“Then [Joseph] took servings to them from before him, but Benjamin’s serving was five times as much as any of theirs. So they drank and were merry with him” (Genesis 43:33, 34).
You may love ice cream, but maybe not this much. The largest scoop of ice cream on record weighed 3,010 pounds and was made on June 28, 2014, in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. The strawberry-flavoured dessert was five feet, six inches tall and was made from 733 containers of ice cream. Guests were served as many bowls of the big treat as they wanted for free.
Maybe you’d rather have a slice of the world’s largest pizza. A team of five Italians created a 13,580-square-foot gluten-free pizza on December 13, 2012. Or perhaps you might want to set your own world record for eating grapes. On June 7, 2014, a man from India ate the most grapes in one minute—a total of seventy-three.
Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons, once received extra- large servings at a banquet given to his siblings by his brother Joseph, who was now governor of Egypt. The last of Rachel’s children, he was given five times more food that his brothers. What shocked everyone was not the amount this younger brother received, but that Joseph—who had not yet revealed himself to his brothers—had lined them all up at the table according to their age.
Jacob dearly loved this youngest child and was reluctant to let his older brothers take him to Egypt. After giving birth to Benjamin, the dying Rachel named him Benoni, which means “son of my pain.” But Jacob renamed him “son of my right hand.” Joseph also had a close relationship to his only full brother and ordered that his own silver cup be placed in Benjamin’s sack of grain.
Someday, if you are faithful to Jesus, you will be invited to a record- breaking banquet in heaven called the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (see Revelation 19:9). Like Joseph’s banquet for his brothers, we will all be treated with special favours that only Jesus knows about.
Dear heavenly Father, I would like to put in my reservation for the marriage supper of the Lamb, guaranteed by the blood of Jesus.
