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

I am not sure that I ever noticed this before: when Joseph insisted that one of them remain imprisoned in Egypt until they returned with their youngest brother and chose Simeon, Joseph’s brothers returned to their father and families with the food they had bought.  They remained in Canaan until they ran out of food.  However, when Joseph demanded that they leave Benjamin, they all returned to Egypt and Judah, whose idea it had been to sell Joseph into slavery, offered himself up as a slave in Benjamin’s place.  I am not sure I can word the importance of this difference in how they responded to Simeon’s imprisonment and Benjamin’s potential enslavement.  In addition to that I want to note that when he sent his sons to Egypt a second time Israel thought he had lost a second son with Simeon’s imprisonment…he did not think that Simeon would be alive to be released when his brothers returned to Egypt.  Part of the difference in the reaction of Joseph’s brothers to the imprisonment of Simeon vs the potential enslavement of Benjamin was the fact that they believed the situation was punishment for what they had done to Joseph.  Simeon shared their guilt in that, but Benjamin did not.

Looking at the story one might wonder why Judah’s offer to be enslaved in place of Benjamin moved Joseph more than all of the brothers offering to be enslaved with Benjamin.  The latter was not exactly what a simple reading of the passage suggests.  If Joseph had enslaved all eleven of them as they “offered” it would have had serious negative consequences for the Kingdom of Egypt in dealing with other foreigners.  The brothers understood that when they made the offer.  Understand, I do not want to diminish the fact that they were united in standing up for their brother Benjamin.  So, while Joseph was touched by his brothers standing up for Benjamin, who had clearly taken his place as his father’s favorite, it was Judah’s willingness to suffer in Benjamin’s place which moved Joseph to tears.  His brothers had changed.  They had become a family.  And it was at this point that Joseph understood why he had experienced the suffering which he went through.  God had a plan to forge Jacob’s family into a nation.  Abram and his brothers went their separate ways.  Isaac and his brothers went their separate ways.  Jacob and Esau went their separate ways.  But Jacob’s sons stayed together and became a nation.

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