A Daily Genesis

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[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 42:37 . .Then Reuben said to his father: You may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring him back to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him back.[/B]

It would have been interesting to ask Reuben's boys how they felt about their dad's rash offer to trade their lives for Benjamin's. That is the very same stupid kind of deal that Lot offered the Sodomites back in chapter 19, only Lot's was dumber because he offered to trade his wife's babies for two perfect strangers' lives. What did men in those days think their offspring were? Cattle? Commodities? God pity kids that grow up in a home with parents that think so little of them.

And did Reuben really think that slaying Jacob's own grandchildren would somehow make him feel any better about losing Benjamin? That's like burning my house, and then stealing my car to make me feel all better about the loss of my home. Reuben either had a very low IQ, or must have been out of his cotton-picking mind! Sometimes I think Joseph rather pitied his elder brothers for being such imbeciles. Small wonder God chose Joseph to go down to Egypt. The rest of them had no more intelligence than a bar of soap.

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 42:38 . . But he said: My son must not go down with you, for his brother is dead and he alone is left. If he meets with disaster on the journey you are taking, you will send my white head down to sheol in grief.[/B]

Some translators render [I]sheol [/I]as the grave; a place to inter a corpse. But though sheol can include one's grave; it's not the whole picture. The specific Hebrew word for grave is [I]qibrah[/I] (kib-raw') e.g. Gen 23:4.

Qibrah is the equivalent of the New Testament Greek word [I]mnemeion[/I] (mnay-mi'-on) which means a remembrance, i.e. cenotaph (place of interment); viz: grave, sepulchre, tomb (e.g. Matt 27:60).

So then, while qibrah indicates a corpse's disposal site; sheol indicates not only its grave, but includes a separate place for interring the spirit of the person who at one time occupied their body before it passed away. (cf. Jonah 2:1-6, Matt 12:40, Ps 16:8-10, Acts 2:22-31)

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