Should we regard the final chapters of Genesis as foreshadowing Christ?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1992.

The whole concern of those final chapters of Genesis is not to single out one of Abraham's or Isaac's or Jacob's sons, dismiss the rest, and from the one son continue the line of the promised seed. The very opposite is true.

In the final chapters the concern is to keep all twelve sons together so that from them can arise a nation. Keeping them together was a very difficult thing, as we see from the early stories in that section of the book. Indeed, at one stage Jacob has lost one-quarter of his sons: he thinks Joseph is dead, Simeon is in prison in Egypt, and now he must let Benjamin go.

The key to reuniting the family and keeping them together was not only Joseph's innocent suffering and faithfulness as a steward, but also Judah's willingness to suffer vicariously and take Benjamin's place, so that Benjamin might go free and his father's heart not be broken. In other words, it takes both the innocent suffering of Joseph and the vicarious suffering of Judah fully to foreshadow the sufferings of Christ.

But when Judah began, though destined as a tribe to carry the sceptre and occupy the throne of Israel, he personally had very little concept of what it meant to be king. His attitude, as he swaggered down the street with his staff of office in hand, was that of complete self-indulgence (see Genesis 38).

The story, therefore, is very poignant. It tells how Judah was brought to the point where, consciously or unconsciously, he discovered what it means to be the tribe in Israel that carries the royal sceptre. It is reminiscent in advance of our Lord's words, 'The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life vicariously as a ransom for many' (see Matthew 20:28).