Genesis 44:18-34

Then Judah came near to him, and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and don’t let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even as Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ We said to my lord, ‘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 loves him.’ You said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ We said to my lord, ‘The boy can’t leave his father: for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will see my face no more.’ It happened when we came up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. Our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food.’ We said, ‘We can’t go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down: for we may not see the man’s face, unless our youngest brother is with us.’ Your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons: and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn in pieces”; and I haven’t seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.’ Now therefore when I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us; since his life is bound up in the boy’s life; it will happen, when he sees that the boy is no more, that he will die. Your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol. For your servant became collateral for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t bring him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever.’ Now therefore, please let your servant stay instead of the boy, a bondservant to my lord; and let the boy go up with his brothers. For how will I go up to my father, if the boy isn’t with me?—lest I see the evil that will come on my father.”

Something amazing happened here that may not be easy to see at first. It appears to me that Jacob and his son’s future was saved by Judah. Judah’s promise to his father, Jacob, was for real. It is interesting that Reuben, who had offered his two sons, didn’t speak up. He was the natural first born of the family, but it was Judah who rose up and offered himself in place of his youngest brother. As a result, he passed the test with an “A”. This expressed how God really saves us. He does it through sacrifice. None of us are good and we all need someone to take our place. Not only that, it isn’t the natural way of salvation, it is the  supernatural way.

I also noticed that Judah referred to Jacob as Joseph’s servant. Once again we see that this fulfilled the prophetic dream that Joseph had as a boy. His father really did bow down to him.

So, Judah, the one who was the son of Jacob’s first wife Leah and was to have King David, King Solomon, and King Jesus in his line, offered himself as collateral for the youngest of his brothers in order to save his father Israel. It’s quite a coincidence isn’t it?