Genesis 37:23-28
What profit is it
With Joseph in the pit, he argues against murder on the grounds of gain. Twenty pieces of silver, and their brother is walked into Egypt.
People of the Bible
Judah
Suggested selling his brother, and years later offered himself in place of another one.
Judah is Leah’s fourth son, the one whose name means praise. He is the voice in the pit who says there is no profit in killing Joseph and proposes a sale instead. He then leaves his brothers, marries a Canaanite, buries two sons, withholds the third from his widowed daughter-in-law, and is confronted with his own staff and seal held up as evidence against him. He says she is more righteous than he is, and that sentence turns him. In Egypt, with Benjamin about to be kept as a slave, he steps forward and asks to be taken instead.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Judah
- 01
- 02
Genesis 38:1-11
Two sons, and a promise not kept
He marries outside the family, loses Er and Onan, and sends Tamar home as a widow with a promise about a third son he does not intend to keep.
- 03
Genesis 38:24-26
She is more righteous than I
He orders her burned, and then recognises his own pledge in her hand. He says it out loud in front of the household and does not touch her again.
- 04
Genesis 43:8-10
I will be surety for him
To get food, he puts himself in pledge for Benjamin’s safety, which is the opposite of what he did with Joseph.
- 05
Genesis 44:18-34
Let me stay instead of the boy
The cup is found in Benjamin’s sack. Judah tells the whole story of his father’s grief and offers his own life for his brother’s, and Joseph cannot keep the secret through it.
Why it matters
Judah is the longest repentance in Genesis and the reason the rest of the Bible has a royal line. The blessing Jacob gives him on his deathbed hands him the sceptre, and from him come David and every king after, and the genealogies in Matthew and Luke run through him. The account is careful to make him the least likely candidate before it does so.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
