In these three suggestions we may see three ways in which sin can be

dealt with.

Simeon's way.  This is futile, for it can neither make reparation

nor restoration.

Reuben's way.  This goes further, and sees the need of the

sacrifice, but two dead grandsons would be no compensation for

To Reuben's offer might be answered:

'None of us can by any means redeem his brother' (Psa 49:7).

'The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very

image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered

year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect ... For it

is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away

sins' (Heb. 10:1-4).

Reuben was giving of his best.  So the sacrifices and offerings of the

law were the people's best, but they had no power to deliver from sin.

Simeon the hostage was no remedy.  Reuben's sacrifice was no remedy.  What

made the difference in Judah's case?  Simeon was a hostage, Reuben's sons

were substitutes, but Judah was himself a surety, and it is in the

combination of the two features, 'himself' and 'surety', that Judah's remedy

transcends that of the 'hostage' and the 'substitute'.

Judah's way.  Judah steps forward when all else has failed and

says: 'I (emphatic pronoun) will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou

require him.  If I bring him not unto thee, then let me bear the blame for

ever' (Gen. 43:9).  So, in Hebrews 10, setting aside all sacrifices and

offerings that could not take away sin, the Lord Jesus, the true Judah, steps

forward and says, 'Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of

Me), to do Thy will, O God ... by the which will we are sanctified through

the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all' (Heb. 10:7-10).  Here

is not the thought of a hostage, nor merely of substitution, but of

suretyship involving identification: 'Forasmuch then as the children are

partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same;

that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is,

the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime

subject to bondage' (Heb. 2:14,15).

When Jacob's sons journeyed again to Egypt, taking Benjamin with them,

Joseph arranged that Benjamin should be suspected and detained.  This led

Judah to step forward and make that moving speech which, when Joseph heard,

'he wept aloud' (Gen. 45:2).

Judah rehearsed the history of their movements, told of Jacob's

reluctance to part with Benjamin, and how Jacob would certainly die if

Benjamin did not return with his brethren.  Judah is the true intercessor,

and his pleading reaches its climax in the words: 'For how shall I go up to

my father, and the lad be not with me?' (Gen. 44:34).  Judah's word 'blame'

in the phrase, 'Then shall I bear the blame to my father for ever' (verse

32), is the word 'sin', as in Reuben's statement in Genesis 42:22, 'Do not

sin against the child'.