A group of men stand in a circle looking down into a hole in the ground. There is not much light flowing into the hole, but they can see the face of a teenaged boy looking up at them. He is quiet now, probably hoarse from the yelling and screaming he did when the men -- his brothers -- stripped him of his ornamented coat and put him down into the pit.

They were going to kill him. They saw him coming from a distance and said, "The Lord of Dreams approaches," remembering that his dreams always involved something bowing to him. 11 sheaves, 11 stars, 11 brothers. They got the picture. "Let's kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams." (Gen. 37:19-20)

The eldest brother stepped in and tried to save him. He modified their plan; yes, throw him into the pit, but don't kill him, he said in three different ways. He did not tell his brothers that he meant to find a way to bring him back to his father, however.

The scene changed when the brothers looked up to see a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt. Another brother spoke, adding one more modification to their plan. "What profit is there if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let's not lay our hand upon him, for he is our brother, our flesh." (Gen. 37:26) The storyteller adds that his brothers listened to this brother whose name was Judah.

This last statement is important. Judah's brothers listened to him, literally, "they heard him." Adele Berlin, in her book, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, noted that a subtle word play highlights the force of Judah's words. When eldest son Reuben "heard their plan," he proposed a modification, but when Judah modified it again all the brothers "heard" him. The change from the singular to the plural form of the verb indicates the shift in power, showing that Judah's words were more effective.1

As the story of Joseph and his family unfolds, it turns out that Judah continues to emerge as leader among them. Judah appears four times as a speaking character in the story. In three of those four appearances, his speeches persuade his listeners to act in ways that will prevent the death of family members. We have seen that Judah persuades his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery rather than kill him.

Judah later convinces his father Jacob to release his son Benjamin to make a trip to Egypt (a condition laid down by the disguised Joseph) to buy grain and save the lives of the family. (Gen. 43:3-13) Finally, he attempts to persuade his disguised brother Joseph to enslave him instead of Benjamin to prevent his father's death from grief. (Gen. 4:16-34) In nearly every scene he appears, Judah's speech moves other characters in the story to a change of heart and action that saves Joseph's life.

How did he do it? Going back to the scene in the wilderness, we see that Judah's short speech to his brothers effectively undoes firstborn Reuben's plan in three ways. First, Reuben's words were negatively charged with the "no" of prohibition: "do not take his life, do not shed his blood, do not lay a hand on him." The words remind us of Abel's blood crying out from the ground and as well as God's claim at the end of the flood story that there will be an accounting for human bloodshed.