Week 5: The Brothers Come to Egypt

Twenty years after they sat down to eat beside a pit, ten brothers go down to Egypt for grain and bow with their faces to the ground before a man they don't recognize. Joseph knows them on sight. He calls them spies, locks them up for three days, and listens as they tell each other in Hebrew what they never told anyone else: they saw his distress when he pleaded with them, and they wouldn't listen. It's the first time in the story that Joseph weeps, and he has to turn away to do it. Then he binds Simeon in front of them and sends the other nine home with their silver hidden in their grain sacks. When one of them finds it, they ask for the first time, "What has God done to us?" Genesis 42 doesn't answer the question, and it isn't finished with them yet. It leaves one brother in chains, an old man refusing to let his youngest son go, and nine guilty men who have finally started to remember.