Biblion Bible Commentary
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We are truly guilty concerning our brother
Genesis 42:18-38
18 Joseph said to them the third day, “Do this, and live, for I fear God. · WEB
Twenty years on, the brothers convict themselves in front of the man they sold, and supply a detail the original account left out.
On the third day Joseph softens the terms — one hostage instead of nine — and gives a reason that would have meant nothing to them and means a great deal to the reader: Do this, and live, for I fear God.
Then, standing in front of him and believing he cannot understand a word, they say the thing the whole test was worth: We are certainly guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we wouldn't listen. Therefore this distress has come upon us.
That sentence carries information the original account withheld. Chapter thirty-seven never told us Joseph pleaded. It reported the stripping, the pit, and the brothers sitting down to eat, and said nothing about the noise coming out of the cistern. Now, two decades later, his brothers supply it in a confession — they saw his distress, they heard him beg, and they would not listen.
And Joseph is hearing that for the first time as well: that they remember it, that they have carried it, and that they connect their present trouble to it.
Reuben's contribution is characteristic and useless. Didn't I tell you...? The man who tried to save Joseph by a maneuver and was not there when it mattered has spent twenty years being right about it.
What Joseph does is reported in one clause and it is the chapter's hinge: He turned himself away from them, and wept. Then he comes back, and takes Simeon, and binds him in front of them.
That is the pattern for the next three chapters — weep in private, then return and continue the test. He does it here, again when he sees Benjamin, and finally he cannot manage it at all and the whole household of Egypt hears him. The severity is real and it is costing him more than it costs them.
Why Simeon is chosen is not stated. He is not the eldest, which would be Reuben; he is, with Levi, one of the two who massacred a city over their sister Genesis 34:25, and Reuben has just been overheard trying to stop the murder.
The returned money is the cruelest kindness in the book. Joseph will not take payment from his family, so he has the silver put back in their sacks — and the effect on men who have just confessed to selling a brother for silver is terror. Their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, "What is this that God has done to us?" Their consciences have reached the point where an unexpected gift can only be a judgment.
And at home Jacob's response is the old refrain, self-centered and honest: You have bereaved me of my children! Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me.
He is wrong on every count. Joseph is alive and second in Egypt, Simeon is a hostage rather than a loss, and everything he lists as against him is the machinery of his family's rescue. It is the most complete misreading of providence in Genesis, spoken by the man it is being worked out for.
Reuben's offer — Kill my two sons, if I don't bring him to you — is grotesque and is refused, and it is exactly the wrong currency. Judah will make the right offer two chapters later, and it will be himself.
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