#117 Voluntary Scapegoat Genesis 44

Then Judah went up to him and said, "o my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself. My lord asked his servants, saying, 'have you a father or a brother?' And we said to my lord, 'we have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother's children, and his father loves him.' Then you said to your servants, 'bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.' We said to my lord, 'the boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die' Then you said to your servants, 'unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.' When we went back to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. And when our father said, 'go again, buy us a little food,' we said, 'we cannot go down. If our youngest brother goes with us, then we will go down. For we cannot see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us.' Then your servant my father said to us, 'you know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me, and I said, surely he has been torn to pieces, and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.' Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy's life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant to Sheol. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, 'if I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.' Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father." Genesis 44: 18-44 ESV

Judah's response to Joseph's verdict is no less than brilliant. He addresses him as lord, ask that he not be angry with his servant, and compares him to Pharaoh. It is to say, I have nothing and yet could you grant me your ear, a moment of your time. He does not reject the ruler's verdict, not does he claim unfairness in the decree. He has acknowledged his own guilt for much worse, and he does not even attempt to defend the innocence of the boy. Instead, he establishes the value of the boy to his father, and the heart ache that will follow. He even recounts the story of Joseph, who he is without knowledge speaking to. This is marvelous on the largest of scales, and if he knew this was Joseph, he had not yet known him when they were young. He would of known only what he did to Joseph, and would have spoken most likely from fear of revenge. Judah stands before his own blessing and unaware. It opposes all a man knows, but it is a blessing to stand accused, to acknowledge who you are. There is in this the hope of repentance and the chance that you might be forgiven. It is a sad thing so few find it, when there is One who has already paid in full for it. It is a beautiful day for Judah, because all he has to offer is himself. He offers himself for the boy and the love of his father. He offers as one innocent of this sin but convinced of that which he thought hidden. 'Now therefore, please let your servant remain.' 

Leviticus 16:21-22

"Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. "The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.