The Brothers Return to an Old Guilt

Jacob “saw” the grain, then says in the next verse that he has “heard” of it. Rashi took the seeing as a figure for insight. The word for grain, shever, comes from a root meaning to break, perhaps from grain broken or threshed. The sons are staring at one another, each waiting for someone else to act.

“Get you down”, redu, is the verb of descent to Egypt that took Joseph there in 39:1. A midrash counted its letters as 210 and read it as the years Israel would spend in Egypt; that is word play, not the text’s claim. “That we may live, and not die” returns in Judah’s mouth in 43:8.

At the moment they set out for Egypt, Genesis calls them “Joseph’s ten brethren”, not Jacob’s sons. The book names them by their relation to the brother they sold, just as they head, unknowing, toward him.

“Mischief” is ason, a fatal accident. The word occurs only in this account (42:4, 42:38, 44:29) and in the law on a pregnant woman harmed in a fight (Exodus 21:22–23). Jacob fears harm on the road, the same road on which he believes Joseph died.

The sons of Israel arrive as one party among many, lost in the crowd of foreigners. A midrash imagines them entering the city by ten different gates to avoid attracting attention. The verse insists on the ordinariness of the arrival: hungry men from Canaan, like everyone else.

“Governor” is shallit, a word found nowhere else in the Pentateuch; later it becomes a common word for ruler in Ecclesiastes and Daniel. “He it was that sold” suggests that sales to foreigners passed through Joseph himself, which is how ten men from Canaan end up in front of him.

The Hebrew plays on one root: he “knew them”, vayyakkirem, and “made himself strange”, vayyitnakker. Recognizing and disguising are the same verb turned inside out. “Roughly” is qashot, hard things; Joseph speaks hard words to the men who once would not speak peaceably to him.

The verse repeats what verse 7 said, and adds the other side. They had last seen him at seventeen; he is now about thirty-eight, clean-shaven, dressed as an Egyptian and speaking through an interpreter. There was no reason for them to know him.

“The nakedness of the land” means its undefended places. Egypt’s northeastern frontier was guarded by a line of fortresses against people coming out of Canaan and Sinai, so the charge of spying had real force. “Remembered” is zakar, the verb the butler failed at in 40:23.

“My lord” and “thy servants” are the ordinary language of courtesy before an official. They are also, word for word, what the brothers refused to be when they asked “shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?” (37:8).

“One man’s sons” is an argument: no father would risk every son he had on a single spying expedition. “True men” is kenim, honest, men whose words are what they appear. The brothers who dipped a coat in goat’s blood now rest their case on their honesty.

Joseph does not answer their argument. He repeats his charge word for word from verse 9. Repetition leaves them nothing to rebut and draws out more than they meant to give.

In verse 11 they spoke of ten sons; now they volunteer twelve. The two not present are the two sons of Rachel. They offer the family’s history unasked, and the one missing part of it is standing in front of them.

“That is it that I spake unto you” treats their answer as confirmation, though nothing in it proves spying. Joseph needs no logic; he holds the grain. He takes the detail about the youngest brother and builds the whole test on it.

“Proved” is bachan, to test as metal is assayed. “By the life of Pharaoh” is an oath on the king’s life, the form Egyptian officials swore by; an Israelite would swear “as the LORD liveth”. Joseph speaks as the Egyptian he appears to be.

The first plan is harsh: one goes home and nine stay in prison. Three days later it becomes the reverse, nine go and one stays (verse 19). The second oath by Pharaoh’s life in two verses shows the ruler’s tone.

“Ward” is mishmar, the word used when the butler and baker were put “in ward” (40:3). Joseph puts his brothers where he himself was kept. He spent years there; they spend days.

“I fear God” is the reassurance Abraham could not find at Gerar, where he said, “the fear of God is not in this place” (20:11). A foreign ruler’s fear of God was a check on his power. Joseph gives them that assurance while still hiding who he is.

“Your houses” shows the ruler thinking of the families at home as well as the men before him. The plan now binds one brother and sends nine home with food, a change that keeps Jacob’s household alive while the test continues.

“Verified” is ye’amenu, from aman, to be firm and trustworthy, the root of “amen” and of Abraham’s believing in 15:6. “And they did so” states the outcome in advance; the coming verses show how.

The same Hebrew word appears twice: Joseph’s “anguish”, tsarah, and “this distress”, hatsarah. The brothers see the fit exactly: the trouble they ignored in him has come on them. “Guilty” is ashemim, from asham, the word later used for the guilt offering.

“His blood is required” uses the verb God used in 9:5, “your blood of your lives will I require”. Reuben remembers himself saying “Do not sin against the child”, though in 37:22 he said “Shed no blood”. He believes Joseph is dead.

“Interpreter” is melits, a go-between, the word used of an intercessor in Job 33:23 and of Babylon’s ambassadors in 2 Chronicles 32:31. Joseph needed none; he was using one as a screen. A midrash names the interpreter as Manasseh, Joseph’s son.

This is the first time Joseph weeps. He will weep again and again before the book ends, more than anyone else in Genesis. Why Simeon is taken is not said; Rashi held that Simeon had been the one who threw Joseph into the pit, which is a tradition, not the text.

The silver they paid goes back into their sacks. The last time these men handled silver over Joseph, it was the twenty pieces they took for him (37:28). There were no coins; silver was weighed out in pieces and carried in tied bundles.

Nine men load donkeys, not camels, with grain and set off. The verse says nothing of Simeon, left bound behind them; the account moves on as the brothers did.

“The inn” is malon, a stopping place for the night, a campsite rather than a building with a keeper; Moses stops at one in Exodus 4:24. “Provender” is mispo, fodder, the word Rebekah used in offering hospitality to Abraham’s servant (24:25).

“Their heart failed them” is literally “their heart went out”. This is the first time in Genesis that the brothers speak of God. They do it in fear, reading the returned silver as God’s hand against them.

“All that befell unto them” is a summary; what follows is edited. They leave out the three days in prison and the talk among themselves about Joseph, and tell only what bears on the ruler’s demand.

They call him “the man”, and he will be “the man” through the next two chapters (43:3–14), a title in place of a name. “Spake roughly” repeats verse 7, the hardness they felt first.

They tell their father that they told the ruler they were honest men. The brothers who deceived Jacob over Joseph’s coat now report their own honesty to him.

To the ruler they said “the sons of one man”; to Jacob, “sons of our father”. They tell Jacob that “one is not”, the brother whose death they led him to believe in with a bloodied coat.

They soften the ruler’s demand: “leave one of your brethren here with me”. They do not say that Simeon was bound before their eyes, which the reader saw in verse 24.

“Ye shall traffick in the land” is sachar, to move about freely as merchants, the offer Hamor made to Jacob’s family in 34:10. Joseph did not say this in verse 20. The brothers add it, or report something Genesis did not record.

Each man finds his own tied pouch of silver, tsror kesef, recognizably his. In verse 27 one of them found his at an overnight stop; the others appear only now to have emptied their sacks. Some read this as two versions joined; others, simply as the others’ silver lying deeper in the grain.

“Bereaved” is shakal, the word Rebekah used when she feared losing both her sons in one day (27:45). Jacob will say it again, resigned, in 43:14. “Against me” is literally “upon me”, all of it landing on him.

Reuben offers two sons, but 46:9 lists four sons of Reuben. The offer is his firstborn’s voice again: in 37:29 he was the one who went back to the pit, and now he offers the most he can think of. Jacob does not answer him in this verse.

“Bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave” is a sentence Judah will quote back to Joseph twice (44:29, 44:31). “He is left alone” means alone of his mother’s sons; Jacob has ten others, and the sentence does not count them.