Fear of Losing Your Treasure (Genesis 42:1-5)

Imagine this scenario: you wake up in the middle of the night in a sleepy haze and smell smoke. As you slowly regain consciousness, you realize that your house is on fire. You barely have time to grab something and get out of the house before everything in it is destroyed. What do you grab?

I’ve had this question posed to me several times, and, throughout my life, my answer has changed many times. This is a good question to ask yourself in order to honestly evaluate what is most important to you. However, a friend of mine was recently in this very situation and found that he barely had time to wake his wife and get out of the house before everything burned down—he didn’t have time to grab anything at all!

So it’s not a perfect question, but you get the point: what do you most treasure? As you read today’s scripture passage, ask yourself what Jacob treasures the most.

Please read Genesis 42:1-5.

After the supposed loss of Joseph, Jacob has only one last reminder of his beloved Rachel—his son Benjamin. When a famine hits his land and his entire family is under the threat of death by starvation, Joseph sends all of his sons down to Egypt to buy grain—except for Benjamin. The reason given is that “he feared that harm might happen to him” (v. 4). Jacob will later declare “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is the only one left. If harm should happen to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol” (42:38).

Did Jacob fear that harm would happen to his other sons? Maybe, but he just didn’t love them as much as he loved Benjamin. If one of his other sons died, he might be upset, but if Benjamin died, he would despair of all life.

Jacob was making Benjamin his treasured idol. He was so focused on Benjamin that he didn’t even care about anyone else—not even his other sons! He would do whatever it took to keep his idol safe, including allowing his entire family to starve to death.

Having this kind of an idol can still lead to horrible results today. Some people idolize their success so much that they spend all of their time away from their family, trying to climb that ladder. Some people idolize the praise of their friends so much that they will do things that they know are wrong in order to get their friends to like them. Some people idolize their children so much that they stunt their emotional and social growth by constantly helicoptering over them.

There are many things that we can idolize. And all of them are sinful. To put anything in a position of greater honor in my life than God is sin. There should be nothing that I am unwilling to give up if God were to call me to do so.

God has called Jacob to be the leader and provider of his family. But he is unwilling to risk even potential harm to Benjamin in order to do so. Clearly, Benjamin is more important to Jacob than obeying God. He simply will not obey over fear of losing his treasure. Is there anything in your life that is more important to you than obeying God?