The Book of Genesis
Part 89
Chapter 44:18-34
Thank God! personality and character are not fixed liabilities. These may be changed, improved, and refined. Many a life in its early years has been marred like the vessel seen by Jeremiah in the potter’s house (Jer. 18), but the Divine Potter has made it again another vessel as it pleased Him. This moral change and refinement are well illustrated by the remarkable transformation in the attitude and behaviour of Joseph’s half-brother Judah.
Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were his older brothers while Issachar and Zebulun were his younger ones. When he was born, his mother said, “Now will I praise the Lord: therefore she called his name Judah” (Gen. 29:35). His name probably means, “Let God be praised.” What a wonderful name! A name that implies reliance upon God, gratitude to God, and reverence before God.
Although Judah was given such an honourable name, obviously he belied its import. In fact, from his attitude toward his brother Joseph one would assume that God was not in all his thoughts. Some Bible students imagine that in his advice to sell rather than to slay Joseph, he manifested compassion and mercy. There are others who see in his words, “What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites,” evidence of cruelty and cowardice, as well as greed.
That sad chapter in the biography of Judah is followed by another just as dark (Gen. 38). If in the one there is the proof of cruelty and greed, in the other there is the evidence of sensuality and impiety. Judah stooped to the very lowest in morality and ethics.
The earliest indication of moral improvement appears when it became necessary for Jacob’s sons to go the second time and purchase food in Egypt. It was then he became responsible and surety for Benjamin.
When the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack, and his young half-brother was exposed apparently to the full penalty of a serious offence, Judah ascended to ideals rarely found in man. His intercession on behalf of Benjamin and his father is exquisite, warm, and real. In lowliness of mind he approaches Egypt’s Food Administrator, saying, “Oh, my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord’s ears.” Touchingly he speaks of his father, and rehearses the story of Joseph and Benjamin: “We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him.” Finally in total self-disregard and in complete self-abnegation he offers himself as a slave in order that Benjamin be spared and returned home to his father. There is something deeply pathetic and heroically grand in this appeal, an appeal quite irresistible to Joseph. Judah here excells, and no one who reads his speech can fail to be moved by its simplicity and genuine sincerity.