And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.”
Twenty years after selling Joseph, his brothers stand in front of him without knowing it. Their memory of that day breaks open. Reuben's answer is the sharpest word in the room. He reminds them he once objected, then admits that a reckoning for blood has now fallen on them all.
Conscience Struck at Last
Their guilt did not surface on its own. The demand Joseph made touched the exact spot where they had wronged their father.
F. B. HoleThe point of this struck home to the brothers. They had robbed their father of Joseph, and now he is to lose the younger son his affection was specially set on. It stabbed their consciences into action, as we see in verses 21 and 22, and this was their first step in the right direction. Moreover it was the first indication to Joseph of a change taking place in them. Joseph had spoken to them roughly, as indeed they deserved, and he understood their language, though they did not know the Egyptian dialect he spoke in.
Another writer states the principle behind it.
W. T. P. WolstonTheir consciences were reached, and it is a good thing when the conscience gets reached. God's avenue to the heart is ever by the conscience.
The One Sin They Named
These men had plenty of other guilt on their record. Yet they all named the same one.
J. G. BellettIt was their sin against Joseph they called to mind in the day of their distress. "We are truly guilty concerning our brother," they say, "in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he begged us, and we would not listen." Other sins might have been on their conscience then. Reuben might have thought of the defilement of his father's bed, Simeon and Levi of their bloodshed and treachery, and Judah of his marriage. But they were stirred into life, not only by the trouble which had come upon them, but by the Spirit. So they keep in mind the sin they all shared, and speak, as with one conscience, of their wickedness concerning Joseph.
Buried Guilt Comes Due
The reckoning Reuben names says the account was never closed. Twenty years of silence had settled nothing, and God's purpose in reopening it was not to crush them.
William KellyTheir sin against Joseph and against their father, and their sin against God too, had been hidden for some twenty years. Now it had begun to come home to them. God would not work the grief of the world that ends in death. In His goodness He would work repentance that leads to salvation, so that the truth they had heard from their father might no longer be a mere theory, but a living reality, as it was in Joseph's soul.
Reuben's Protest That Never Became Rescue
Reuben's "did I not tell you" is true — he had spoken up. But speaking up was as far as he ever got, and one writer sees a whole character type in it.
The Bible TreasuryWhen Joseph was in danger from his brothers, Reuben should have protected him as the eldest. He does go so far as to say, "Shed no blood … put him down this pit." He meant to rescue him. But something always happens to upset a Reuben's good intentions.
Reuben's protest here fits that pattern. He objected once, and Joseph was sold anyway.
A Picture of Israel's Later Confession
Commentators read this scene as a preview of a confession Israel has still to make.
The Bible TreasuryWe know, on authority that cannot be broken, that the repentant Jew will one day say what his forefathers said in the similar case of Joseph — only about One greater and better than Joseph: We were very guilty concerning our brother.
And the confession is not the end of the story. The brothers read their trouble as punishment. Joseph read it as God's provision. That gap is where the gospel sits.
J. G. BellettThey said, and very rightly, "we are truly guilty concerning our brother." He says, and very truly, "God did send me before you, to preserve life." And this is the gospel. We are convicted, but saved. We learn that we have destroyed ourselves, but that in Him is our help. The blood meets the spear. The fountain is opened in those very wounds which our own hands have inflicted.
Summary
- Struck — Joseph's rough handling reached what twenty quiet years never did. Conscience is God's road into a person.
- Named — They passed over every other sin and confessed the one they shared. Naming the right sin is the Spirit's fingerprint.
- Required — Hidden guilt is not cancelled guilt. God reopened the account, and He reopened it for repentance that leads to salvation, not despair.
- Protest — Reuben spoke up, meant to rescue Joseph, and never delivered. Good intentions saved no one, and the reckoning fell on him too.
- Answered — The brothers saw only their crime; Joseph saw God preserving life. Conviction met by grace is the gospel. It is the confession Israel will yet make about One greater than Joseph.