Genesis43chapter 43

Genesis 43:1-2

This is the third famine in Genesis to move a patriarch's household, after the one that sent Abram down in 12:10 and the one Isaac was forbidden to follow in 26:1. The first two ended with the family back in Canaan, and this one does not. God had told Abram in 15:13 that his seed would be strangers in a land that was not theirs for four hundred years, and the sore famine of this verse is the machinery that puts them there.

Genesis 43:3-5

Jacob had said in the previous verse only that they should go and buy a little food, as though the condition attached to the last trip had not been spoken. Judah answers by repeating the condition twice in three verses, that they shall not see the man's face except their brother be with them. The whole family is now held by a demand made by a ruler they cannot identify, and the one thing he wants is the son they have kept hidden at home.

Genesis 43:6-7

Jacob's first response is to blame his sons for answering a stranger's questions honestly. The man who once dealt with his own father by a garment and a kid is now being dealt with by his sons, and he cannot see what is being done to him any more than Isaac could. Their answer is the plain one, that the man asked straitly of their state and their kindred and they could not have known where it was going.

Genesis 43:8

Reuben the firstborn had already made his offer in 42:37, that Jacob might kill his two sons if Benjamin did not come back, and Jacob refused it flatly. Judah, the fourth son, offers nothing of anyone else's and states the case as survival for the whole house, that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones. Clarke notes that the word behind the lad is not the word for a child, and that Benjamin was a grown man with a family of his own by now.

Genesis 43:9-10

The Hebrew root behind surety here is the root behind the pledge Judah handed Tamar in 38:17 and 38:20, when he gave his signet and staff to a woman at the roadside and never redeemed them. The same man now puts himself up as the pledge for his brother, and in 44:33 he will ask to stay as a bondman in Benjamin's place. Wesley reads this as the evidence that Judah's repentance over what was done to Joseph was real, and the Letter to the Hebrews later calls Jesus, out of Judah's own tribe, the surety of a better testament.

Genesis 43:11-13

Jacob sends balm, spices and myrrh down to Egypt, and those are the exact goods the Ishmaelite caravan was carrying down to Egypt in 37:25 on the day the brothers sold Joseph into it. The freight that took the son away is now the gift sent after him by a father who does not know it. Jacob also sends double money and orders the returned silver carried back, on the reading that it was an oversight.

Genesis 43:14

God Almighty is El Shaddai, the covenant name given to Abraham in 17:1 and spoken over Jacob himself at Bethel in 35:11 when the promise of nations was renewed. He reaches for that name at the point where he expects to lose everything, and then lands on the flattest sentence in the chapter, if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. Clarke takes the verse as spoken prophetically, with God giving Jacob some assurance that his children would be restored.

Genesis 43:15-17

They go down to Egypt and stand before Joseph, and the text lists what they carry in the order Jacob named it, the present, the double money, and Benjamin. Joseph's whole demand was the last item, and the moment he sees Benjamin he orders a slaughter and a dinner at noon. He does not speak to them at all here; he speaks to his steward about them, which is how the chapter keeps him a stranger.

Genesis 43:18-20

An invitation to dinner reads to them as arrest, and the specific fear they name is being taken for bondmen, which is exactly what they did to Joseph. Clarke's line on it is that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. Ambrose noticed that they stop at the door and start pleading their case before anyone has accused them, preferring to be justified from their works rather than receive what was given.

Genesis 43:21-23

They tell the whole story of the money without being asked, down to the detail that it was there in full weight, and the honesty is new in these men. The answer they get is that their God, and the God of their father, had given them treasure in their sacks, spoken by an Egyptian household servant who then says he had their money himself. Simeon comes out to them in the same verse, so the brother they left bound in 42:24 is returned before a word of accusation is spoken.

Genesis 43:24-25

Water for the feet and provender for the animals is the old courtesy Abraham offered the three men at his tent door in 18:4, and here it is offered to men who came expecting chains. They spend the morning preparing a gift for a man who has already ordered a feast for them. Everything they are anxious about has been settled behind their backs, and they will not learn that for another two chapters.

Genesis 43:26-28

They bow to the earth in verse 26 and bow again in verse 28, which is the sheaves of his dream in 37:7 standing round about and making obeisance. Genesis states its own rule for this at 41:32, that a thing doubled is established by God and will shortly come to pass, and the doubling here is not a dream but the fulfilment of one. The second dream of 37:9 brought the sun and the moon down as well, and Jacob is still in Canaan, so that half is not yet paid.

Genesis 43:29-31

The text calls Benjamin his mother's son rather than his brother's brother, which marks the one man in the room who shares Rachel with him, and Rachel died bearing this boy in 35:18. Joseph's first words to him are a blessing rather than a question, God be gracious unto thee, my son. Then he has to leave the room, and this is the second of the times the ruler of Egypt turns aside to weep over these men, running from 42:24 through to 50:17.

Genesis 43:32-33

Three tables are set because Egyptians would not eat bread with Hebrews, and Joseph sits at none of theirs, alone between the people he rules and the family he came from. Henry reads the third table as the position of a man who dared not own himself a Hebrew and would not sit with the Egyptians. Then the brothers are seated in exact birth order by a stranger who could not possibly know it, and the verse says only that the men marvelled one at another.

Genesis 43:34

The youngest son is openly favoured in front of the older ones with five times the portion, which is the situation that produced the coat and the pit in chapter 37. Nothing happens. They drink and are merry with him, and the brothers who once hated a favoured younger son sit still while another one is honoured over them, which is a test they do not know they are taking. The fivefold measure keeps returning in Joseph's dealings, the fifth part of Egypt's harvest in 41:34, five changes of raiment for Benjamin in 45:22, and five brothers set before Pharaoh in 47:2.