I Will Bear The Blame

I cannot go back to my father without the boy. Our father’s life is bound up in the boy’s life. If he sees that the boy is not with us, our father will die. We, your servants, will indeed be responsible for sending that grieving, white-haired man to his grave. My lord, I guaranteed to my father that I would take care of the boy. I told him, “If I don’t bring him back to you, I will bear the blame forever.” So please, my lord, let me stay here as a slave instead of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. For how can I return to my father if the boy is not with me? I couldn’t bear to see the anguish this would cause my father! Genesis 44:30-34

IF WE’VE BEEN TRACING Judah throughout the story of his brother Joseph, we recognize in this scene that something in Judah had shifted. Judah had been the one who’d come up with the idea to sell Joseph to the slave traders years earlier. It was Judah who slept with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, thinking she was a prostitute, and then wanted to have her burned to death when she became pregnant. Along with his brothers, Judah kept silent all those years while Jacob mourned over Joseph.

Something had clearly changed. Judah was no longer resentful over the intensity of Jacob’s love for another brother, Benjamin. He was no longer anxious to get rid of his father’s favorite. He couldn’t bear the idea that his father would have to experience the anguish of losing a second son. So Judah offered himself in place of another out of love for his father. He was willing to bear the blame. How very Christlike.

But sadly, there is something that hadn’t changed about Jacob. His life was still “bound up” in the life of a favored son. His other sons saw it. They knew that if this son died, life would not be worth living to their father.

Lord, as much as I love my children, don’t let me put them in the place that should be reserved for you alone. Protect me from allowing my identity or my happiness to be “bound up” in them. Instead, as I grow older, keep changing me. Make me more compassionate, more self-denying. Likewise, help me to trust that you intend to work in ________’s life over the course of a lifetime to make ________ more like Christ.