Jacob Opens His Hands and Sends Benjamin

The Condition They Brought Home

The sons of Jacob came home from Egypt with grain and with a condition. The viceroy of Egypt, whose face they did not recognize, would not see them again without their youngest brother. They had left Simeon behind in an Egyptian prison as proof of their intention to return. Benjamin had to come with them, or Simeon would stay there until he died, and the famine grinding through Canaan would finish the rest of them.

Jacob received this information the way he received every blow that came from the south: the land that had taken Joseph was now taking Simeon and demanding Benjamin as the price of grain. He said what he had said for twenty-two years: You have bereaved me. Joseph is gone, and Simeon is gone, and now you want to take Benjamin.

He refused. The sons waited. The grain ran out.

What the Famine Said

Famine does not argue. It simply continues. The stores they had brought from Egypt emptied, and Jacob's household, which had been large enough to require two camps when he returned from Paddan Aram, stood in front of bare shelves. Judah came to his father a second time and said what had to be said: there was no other way. The man in Egypt had been absolutely clear. Without Benjamin they would not even be received. They would go down and come back empty and the famine would finish what the empty shelves had started.

Judah offered himself as surety. He would be responsible for Benjamin. If Benjamin did not return, Judah would bear the sin forever. This was not a small offer from a man who understood what permanent debt to a father meant. But Judah made it, and Jacob heard it, and the scales finally tipped.

Jacob relented. What follows in the rabbinical tradition is a portrait of a father finding, inside his grief, reserves he did not know he had.

What Jacob Sent With Them

He sent gifts. The best products of Canaan: balm, honey, aromatic gum, ladanum, pistachio nuts, almonds. Small things, the kind of gifts a man sends when he has no real negotiating power and wants to make the meeting go well on texture and courtesy if nothing else. He sent double silver, enough to return what had been mysteriously placed back in their sacks and enough to buy new grain.

He sent a prayer. May El Shaddai grant you mercy before the man, that he may release to you your other brother and Benjamin. He did not say he expected God to answer. He said he hoped God would grant mercy. These are different words. A man who expected the outcome would not qualify it with hope. Jacob prayed and sent his son knowing that prayer might not be enough, knowing that the viceroy in Egypt might not grant mercy no matter what El Shaddai arranged.

And then he said the thing that reveals how far he had come from twenty-two years of refusing comfort: If I am bereaved, I am bereaved. The Hebrew carries a finality that is not despair but something harder, a recognition that there was nothing left to protect by holding on. He opened his hands.

Benjamin Himself

The rabbis paused at Benjamin. Why was he born in Canaan while all his brothers were born in Paddan Aram? One tradition says it was because he was the only son who could honestly be called a son of the land, a native of the place God had promised, born before the family descended to Egypt. Another says it was because Jacob, traveling through Canaan after Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin on the road to Ephrath, was given a native son for a native land.

Benjamin had lived his whole life as the replacement for something irreplaceable. Jacob had transferred everything he could not give Joseph onto this last son of Rachel. Benjamin carried the weight of all that redirected grief, and he did not know what the man in Egypt wanted with him, or whether he would come home.

He went. Jacob watched the party leave Canaan heading south and turned back into the tent to wait.