R.C. Sproul

He risks the other ten by sending them on this arduous journey to Egypt, but he won't let Benjamin leave home.

He wants to protect Benjamin.

Now, again, some interpreters of this text have said this is an indication of a fundamental lack of faith on Jacob's part, that Jacob is not like Abraham, who's the father of the faithful, who goes out wherever God tells him to go, trusting in the promises of God.

But Jacob, who had had the promises of God for his sons, is now waffling in his faith.

And I think it's important for us to see that, that the biblical patriarchs, the biblical examples of faith were men of flesh and blood.

And there was always a mixture of fear and doubt that was diluting the purity of their confidence in the promises of God.

We may have expected Jacob to act heroically and say, I'll risk all of my boys because after all, I'm entrusting them to the providence of God.

But he was not prepared to do that, and so he leaves Benjamin at home.

Jacob did not send Joseph's brother Benjamin, for he said, lest some calamity befall him.

And the sons of Israel went to buy grain among those who journeyed, for the famine was in the land of Canaan.

Now, verse 6 of chapter 42 says,

Now Joseph was governor over the land, and it was he who sold to all of the people of the land.

And Joseph's brothers came and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth."

Already we see the beginnings of the fulfillment of the dream that Joseph had that got him in so much trouble with his brothers in the first place.

And here, over 20 years later, that dream is being fulfilled as they come and prostrate themselves

before their brother, but they're not doing this as willing obeisance to Joseph because they don't know that they are bowing down before Joseph.

All they know is that they are in the presence of the prime minister of all of Egypt, and the last thing in the world they would expect would be for that to be Joseph.

They're assuming that Joseph is dead.

The last thing they would assume would be that the man standing before them was Joseph.

Now, why didn't they recognize him?