Genesis 44:1-2
Put my cup in the sack’s mouth of the youngest
The instruction is given in detail and includes returning every man’s money as well, so the accusation will look like ingratitude on top of theft.
Objects of the Bible
The silver cup of Joseph
Planted in the youngest brother’s sack to find out whether the others had changed.
The cup is the last of the tests and the only one that is openly dishonest. Joseph tells the steward to fill the sacks with food as much as they can carry, put every man’s money in his sack’s mouth, and put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack’s mouth of the youngest. Then he sends them away and sends the steward after them with a speech already written. It is a trap built to produce one specific situation: Rachel’s other son accused, and the ten who sold Rachel’s first son free to walk away.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The silver cup of Joseph
- 01
- 02
Genesis 44:9-12
He searched, and began at the eldest
They offer the death penalty for whoever has it, so certain are they. The search runs in order down to the last sack, which is the point of running it in order.
- 03
Genesis 44:13
They rent their clothes
Nobody rides on. The whole company turns around and goes back for a brother, which is the exact thing they did not do for the last one.
- 04
Genesis 44:18-34
Judah came near unto him
The longest speech in the book is made by the man who once said what profit is it if we slay our brother. It ends with an offer to be the slave instead.
- 05
Genesis 45:1-4
Joseph could not refrain himself
The test ends because the tester cannot finish it. He clears the room and says I am Joseph, and the cup is never mentioned again.
Why it matters
They do not walk away. They rend their clothes, load their asses and go back to the city together, and Judah, the brother who proposed the sale twenty two years earlier, makes the longest speech in Genesis. He recounts the whole family history, names his father’s grief for the other son, and offers himself in the boy’s place: let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brethren. The next chapter is Joseph unable to keep it up any longer.
The music
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
No song in the catalogue reaches these chapters yet.
