I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 42-44.

    There was a famine in Canaan which led Abraham to go to Egypt and spend some time there. There was another famine in Canaan which tempted Isaac to go to Egypt, but God told him not to do so, so he did not. Now we have a famine in Canaan which led, ultimately, to Jacob and his descendants moving to Egypt. I don’t know that there is any significance to the fact of recurring famines in Canaan, but I wanted to make note of it in case something later strikes me as significant about it.

    I noticed in today’s passage that both Reuben and Judah took leadership roles among their brothers. The first time we see these two both doing so was when the brothers sold Joseph into slavery. In that case, Reuben had the brothers throw Joseph into a cistern rather than kill him outright, intending to return and release Joseph later. While Judah convinced them to sell Joseph to slavers rather than let him die in the cistern. In today’s passage, Reuben tried to convince Jacob to send them immediately back to Egypt with Benjamin by offering the lives of his own sons against Benjamin’s safe return. Later, when Jacob is desperate for more grain, Judah offers to take the blame for eternity if anything happens to Benjamin. I believe part of Reuben’s motivation for an immediate return was a desire to free Simeon from imprisonment. In these examples we see Judah being slightly more effective as a leader than Reuben, but much of that could just be circumstances. However, at the end of the passage we see Judah take a step up. There he offers himself in place of Benjamin. Judah was willing to sacrifice himself for his brother. It appears to me that Judah was a more effective leader than Reuben and that fact played as much of a role in Jacob’s later blessing giving the leadership role of his sons to Judah over Reuben as the fact that Reuben had slept with Jacob’s concubine.