Genesis 44:14

They are getting ready to go back to Canaan a second time with food for themselves and their households. Joseph's cup goes into Benjamin's sack, and they set out on their journey. But this, simple as it seems, is the crisis. Their own lips will now have to give the verdict. The question is about to be put to them: are they the men they once were, or have they been given a heart of flesh? Will the sorrows of Benjamin move them, as the cries of Joseph once failed to do? Will their old father's grief at home move their heart, as it once did not? This place, this moment, was the field of Dothan again.

Benjamin stands in the place that once had been Joseph's — the youngest and best-loved son of his father. Benjamin shall pass into bondage, as once Joseph had filled the place of a slave. The ten brothers are perfectly free, as once before, to return to their father in peace. What will they do now? Will they abandon their brother to slavery, knowing he is innocent? They did this to Joseph; will they do it to Benjamin? Will they go back to Jacob and face his grief with some false story about why Benjamin is missing, as they once explained away the loss of Joseph? Ah, no! Grace has been at work in these men, and repentance has done its work.

No wonder that they tore their clothes, and each man loaded his donkey, and returned to the city heartbroken. And now more than ever they paid Joseph the fullest homage as they fell before him on the ground, fulfilling his dreams without knowing it… And what will it be when the picture comes true, and the Lord Himself appears to the Judah of a future day? They will look on Him whom they pierced, and mourn as for an only son, each family on its own, and the wives on their own (Zech. 12).

There was a fulfilment in picture form when his brothers bowed low to him in Egypt. Their sheaves bowed to his. And they did not fail to honour him after they knew who he was. But this did not meet the full meaning of Joseph's prophetic dreams. The sheaves of Israel are to bow to Messiah. But the second dream shows more: the sun, the moon and the eleven stars — every ruling power in the world, Gentile or Jewish — bowing to Christ in the person of His representative.

It is not Reuben, the eldest, who speaks to Joseph, but Judah, the one who had been leader in selling Joseph as a slave. He does not plead any defense whatever. He himself was not guilty of stealing the cup. Even so, he realizes that God was using this to remind him of their earlier guilt in selling Joseph.

They really were innocent about the cup. But this is nothing to their consciences, and nothing on Judah's lips. Conviction loses sight of everything except sin. Its own offence is all it sees… Once they hid their guilt under the lie they sent to their father. Now they are willing to hide their innocence about the cup under the confession they make to Joseph… Confession, and not self-defence, is their language.