Scripture Daily

Context No. 436 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 44:7-13: in context

7They said to him, “Why does my lord speak such words as these? Far be it from your servants that they should do such a thing! 8Behold, the money, which we found in our sacks’ mouths, we brought again to you out of the land of Canaan. How then should we steal silver or gold out of your lord’s house? 9With whomever of your servants it is found, let him die, and we also will be my lord’s slaves.” 10He said, “Now also let it be according to your words. He with whom it is found will be my slave; and you will be blameless.” 11Then they hurried, and each man took his sack down to the ground, and each man opened his sack. 12He searched, beginning with the oldest, and ending at the youngest. The cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. 13Then they tore their clothes, and each man loaded his donkey, and returned to the city.

To feel the weight of this scene you have to remember what these brothers did years earlier. They had sold their younger brother Joseph into slavery out of jealousy, because their father loved him best, and then lied to cover it up. Now Joseph, unrecognized and ruling in Egypt, has set a trap that recreates that exact moral situation. He has secretly hidden his silver cup in the sack of Benjamin, the new favored youngest son, the only other child of Joseph's own mother Rachel. And when his steward overtakes the brothers and finds the cup on Benjamin, they are handed the same choice they faced with Joseph: will they abandon the favored brother to save their own skins?

Watch what they do, because it is the point of the whole test. When they had first protested their innocence, they had rashly overpromised, saying, whoever has the cup, let him die, and the rest of us will be slaves, so sure were they of their own honesty. That vow now traps them. And when the cup is found in Benjamin's sack, the steward offers them the easy exit: only the guilty one, Benjamin, will be enslaved, and the rest of you go free and blameless. This is the moment. They could take the deal, leave Benjamin to his fate, and walk home, exactly as they once walked home without Joseph. Instead, the text says, they tore their clothes, and every one of them loaded his donkey and returned to the city with Benjamin. Not one of them abandons him. They go back together, into slavery if it comes to that, refusing to do to the second favored brother what they did to the first. They have changed.

That is a picture of something God often does with us. He brings us back to a situation shaped like an old failure, the same temptation in new clothes, to reveal whether we have actually changed or only think we have. The brothers were given a second chance at the very choice they had failed, and this time they stood by their brother. Where might I be handed a fresh version of an old failure, the same choice I once got wrong, and if I am, would I make the same decision, or have I genuinely become someone who would not?

Sources