The Judah Substitution

While following a rabbit trail today I found myself reading Genesis 44. This passage takes place within the wider narrative of Joseph, of course, but here it is Judah who captivates me. He pleads with an Egyptian official to set his brother Benjamin free:

"Your servant my father said to us, '...If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in misery.'
"So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy's life, sees that the boy isn't there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. Your servant guaranteed the boy's safety to my father. I said, 'If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!'
"Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord's slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father."

The Egyptian official of course turns out to be Joseph in disguise, and Joseph again recaptures main stage in the verses which follow. Out of fifty chapters in Genesis, nearly ten of them are devoted to the story of Joseph. By way of comparison, Judah has up to this point gotten very little coverage.

What do we know about Judah so far? Well, let's see. We know that Judah came up with the bright idea of selling his own brother Joseph as a slave to some traders heading to Egypt (Genesis 37:26-27). Very nice. What else? We also know that that Judah first rudely neglected, and then passionately impregnated, his own daughter-in-law (Genesis 38). But here Judah did have a very good excuse for having gotten her pregnant — he had mistakenly believed her to be a local prostitute. So that's all fine.

Reality TV cannot beat this kind of sludge, though not for lack of trying. But we obviously have not seen the whole of Judah yet, and here is a reminder for people like me who too easily judge a man's life by two massive moral failures. In this passage, Judah rises above his past. Are we ready to let him?

And what a rise it is. Because he cannot bear the thought of what the loss of Benjamin would mean to their father Israel, Judah offers his own life as a substitute. In doing so Judah shows true colors forged in a furnace we know nothing about. Judah's father Israel does know of Judah's true character, however, and he speaks to it when prophesying blessings and curses on each of his sons.

Genesis 49:8-12
“Judah, your brothers will praise you.
You will grasp your enemies by the neck.
All your relatives will bow before you.
Judah, my son, is a young lion
that has finished eating its prey.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down;
like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?
The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from his descendants,
until the coming of the one to whom it belongs,
the one whom all nations will honor.
He ties his foal to a grapevine,
the colt of his donkey to a choice vine.
He washes his clothes in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
His eyes are darker than wine,
and his teeth are whiter than milk."

A few verses later Israel declares Joseph to be a prince among his brothers — but it is Judah whom Israel names king. This prophecy is fulfilled partially when Judah's descendant David assumes the throne of Israel. The final and perfect fulfillment, however, is in Jesus Christ, a descendant of both David and Judah. It is Jesus who rules forever and it is Jesus who will forever be honored by all nations.

The fact that Jesus completes the kingly line of Judah is no secret. The authors of Hebrews and Revelation make this connection clear. Substitutionary theology is likewise anything but new. What is new for me is this substitutionary link between Jesus and his ancestor Judah.

I recently reflected on how God's testing of Abraham (with the sacrifice of Isaac) richly foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus, God's own son, for all of humanity. Isaac walked free, but Jesus, God's son, was indeed sacrificed. I see here a similar parallel here with the story of Judah and Benjamin. Judah also walked free, but the substitutionary offer Jesus made was accepted. Jesus completed the unfinished sacrifice of his ancestor Isaac and the unfinished substitution of his ancestor Judah.

The more I stare at Old Testament stories like these, the more I see (along with the author of Hebrews) that they were dim previews of good things to come.

Hebrews 10
The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship....

...For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God,

“You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings.
But you have given me a body to offer.
You were not pleased with burnt offerings
or other offerings for sin.
Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God —
as is written about me in the Scriptures.’”