When You Didn’t Want to Go Back-Gen43:1-2

The famine in Canaan was severe.

Genesis 42 ended in tension.

Jacob said,

“All these things are against me.”

He did not want to send Benjamin.

He did not want to lose another son.

But Genesis 43 does not begin with emotion.

It begins with reality.

“The famine was severe.”

The famine did not stop.

The grain they had brought from Egypt ran out.

And the father said,

“Go back and buy us a little food.”

This was not just repetition.

It was an unwanted restart.

Jacob was still afraid.

Nothing in his heart had changed.

But reality pushed him forward.

At this point, we may ask:

Did God deliberately send the famine?

Does God only work through suffering?

Scripture does not answer so simply.

Famine belongs to the broken reality of a fallen world.

Yet God holds even that reality

and works through it to accomplish His covenant purposes.

God does not delight in suffering.

But He does not waste it.

Jacob was not persuaded by an explanation.

God did not give him a detailed sermon.

Instead, circumstances moved him.

Sometimes our lives feel the same.

Our hearts want to stop.

But reality forces us to move again.

We may see it as pressure or loss.

But Scripture reminds us:

Even in that reluctant movement,

God’s providence is still at work.

Genesis 43 is not a chapter of miracles.

It is simply the chapter of “going back.”

But redemption often begins

with that quiet, reluctant step forward.