We are truly guilty concerning our brother
18 Joseph said to them the third day, “Do this, and live, for I fear God. 19 If you are honest men, then let one of your brothers be bound in your prison; but you go, carry grain for the famine of your houses. 20 Bring your youngest brother to me; so will your words be verified, and you won’t die.” They did so. 21 They said to one another, “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.” 22 Reuben answered them, saying, “Didn’t I tell you, saying, ‘Don’t sin against the child,’ and you wouldn’t listen? Therefore also, behold, his blood is required.” 23 They didn’t know that Joseph understood them; for there was an interpreter between them. 24 He turned himself away from them, and wept. Then he returned to them, and spoke to them, and took Simeon from among them, and bound him before their eyes. 25 Then Joseph gave a command to fill their bags with grain, and to restore each man’s money into his sack, and to give them food for the way. So it was done to them. 26 They loaded their donkeys with their grain, and departed from there. 27 As one of them opened his sack to give his donkey food in the lodging place, he saw his money. Behold, it was in the mouth of his sack. 28 He said to his brothers, “My money is restored! Behold, it is in my sack!” Their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?” 29 They came to Jacob their father, to the land of Canaan, and told him all that had happened to them, saying, 30 “The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly with us, and took us for spies of the country. 31 We said to him, ‘We are honest men. We are no spies. 32 We are twelve brothers, sons of our father; one is no more, and the youngest is today with our father in the land of Canaan.’ 33 The man, the lord of the land, said to us, ‘By this I will know that you are honest men: leave one of your brothers with me, and take grain for the famine of your houses, and go your way. 34 Bring your youngest brother to me. Then I will know that you are not spies, but that you are honest men. So I will deliver your brother to you, and you shall trade in the land.’” 35 As they emptied their sacks, behold, each man’s bundle of money was in his sack. When they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid. 36 Jacob, their father, said to them, “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.” 37 Reuben spoke to his father, saying, “Kill my two sons, if I don’t bring him to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him to you again.” 38 He said, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left. If harm happens to him along the way in which you go, then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”
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.
settled What this mark means