinies. This comforts me. I've made mistakes, haven't you? Yet they haven't disqualified us as the children of God. They haven't ruined us beyond repair. They haven't altered the big picture that God painted long before we were born.
All the brothers try to defend themselves against Jacob's accusation that they said too much in Egypt. I am not sure they're being truthful when they defend themselves because they are going to describe their conversation with the governor in a different way than it was presented to us in Chapter 42. In Chapter 42 we found them volunteering information about their family, but here in Chapter 43 they insist the governor asked them many questions about their family. I think they're trying to present themselves in a better light to their father so he won't be so harsh in his opinion about how well (or how poorly) they handled things in Egypt. "They replied, 'The man questioned us closely about ourselves and our family. 'Is your father still living?' he asked us. 'Do you have another brother?' We simply answered his questions. How were we to know he would say, 'Bring your brother down here?'" (Genesis 43:7) How indeed could they have known that? It's seems such an illogical request for the governor of Egypt to demand to see the youngest son of a shepherd in Canaan. How is seeing Benjamin supposed to prove the men are not spies, as the governor accused them of being? The whole situation makes little sense to these men because they don't yet know who the governor really is, but it's logical that they ask their father, "How were we to know he'd demand we bring Benjamin to see him?"
Judah again takes the lead in handling this meeting with his father and brothers. "Then Judah said to Israel his father, 'Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life. As it is, if we had not delayed, we could have gone and returned twice.'" (Genesis 43:8-10) Judah is beginning to "man up" as the saying goes. He's no longer the young guy who deeply resented the affection his father lavished on a different son. Following the supposed death of Joseph, Jacob transferred all his affections to Benjamin, but by this time Judah is past allowing himself to be bothered by it. His father is who he is and the family dynamics are what they are and Judah doesn't waste time and energy and thoughts on that stuff anymore. Benjamin has got to be an adult by now but Jacob has treated him like a petted and protected child for so long that they all refer to him as a "boy". Something about Benjamin seems helpless, and I think it's because his father has made him fairly helpless, but Judah promises to be personally responsible for his safety. He says, "Father, if I don't bring him back here in one piece, safe and sound, you may blame me every day for the rest of my life. You may disinherit me, curse me, and cast me out of the family. I'm willing to suffer any consequences that you want to heap on me if I fail to keep my word."
There are segments of the Bible that make me chuckle and one of them is in verse 10 above when Judah tells his father (and I'm paraphrasing his words), "We've debated this issue for so long that we could have been to Egypt and back twice by now." Judah's family line will be the family line of the coming Messiah, and we see here that Judah is prone to exasperation and impatience. That reassures me since I'm a person who is prone to exasperation and impatience! Yet the Lord chose Judah to be the ancestor of His own Son. If the Lord could use a man like Judah, who looted and pillaged the town of Shechem, who once harbored intense hatred in his heart, who sold one of his brothers into slavery, who now is becoming a better man but who still struggles with the type of emotions we all struggle with----then certainly the Lord can use us, can't He?
There's nothing Jacob can really do but give in. If he doesn't agree, he risks his whole family starving to death. His family is quite large by now, for most or all of his sons have wives and children. He's also responsible for the lives of all their servants and all the animals. If he doesn't allow Benjamin to go to Egypt, the thing he fears most will happen anyway: Benjamin will die. He won't die at the hands of an intimidating foreign governor but he'll die a slow death of starvation in Canaan. Jacob agrees to let him go. "Then their father Israel said to them, 'If it must be, then do this: Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift---a little balm and a little honey, some pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double the amount of silver with you, for you must return the silver that was put back into the mouths of your sacks. Perhaps it was a mistake. Take your brother also and go to the man at once. And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you. As for me, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved.'" (Genesis 43:11-14)
Jacob's final comment reminds me of the words of the Hebrew queen of Assyria, Queen Esther, who dared go into the presence of her husband the king without being summoned. Doing such a thing was worthy of the death penalty in Assyrian culture, but she had to go before the king to plead for the lives of the Hebrew people among them. She fasted and prayed and left it all up to God, saying before she made her appearance before the king, "If I perish, I perish." Knowing we've done all we can do and knowing that everything really depends on the power of the Lord is a good place to be. It's a place of surrender and acceptance. Queen Esther didn't know how things were going to turn out but she was willing to do what was right even if it meant her death. She was willing to be used by the Lord, if it was His intention, to preserve her people. Jacob has reached the same place of surrender and acceptance. Sending all his sons to Egypt is the right thing to do. If he doesn't, the governor won't sell them any grain and the whole family will perish. On the other hand, the governor may believe they were all thieves who took their silver back, and he may have every one of them executed. Jacob has done all he can do, which is considering the options and realizing this is the only one he has, and trusting the Lord to do what seems best to Him. Jacob is saying, "There's no way around this. You must all go to Egypt or all of us will die, including all of our wives and children and grandchildren. If it is the Lord's will, you will all come home to me safely. If it is the Lord's will, you will not. May His will be done."
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