We read in Parashat Miketz of Reuven’s startling proposal to Yaakov as he and his brothers attempted to persuade their father to allow Binyamin, the youngest brother, to join them in Egypt, as the vizier (Yosef) had demanded. Yaakov adamantly refused to allow Binyamin to join them, fearful that something might happen to Binyamin. Reuven tried to assure Yaakov by “offering” that Yaakov could kill his two sons if Binyamin did not return home safely (42:37). Yaakov, naturally, refused, and Rashi, citing the Midrash, writes that Yaakov (at least inwardly) ridiculed the suggestion that this “offer” would give him assurance of Binyamin’s safety.
The question arises as to what Reuven actually had in mind in making this proposal. Why did he think this would convince Yaaakov to allow Binyamin to travel to Egypt?
One simple possibility, perhaps, is that Reuven was merely expressing his confidence that Binyamin would return safely. He was not “offering” to Yaakov the “right” to kill his two sons if Binyamin did not return, but was rather committing to ensure Binyamin’s wellbeing to the point where he was prepared the wager his own sons’ life for it.
A different approach is taken by Rav Aryeh Nachum Lubetzky, in his Nachal Kedumim. He writes that Reuven was not “offering” to kill his sons, but was rather explaining to Yaakov that the alternative to sending Binyamin to Egypt was the death of Yaakov’s grandchildren. After all, as the Torah described several verses earlier, the famine in Canaan was dire, and the family had already consumed the rations that the brothers had brought with them from their initial trip to Egypt. They were all starving, and it would not be too long until some family members began dying from hunger. This, Rav Lubetzky writes, was the point Reuven was trying to make to Yaakov. Out of respect for his father, he did not want to come right out and say that he was killing his grandchildren. And so he instead conveyed this message in an awkward, roundabout way.
If, indeed, this was Reuven’s intent, this his comments to Yaakov perhaps serve as a warning against the tendency many of us have to obsess over one particular concern at the expense of everything else. Reuven charged that Yaakov was narrowly concerned with Binyamin’s wellbeing and thus lost sight of the broader picture, of the needs of the family at large. His preoccupation with Binyamin’s safety, at least from Reuven’s perspective, was literally putting the family’s lives at risk. Often, we stubbornly adhere to a particular matter, affording it such high priority that other, equally important concerns are neglected. We need to ensure that our concern for one “son” does not risk the entire “family”; that our passionate commitment to one issue does not lead us to neglect everything else.