18 Then Judah went up to him and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself. 19 My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ 20 And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’ 21 Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ 22 We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ 23 Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.’
24 “When we went back to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. 25 And when our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food,’ 26 we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother goes with us, then we will go down. For we cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ 27 Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. 28 One left me, and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. 29 If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’
30 “Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, 31 as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. 32 For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.’ 33 Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. 34 For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.”
(ESV)
STOP! Think a little 🤔 What is God saying to you?
- What is the writer saying?
- How do I apply this to my life?
The change in Judah seems to represent the change in all the brothers. Judah was the one who initiated the sale of Joseph to the Ishmaelites (37:26-27). In chapter 38 he is involved in deception and immorality with Tamar. But we see that God had been working in his heart because he became surety for Benjamin (Gen 43:8-9). He admitted their original guilt, “God has found out the guilt of your servants” (Gen 43:16). In today’s passage, he pours out his heart in intercession for Benjamin, putting himself forward as a substitute slave for Benjamin in order to save his father the grief of losing Benjamin. He has moved from selling his brother to be a slave to being a slave in his brother’s place. He has moved from a callousness towards his father to a sacrificial concern for his well-being.
Where are you on the spectrum of putting others before yourself? You first in everything or completely self-sacrificing for others? Is there a specific relationship or situation that God is wanting you to lay down your self for?