Bowing Before the Brother: Genesis 42:1-38

When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, "Why do you just keep looking at each other?" He continued, "I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die."

Famine had spread beyond Egypt. Canaan was starving. And Jacob's ten older sons set out for the only place with food.

Then ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with the others, because he was afraid that harm might come to him.

Benjamin—Rachel's surviving son, the only remaining child of the wife Jacob had loved most. After losing Joseph, Jacob could not risk Benjamin.

So Israel's sons were among those who went to buy grain, for there was famine in the land of Canaan also.

Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the person who sold grain to all its people. So when Joseph's brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.

They bowed.

The dream. The sheaves. The brothers prostrating themselves before Joseph's sheaf. Twenty years later, in an Egyptian palace, the vision came true.

As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them.

He recognized them instantly—the faces of the brothers who had thrown him in a pit, who had sold him into slavery, who had broken their father's heart. But they did not recognize him: shaved like an Egyptian, dressed in royal robes, speaking through an interpreter.

"Where do you come from?" he asked.

"From the land of Canaan," they replied, "to buy food."

Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. Then he remembered his dreams about them.

He remembered. The dreams that had started everything—now being fulfilled while the dreamers knelt before him.

And he said to them, "You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected."

"No, my lord," they answered. "Your servants have come to buy food. We are all the sons of one man. Your servants are honest men, not spies."

Honest men. The irony burned. These "honest men" had sold their brother.

But he said to them, "No! You have come to see where our land is unprotected."

And they said, "Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more."

One is no more. They spoke of Joseph as dead. He was standing right in front of them.

Joseph said to them, "It is just as I told you: You are spies! And this is how you will be tested: As surely as Pharaoh lives, you will not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here."

Benjamin. Joseph wanted to see his full brother, Rachel's other son. He devised a test.

They were put in custody for three days.

Three days in prison—a taste of what Joseph had endured for years.

On the third day, Joseph said to them, "Do this and you will live, for I fear God: If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back for your starving households. But you must bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified and that you may not die."

They said to one another, "Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that's why this distress has come on us."

Now the truth emerged. Twenty years buried, and guilt still festered. They remembered Joseph's pleas—cries the Scripture had not recorded but the brothers had never forgotten.

Reuben replied, "Didn't I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn't listen! Now we must give an accounting for his blood."

They did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter.

He understood every word. Every confession. Every excuse. Every weight of guilt.

He turned away from them and began to weep.

Joseph wept. The powerful prime minister, undone by his brothers' belated remorse.

Then he came back and spoke to them again. He had Simeon taken from them and bound before their eyes.

Simeon—perhaps the ringleader after Reuben had failed. Bound as collateral. The brothers would have to return.

Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, to put each man's silver back in his sack, and to give them provisions for their journey.

The grain was free. Joseph could not take their money, could not charge his family for survival.

After they loaded their donkeys with the grain and left, at the place where they stopped for the night one of them opened his sack to get feed for his donkey, and he saw his silver in the mouth of his sack.

"My silver has been returned," he said to his brothers. "Here it is in my sack."

Their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, "What is this that God has done to us?"

What is God doing? The brothers who had refused to see God in their crime against Joseph now saw God's hand in their distress.

When they came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them—the accusations, the demands for Benjamin, Simeon left behind.

Jacob said to them, "You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!"

Jacob's lament. First Joseph, now Simeon, perhaps Benjamin next. The old man felt cursed.

Then Reuben said to his father, "You may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring him back to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him back."

But Jacob said, "My son will not go down there with you; his brother is dead and he is the only one left. If harm comes to him on the journey you are taking, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow."

Jacob refused. Benjamin would stay. Simeon would rot in Egypt. The family remained fractured.

But the famine was only beginning. Eventually, Jacob would have no choice.

And in Egypt, Joseph waited—powerful, grieving, and not yet ready to reveal himself.