“Ears That Don’t Hear”

Genesis 43: 2: “So it came about when they had finished eating the grain which they had brought from Egypt, that their father said to them, ‘Go back, buy us a little food.’” Here’s a perfect example of what we learned yesterday. Long before (however long it took for the family to go through their supplies of grain) Jacob’s sons had told him that they couldn’t go back to Egypt without Benjamin. But now it is as if Jacob had never heard those words. Be assured: he heard them. He just didn’t want to believe them, so it was if he didn’t hear. No wonder his sons gave him so much trouble over the years: getting rid of Joseph, lying with a presumed harlot, lying with Jacob’s actual concubine (eeew!) and massacring in cold blood the entire family of Shechem. He didn’t hear them, so they didn’t hear him.