Genesis 43:4

“And the famine was sore in the land.” The word for famine, râʻâb, means hunger or dearth, and “sore” is kâbêd, heavy. This famine lay on the land like a weight. The land, ʼerets, is Canaan, Jacob’s own home, so the hunger had reached them as well as Egypt, and they had nowhere nearer to turn. Egypt, watered by the Nile’s yearly flood, had grain because Joseph had stored it.

The story behind this goes back to Genesis 41. Joseph told Pharaoh that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine, and he gathered grain throughout the good years (Genesis 41:29–36). Pharaoh set him over all the land of Egypt (Genesis 41:40), and when the famine came it spread over all the face of the earth, and people from every country came to Egypt to buy (Genesis 41:47–57). Abram had gone down to Egypt in a famine long before (Genesis 12:10), and now his grandson’s family must do the same.

Genesis 42 tells of the first journey. Ten brothers went down to buy grain (Genesis 42:1–3). Joseph knew them, though they did not know him. He accused them of being spies, kept Simeon bound, and told them to bring their youngest brother to prove their words (Genesis 42:15–20). On the way home they found their money in their sacks and were afraid (Genesis 42:27–28). Jacob refused to let Benjamin go. Reuben offered his own two sons as a pledge, and Jacob answered that if harm came to Benjamin it would bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave (Genesis 42:36–38).

“When they had eaten up the corn” uses two Hebrew verbs together, kâlâh, to finish or bring to an end, and ʼâkal, to eat. They had eaten the grain to the last of it. “Corn” in the English of the KJV means grain of any kind, such as wheat or barley, and has nothing to do with maize, which was unknown in Egypt and Canaan. Jacob speaks as ʼâb, father and head of the household, responsible for everyone under his roof. “Buy us a little food” uses shâbar, a verb made from the word for grain, so it means to deal in grain, to buy it. ʼôkel is food, and mᵉʻaṭ is “a little”. The family was paying for its bread, and Jacob asks only for enough to keep them alive.

Judah answers his father with the condition that stands in the way. “The man did solemnly protest unto us” translates ʻûwd, a verb whose root idea is to repeat, and so to protest or testify, as a man does when he says something again to make it stick. Joseph had warned them earnestly, and the condition was fixed.

“Ye shall not see my face” uses pânîym, the word for face, plural in form but always used as a singular, which reaches out to mean front and presence. To see a ruler’s face was to be admitted to him, and David used the same kind of words when he said that Absalom should not see his face. Without an audience there was no grain. “Except” is biltîy, a particle that only ever works as a negative, and it leaves one door open: “except your brother be with you.” The word for brother, ʼâch, comes again and again in these verses, and almost every time it points to Benjamin.

In verses 4 and 5 Judah lays out both sides of the choice. “If thou wilt send our brother with us, we will go down and buy thee food.” If Jacob refuses, “we will not go down.” The verb for send is shâlach, to send away or let go, and “go down” is yârad, to descend. Canaan lies higher than the Nile valley, so Scripture speaks of going down to Egypt. Judah is stating facts, and the facts are hard. A journey without Benjamin would be wasted and could cost them more than Simeon.

In verse 8 Judah speaks to “Israel his father” and asks, “Send the lad with me.” The word for lad, naʻar, covers a boy from infancy to youth and can also mean a servant. Benjamin was likely a young man in his early twenties, though still the youngest, whom his father kept close. Judah asks that he be sent “with me”, into his own keeping. “We will arise and go” gives the readiness of men who will leave the moment Benjamin is allowed to come.

“That we may live, and not die” sets châyâh, to live, beside mûwth, to die. Judah names everyone whose life hangs on the decision: “both we, and thou, and also our little ones.” The little ones, ṭaph, are the children of the household. Keeping Benjamin at home would leave him to starve with the rest, Jacob included.

Jacob gives way in verse 11: “If it must be so now, do this.” The little word ʼêphôw, “now” or “then”, carries the weight of a father who has run out of reasons to refuse. Once he has yielded, he turns to careful preparation.

“Take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels.” Zimrâh is choice fruit, the best of the crop, and Jacob gathers it even from a land in famine. “Carry down the man a present”: the word is minchâh, a gift or tribute, which elsewhere is also the word for an offering to God. Here it is a gift to a powerful man, to show respect and win his favour, just as Jacob once sent a present ahead of him to Esau. Proverbs says that a man’s gift makes room for him (Proverbs 18:16).

Each item is a product of Canaan that Egypt valued.

• Balm, tsᵉrîy, a balsam that oozes from the plant, prized as a medicine and for its fragrance. Jeremiah later asks whether there is no balm in Gilead (Jeremiah 8:22).
• Honey, dᵉbash, named from its stickiness. It can also mean a syrup, and here it may be a fruit syrup such as date syrup.
• Spices, nᵉkôʼth, an aromatic gum, perhaps styrax, used powdered.
• Myrrh, lôṭ, a sticky gum, probably ladanum, used for its scent.
• Nuts, bôṭen, pistachio nuts.
• Almonds, shâqêd, named as the tree that is earliest in bloom.

“A little” comes twice in the verse, and it is mᵉʻaṭ, the word Jacob used when he asked for “a little food”. Even the present is measured by the famine. Jacob is sending tribute, without knowing it, to his own son.

“Take also your brother, and arise, go again unto the man.” The verb for take, lâqach, is the one Jacob has just used of the fruits and the money, and Benjamin comes last, the hardest thing to hand over. “Arise” urges them to set out without more delay, and “go again” is shûwb once more. “The man” is ʼîysh, a man, an individual, and it is all the family ever calls Joseph in these verses, since they do not know who he is. Rachel’s son, for whom Jacob had mourned for so long, is the man they are being sent to.

Then Jacob prays. “And God Almighty give you mercy before the man.” The name is ʼêl Shadday. ʼêl is God, the mighty one, and Shadday is the title “the Almighty”, which may mean “the All-Sufficient One”, though its exact meaning is uncertain. It is the name by which God appeared to Abram when he gave him the covenant promise (Genesis 17:1). Jacob has prayed in fear before, on the night before he met Esau (Genesis 32:9–10), and now he turns again to the God who has kept him all his life.

Mercy is racham, compassion, a plural word in Hebrew that by extension can mean the womb, the place of a mother’s tenderness. Jacob asks God to put compassion for his sons in the heart of the man who holds their lives. “That he may send away your other brother, and Benjamin”: the other brother is Simeon, still bound in Egypt, and Binyâmîyn means son of the right hand. “Before the man” is pânîym again, the face. The brothers are going back to the face they were warned they would be refused, and Jacob asks God to make that face kind.

“If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” The verb shâkôl properly means to miscarry, and then to be bereaved or made childless. The Hebrew runs Im shakkolti shakkolti, and “bereaved” comes twice in the English as well. Jacob has done all he can, and he leaves the outcome with God, prepared even for the loss he fears most. Abraham once had to let go of his beloved son at God’s word (Genesis 22:1–19), and Jacob now lets Benjamin go with little hope and a prayer. Scripture calls us to the trust that Jacob is learning here: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

Jacob goes to God expecting loss, and God is already preparing reunion. Within two chapters he will have all his sons again, and Joseph besides, when Joseph makes himself known to his brothers (Genesis 45).

From the beginning of Genesis 37 to the end of Genesis 50, God is quietly carrying out what he promised Abraham, to make of him a great nation and bless all families of the earth through him (Genesis 12:1–3). The famine, Joseph’s place in Egypt, Jacob’s fear and the brothers’ delay all serve that purpose. In Egypt the family will be kept alive and grow into a nation until the night God brings them out (Exodus 12). Joseph will sum it up himself: his brothers meant evil against him, and God meant it for good, to save many people alive (Genesis 50:20).

Scripture says the same in many places. A man’s heart plans his way, and the LORD directs his steps (Proverbs 16:9). The counsel of the LORD stands for ever (Psalm 33:10–11), and his eye is on those who fear him, to keep them alive in famine (Psalm 33:18–19). David had never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread (Psalm 37:25). God let Israel hunger in the wilderness to humble them and test them, and to teach them that “man doth not live by bread only” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). All things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28).

The famine also tests these men. The brothers who once sold a brother now plead for one, and the father who once favoured one son learns to put all of them into God’s hands.

A family facing death by hunger, with bread to be had only from the brother they rejected, is a picture of our own need. Jesus calls himself “the bread of life” and promises that whoever comes to him will never hunger (John 6:35). He is the living bread come down from heaven, given for the life of the world (John 6:48–51), and the water he gives becomes a spring of everlasting life (John 4:13–14). Isaiah calls the hungry to come and buy and eat, without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1–2), and in Christ the meal is free.

Joseph, too, foreshadows Christ. He was rejected by his own brothers and later raised to power to save them, and Christ “came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11) and was then highly exalted (Philippians 2:9–11). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and God was in him reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18–19). Jacob’s sending of his beloved son into danger for the family’s life reminds us of the Father, who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16).

These fourteen verses show God working through hunger, argument, delay, grief and a reluctant old man’s prayer, and none of it falls outside his plan. He was patient with Jacob’s fear. He took Judah, who once sold his brother for silver, and made him a man who would answer for his brother with his own life. And he was already preparing the answer to Jacob’s prayer before Jacob prayed it.

Jacob’s prayer was small and fearful, and God answered it beyond anything he imagined. God is our refuge and strength (Psalm 46:1), and Paul tells us to bring our requests to him with thanksgiving, with the promise that his peace will keep our hearts (Philippians 4:6–7). Above all, the passage gives us a surety. Judah promised to bring his brother home and set him before his father, and Jesus has pledged himself to bring us safely to his Father.