Genesis 37-45

Living Bible

37 So Jacob settled again in the land of Canaan, where his father had lived.

² Jacob’s son Joseph was now seventeen years old. His job, along with his half brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah, was to shepherd his father’s flocks. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things they were doing. ³ Now as it happened, Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other children, because Joseph was born to him in his old age. So one day Jacob gave him a special gift—a brightly colored coat.^{[a] 4} His brothers of course noticed their father’s partiality, and consequently hated Joseph; they couldn’t say a kind word to him. ⁵ One night Joseph had a dream and promptly reported the details to his brothers, causing even deeper hatred.

⁶ “Listen to this,” he proudly announced. ⁷ “We were out in the field binding sheaves, and my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves all gathered around it and bowed low before it!”

⁸ “So you want to be our king, do you?” his brothers derided. And they hated him both for the dream and for his cocky attitude.

⁹ Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Listen to my latest dream,” he boasted. “The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me!” ¹⁰ This time he told his father as well as his brothers; but his father rebuked him. “What is this?” he asked. “Shall I indeed, and your mother and brothers come and bow before you?” ¹¹ His brothers were fit to be tied concerning this affair, but his father gave it quite a bit of thought and wondered what it all meant.

¹² One day Joseph’s brothers took their father’s flocks to Shechem to graze them there. ^13-14 A few days later Israel called for Joseph, and told him, “Your brothers are over in Shechem grazing the flocks. Go and see how they are getting along, and how it is with the flocks, and bring me word.”

“Very good,” Joseph replied. So he traveled to Shechem from his home at Hebron Valley. ¹⁵ A man noticed him wandering in the fields.

“Who are you looking for?” he asked.

¹⁶ “For my brothers and their flocks,” Joseph replied. “Have you seen them?”

¹⁷ “Yes,” the man told him, “they are no longer here. I heard your brothers say they were going to Dothan.” So Joseph followed them to Dothan and found them there. ¹⁸ But when they saw him coming, recognizing him in the distance, they decided to kill him!

^19-20 “Here comes that master-dreamer,” they exclaimed. “Come on, let’s kill him and toss him into a well and tell Father that a wild animal has eaten him. Then we’ll see what will become of all his dreams!”

^21-22 But Reuben hoped to spare Joseph’s life. “Let’s not kill him,” he said; “we’ll shed no blood—let’s throw him alive into this well here; that way he’ll die without our touching him!” (Reuben was planning to get him out later and return him to his father.) ²³ So when Joseph got there, they pulled off his brightly colored robe, ²⁴ and threw him into an empty well—there was no water in it. ²⁵ Then they sat down for supper. Suddenly they noticed a string of camels coming towards them in the distance, probably Ishmaelite traders who were taking gum, spices, and herbs from Gilead to Egypt.

^26-27 “Look there,” Judah said to the others. “Here come some Ishmaelites. Let’s sell Joseph to them! Why kill him and have a guilty conscience? Let’s not be responsible for his death, for, after all, he is our brother!” And his brothers agreed. ²⁸ So when the traders^[b] came by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the well and sold him to them for twenty pieces of silver, and they took him along to Egypt. ²⁹ Some time later, Reuben (who was away when the traders came by)^[c] returned to get Joseph out of the well. When Joseph wasn’t there, he ripped at his clothes in anguish and frustration.

³⁰ “The child is gone; and I, where shall I go now?” he wept to his brothers. ³¹ Then the brothers killed a goat and spattered its blood on Joseph’s coat, ³² and took the coat to their father and asked him to identify it.

“We found this in the field,” they told him. “Is it Joseph’s coat or not?” ³³ Their father recognized it at once.

“Yes,” he sobbed, “it is my son’s coat. A wild animal has eaten him. Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces.”

³⁴ Then Israel tore his garments and put on sackcloth and mourned for his son in deepest mourning for many weeks. ³⁵ His family all tried to comfort him, but it was no use.

“I will die in mourning for my son,” he would say, and then break down and cry.

³⁶ Meanwhile, in Egypt, the traders sold Joseph to Potiphar, an officer of the Pharaoh—the king of Egypt. Potiphar was captain of the palace guard, the chief executioner.

38 About this time, Judah left home and moved to Adullam and lived there with a man named Hirah. ² There he met and married a Canaanite girl—the daughter of Shua. ^3-5 They lived at Chezib and had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. These names were given to them by their mother, except for Er, who was named by his father.

⁶ When his oldest son, Er, grew up, Judah arranged for him to marry a girl named Tamar. ⁷ But Er was a wicked man, and so the Lord killed him.

⁸ Then Judah said to Er’s brother, Onan, “You must marry Tamar, as our law requires of a dead man’s brother; so that her sons from you will be your brother’s heirs.”

⁹ But Onan was not willing to have a child who would not be counted as his own, and so, although he married her,^[d] whenever he went in to sleep with her, he spilled the sperm on the bed to prevent her from having a baby which would be his brother’s. ¹⁰ So far as the Lord was concerned, it was very wrong of him to deny a child to his deceased brother, so he killed him, too. ¹¹ Then Judah told Tamar, his daughter-in-law, not to marry again at that time, but to return to her childhood home and to her parents, and to remain a widow there until his youngest son, Shelah, was old enough to marry her. (But he didn’t really intend for Shelah to do this, for fear God would kill him, too, just as he had his two brothers.) So Tamar went home to her parents.

¹² In the process of time Judah’s wife died. After the time of mourning was over, Judah and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite, went to Timnah to supervise the shearing of his sheep. ¹³ When someone told Tamar that her father-in-law had left for the sheepshearing at Timnah, ¹⁴ and realizing by now that she was not going to be permitted to marry Shelah, though he was fully grown, she laid aside her widow’s clothing and covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and sat beside the road at the entrance to the village of Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah. ¹⁵ Judah noticed her as he went by and thought she was a prostitute, since her face was veiled. ¹⁶ So he stopped and propositioned her to sleep with him, not realizing of course that she was his own daughter-in-law.

“How much will you pay me?” she asked.

¹⁷ “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he promised.

“What pledge will you give me, so that I can be sure you will send it?” she asked.

¹⁸ “Well, what do you want?” he inquired.

“Your identification seal and your walking stick,” she replied. So he gave them to her and she let him come and sleep with her; and she became pregnant as a result. ¹⁹ Afterwards she resumed wearing her widow’s clothing as usual. ²⁰ Judah asked his friend Hirah the Adullamite to take the young goat back to her, and to pick up the pledges he had given her, but Hirah couldn’t find her!

²¹ So he asked around of the men of the city, “Where does the prostitute live who was soliciting out beside the road at the entrance of the village?”

“But we’ve never had a public prostitute here,” they replied. ²² So he returned to Judah and told him he couldn’t find her anywhere, and what the men of the place had told him.

²³ “Then let her keep them!” Judah exclaimed. “We tried our best. We’d be the laughingstock of the town to go back again.”

²⁴ About three months later word reached Judah that Tamar, his daughter-in-law, was pregnant, obviously as a result of prostitution.

“Bring her out and burn her,” Judah shouted.

²⁵ But as they were taking her out to kill her she sent this message to her father-in-law: “The man who owns this identification seal and walking stick is the father of my child. Do you recognize them?”

²⁶ Judah admitted that they were his and said, “She is more in the right than I am, because I refused to keep my promise to give her to my son Shelah.” But he did not marry her.

²⁷ In due season the time of her delivery arrived and she had twin sons. ²⁸ As they were being born, the midwife tied a scarlet thread around the wrist of the child who appeared first, ²⁹ but he drew back his hand and the other baby was actually the first to be born. “Where did you come from!” she exclaimed. And ever after he was called Perez (meaning “Bursting Out”). ³⁰ Then, soon afterwards, the baby with the scarlet thread on his wrist was born, and he was named Zerah.

39 When Joseph arrived in Egypt as a captive of the Ishmaelite traders, he was purchased from them by Potiphar, a member of the personal staff of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Now this man Potiphar was the captain of the king’s bodyguard and his chief executioner. ² The Lord greatly blessed Joseph there in the home of his master, so that everything he did succeeded. ³ Potiphar noticed this and realized that the Lord was with Joseph in a very special way. ⁴ So Joseph naturally became quite a favorite with him. Soon he was put in charge of the administration of Potiphar’s household, and all of his business affairs. ⁵ At once the Lord began blessing Potiphar for Joseph’s sake. All his household affairs began to run smoothly, his crops flourished and his flocks multiplied. ⁶ So Potiphar gave Joseph the complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. He hadn’t a worry in the world with Joseph there, except to decide what he wanted to eat! Joseph, by the way, was a very handsome young man.

⁷ One day at about this time Potiphar’s wife began making eyes at Joseph, and suggested that he come and sleep with her.

⁸ Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in the entire household; ⁹ he himself has no more authority here than I have! He has held back nothing from me except you yourself because you are his wife. How can I do such a wicked thing as this? It would be a great sin against God.”

¹⁰ But she kept on with her suggestions day after day, even though he refused to listen, and kept out of her way as much as possible. ¹¹ Then one day as he was in the house going about his work—as it happened, no one else was around at the time— ¹² she came and grabbed him by the sleeve^[e] demanding, “Sleep with me.” He tore himself away, but as he did, his jacket slipped off and she was left holding it as he fled from the house. ¹³ When she saw that she had his jacket, and that he had fled, ^14-15 she began screaming; and when the other men around the place came running in to see what had happened, she was crying hysterically. “My husband had to bring in this Hebrew slave to insult us!” she sobbed. “He tried to rape me, but when I screamed, he ran, and forgot to take his jacket.”

¹⁶ She kept the jacket, and when her husband came home that night, ¹⁷ she told him her story.

“That Hebrew slave you’ve had around here tried to rape me, ¹⁸ and I was only saved by my screams. He fled, leaving his jacket behind!”

¹⁹ Well, when her husband heard his wife’s story, he was furious. ²⁰ He threw Joseph into prison, where the king’s prisoners were kept in chains. ²¹ But the Lord was with Joseph there, too, and was kind to him by granting him favor with the chief jailer. ²² In fact, the jailer soon handed over the entire prison administration to Joseph, so that all the other prisoners were responsible to him. ²³ The chief jailer had no more worries after that, for Joseph took care of everything, and the Lord was with him so that everything ran smoothly and well.

40 ^1-3 Some time later it so happened that the king of Egypt became angry with both his chief baker and his chief butler, so he jailed them both in the prison where Joseph was, in the castle of Potiphar, the captain of the guard, who was the chief executioner. ⁴ They remained under arrest there for quite some time, and Potiphar assigned Joseph to wait on them. ⁵ One night each of them had a dream. ⁶ The next morning Joseph noticed that they looked dejected and sad.

⁷ “What in the world is the matter?” he asked.

⁸ And they replied, “We both had dreams last night, but there is no one here to tell us what they mean.”

“Interpreting dreams is God’s business,” Joseph replied. “Tell me what you saw.”

^9-10 The butler told his dream first. “In my dream,” he said, “I saw a vine with three branches that began to bud and blossom, and soon there were clusters of ripe grapes. ¹¹ I was holding Pharaoh’s wine cup in my hand, so I took the grapes and squeezed the juice into it, and gave it to him to drink.”

¹² “I know what the dream means,” Joseph said. “The three branches mean three days! ¹³ Within three days Pharaoh is going to take you out of prison and give you back your job again as his chief butler. ¹⁴ And please have some pity on me when you are back in his favor, and mention me to Pharaoh, and ask him to let me out of here. ¹⁵ For I was kidnapped from my homeland among the Hebrews, and now this—here I am in jail when I did nothing to deserve it.”

¹⁶ When the chief baker saw that the first dream had such a good meaning, he told his dream to Joseph, too.

“In my dream,” he said, “there were three baskets of pastries on my head. ¹⁷ In the top basket were all kinds of bakery goods for Pharaoh, but the birds came and ate them.”

^18-19 “The three baskets mean three days,” Joseph told him. “Three days from now Pharaoh will take off your head and impale your body on a pole, and the birds will come and pick off your flesh!”

²⁰ Pharaoh’s birthday came three days later, and he held a party for all of his officials and household staff. He sent for his chief butler and chief baker, and they were brought to him from the prison. ²¹ Then he restored the chief butler to his former position; ²² but he sentenced the chief baker to be impaled, just as Joseph had predicted. ²³ Pharaoh’s wine taster, however, promptly forgot all about Joseph, never giving him a thought.

41 One night two years later, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing on the bank of the Nile River, ² when suddenly, seven sleek, fat cows came up out of the river and began grazing in the grass. ³ Then seven other cows came up from the river, but they were very skinny and all their ribs stood out. They went over and stood beside the fat cows. ⁴ Then the skinny cows ate the fat ones! At which point, Pharaoh woke up!

⁵ Soon he fell asleep again and had a second dream. This time he saw seven heads of grain on one stalk, with every kernel well formed and plump. ⁶ Then, suddenly, seven more heads appeared on the stalk, but these were shriveled and withered by the east wind. ⁷ And these thin heads swallowed up the seven plump, well-formed heads! Then Pharaoh woke up again and realized it was all a dream. ⁸ Next morning, as he thought about it, he became very concerned as to what the dreams might mean; he called for all the magicians and sages of Egypt and told them about it, but not one of them could suggest what his dreams meant. ⁹ Then the king’s wine taster spoke up. “Today I remember my sin!” he said. ¹⁰ “Some time ago when you were angry with a couple of us and put me and the chief baker in jail in the castle of the captain of the guard, ¹¹ the chief baker and I each had a dream one night. ¹² We told the dreams to a young Hebrew fellow there who was a slave of the captain of the guard, and he told us what our dreams meant. ¹³ And everything happened just as he said: I was restored to my position of wine taster, and the chief baker was executed, and impaled on a pole.”

¹⁴ Pharaoh sent at once for Joseph. He was brought hastily from the dungeon, and after a quick shave and change of clothes, came in before Pharaoh.

¹⁵ “I had a dream last night,” Pharaoh told him, “and none of these men can tell me what it means. But I have heard that you can interpret dreams, and that is why I have called for you.”

¹⁶ “I can’t do it by myself,” Joseph replied, “but God will tell you what it means!”

¹⁷ So Pharaoh told him the dream. “I was standing upon the bank of the Nile River,” he said, ¹⁸ “when suddenly, seven fat, healthy-looking cows came up out of the river and began grazing along the riverbank. ¹⁹ But then seven other cows came up from the river, very skinny and bony—in fact, I’ve never seen such poor-looking specimens in all the land of Egypt. ²⁰ And these skinny cattle ate up the seven fat ones that had come out first, ²¹ and afterwards they were still as skinny as before! Then I woke up.

²² “A little later I had another dream. This time there were seven heads of grain on one stalk, and all seven heads were plump and full. ²³ Then, out of the same stalk, came seven withered, thin heads. ²⁴ And the thin heads swallowed up the fat ones! I told all this to my magicians, but not one of them could tell me the meaning.”

²⁵ “Both dreams mean the same thing,” Joseph told Pharaoh. “God was telling you what he is going to do here in the land of Egypt. ²⁶ The seven fat cows (and also the seven fat, well-formed heads of grain) mean that there are seven years of prosperity ahead. ²⁷ The seven skinny cows (and also the seven thin and withered heads of grain) indicate that there will be seven years of famine following the seven years of prosperity.

²⁸ “So God has showed you what he is about to do: ²⁹ The next seven years will be a period of great prosperity throughout all the land of Egypt; ³⁰ but afterwards there will be seven years of famine so great that all the prosperity will be forgotten and wiped out; famine will consume the land. ³¹ The famine will be so terrible that even the memory of the good years will be erased. ³² The double dream gives double impact, showing that what I have told you is certainly going to happen, for God has decreed it, and it is going to happen soon. ³³ My suggestion is that you find the wisest man in Egypt and put him in charge of administering a nationwide farm program. ^34-35 Let Pharaoh divide Egypt into five administrative districts,^[f] and let the officials of these districts gather into the royal storehouses all the excess crops of the next seven years, ³⁶ so that there will be enough to eat when the seven years of famine come. Otherwise, disaster will surely strike.”

³⁷ Joseph’s suggestions were well received by Pharaoh and his assistants. ³⁸ As they discussed who should be appointed for the job, Pharaoh said, “Who could do it better than Joseph? For he is a man who is obviously filled with the Spirit of God.” ³⁹ Turning to Joseph, Pharaoh said to him, “Since God has revealed the meaning of the dreams to you, you are the wisest man in the country! ⁴⁰ I am hereby appointing you to be in charge of this entire project. What you say goes, throughout all the land of Egypt. I alone will outrank you.”

^41-42 Then Pharaoh placed his own signet ring on Joseph’s finger as a token of his authority, and dressed him in beautiful clothing and placed the royal gold chain about his neck and declared, “See, I have placed you in charge of all the land of Egypt.”

⁴³ Pharaoh also gave Joseph the chariot of his second-in-command, and wherever he went the shout arose, “Kneel down!” ⁴⁴ And Pharaoh declared to Joseph, “I, the king of Egypt, swear that you shall have complete charge over all the land of Egypt.”

⁴⁵ Pharaoh gave him a name meaning “He has the godlike power of life and death!”^[g] And he gave him a wife, a girl named Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of Heliopolis. So Joseph became famous throughout the land of Egypt. ⁴⁶ He was thirty years old as he entered the service of the king. Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and began traveling all across the land.

⁴⁷ And sure enough, for the next seven years there were bumper crops everywhere. ⁴⁸ During those years, Joseph requisitioned for the government a portion of all the crops grown throughout Egypt, storing them in nearby cities. ⁴⁹ After seven years of this, the granaries were full to overflowing, and there was so much that no one kept track of the amount.

⁵⁰ During this time before the arrival of the first of the famine years, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of the sun god Re of Heliopolis. ⁵¹ Joseph named his oldest son Manasseh (meaning “Made to Forget”—what he meant was that God had made up to him for all the anguish of his youth, and for the loss of his father’s home). ⁵² The second boy was named Ephraim (meaning “Fruitful”—“For God has made me fruitful in this land of my slavery,” he said).

⁵³ So at last the seven years of plenty came to an end. ⁵⁴ Then the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had predicted. There were crop failures in all the surrounding countries, too, but in Egypt there was plenty of grain in the storehouses. ⁵⁵ The people began to starve. They pleaded with Pharaoh for food, and he sent them to Joseph. “Do whatever he tells you to,” he instructed them.

^56-57 So now, with severe famine all over the world, Joseph opened up the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians and to those from other lands who came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph.

42 When Jacob heard that there was grain available in Egypt he said to his sons, “Why are you standing around looking at one another? ² I have heard that there is grain available in Egypt. Go down and buy some for us before we all starve to death.”

³ So Joseph’s ten older^[h] brothers went down to Egypt to buy grain. ⁴ However, Jacob wouldn’t let Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin go with them, for fear some harm might happen to him as it had to his brother Joseph.^{[i] 5} So it was that Israel’s sons arrived in Egypt along with many others from many lands to buy food, for the famine was as severe in Canaan as it was everywhere else.

⁶ Since Joseph was governor of all Egypt, and in charge of the sale of the grain, it was to him that his brothers came, and bowed low before him, with their faces to the earth. ⁷ Joseph recognized them instantly, but pretended he didn’t.

“Where are you from?” he demanded roughly.

“From the land of Canaan,” they replied. “We have come to buy grain.”

^8-9 Then Joseph remembered the dreams of long ago! But he said to them, “You are spies. You have come to see how destitute the famine has made our land.”

¹⁰ “No, no,” they exclaimed. “We have come to buy food. ¹¹ We are all brothers and honest men, sir! We are not spies!”

¹² “Yes, you are,” he insisted. “You have come to see how weak we are.”

¹³ “Sir,” they said, “there are twelve of us brothers, and our father is in the land of Canaan. Our youngest brother is there with our father, and one of our brothers is dead.”

¹⁴ “So?” Joseph asked. “What does that prove?^[j] You are spies. ¹⁵ This is the way I will test your story: I swear by the life of Pharaoh that you are not going to leave Egypt until this youngest brother comes here. ¹⁶ One of you go and get your brother! I’ll keep the rest of you here, bound in prison. Then we’ll find out whether your story is true or not. If it turns out that you don’t have a younger brother, then I’ll know you are spies.”

¹⁷ So he threw them all into jail for three days.

¹⁸ The third day Joseph said to them, “I am a God-fearing man and I’m going to give you an opportunity to prove yourselves. ¹⁹ I’m going to take a chance that you are honorable;^[k] only one of you shall remain in chains in jail, and the rest of you may go on home with grain for your families; ²⁰ but bring your youngest brother back to me. In this way I will know whether you are telling me the truth; and if you are, I will spare you.” To this they agreed.

²¹ Speaking among themselves, they said, “This has all happened because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his terror and anguish and heard his pleadings, but we wouldn’t listen.”

²² “Didn’t I tell you not to do it?” Reuben asked. “But you wouldn’t listen. And now we are going to die because we murdered him.”

²³ Of course they didn’t know that Joseph understood them as he was standing there, for he had been speaking to them through an interpreter. ²⁴ Now he left the room and found a place where he could weep. Returning, he selected Simeon from among them and had him bound before their eyes. ²⁵ Joseph then ordered his servants to fill the men’s sacks with grain, but also gave secret instructions to put each brother’s payment at the top of his sack! He also gave them provisions for their journey. ²⁶ So they loaded up their donkeys with the grain and started for home. ²⁷ But when they stopped for the night and one of them opened his sack to get some grain to feed the donkeys, there was his money in the mouth of the sack!

²⁸ “Look,” he exclaimed to his brothers, “my money is here in my sack.” They were filled with terror. Trembling, they exclaimed to each other. “What is this that God has done to us?” ²⁹ So they came to their father, Jacob, in the land of Canaan and told him all that had happened.

³⁰ “The king’s chief assistant spoke very roughly to us,” they told him, “and took us for spies. ³¹ ‘No, no,’ we said, ‘we are honest men, not spies. ³² We are twelve brothers, sons of one father; one is dead, and the youngest is with our father in the land of Canaan.’ ³³ Then the man told us, ‘This is the way I will find out if you are what you claim to be. Leave one of your brothers here with me and take grain for your families and go on home, ³⁴ but bring your youngest brother back to me. Then I shall know whether you are spies or honest men; if you prove to be what you say, then I will give you back your brother and you can come as often as you like to purchase grain.’”

³⁵ As they emptied out the sacks, there at the top of each was the money paid for the grain! Terror gripped them, as it did their father.

³⁶ Then Jacob exclaimed, “You have bereaved me of my children—Joseph didn’t come back, Simeon is gone, and now you want to take Benjamin too! Everything has been against me.”

³⁷ Then Reuben said to his father, “Kill my two sons if I don’t bring Benjamin back to you. I’ll be responsible for him.”

³⁸ But Jacob replied, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother Joseph is dead and he alone is left of his mother’s children. If anything should happen to him, I would die.”

43 But there was no relief from the terrible famine throughout the land. ² When the grain they had brought from Egypt was almost gone, their father said to them, “Go again and buy us a little food.”

^3-5 But Judah told him, “The man wasn’t fooling one bit when he said, ‘Don’t ever come back again unless your brother is with you.’ We cannot go unless you let Benjamin go with us.”

⁶ “Why did you ever tell him you had another brother?” Israel moaned. “Why did you have to treat me like that?”

⁷ “But the man specifically asked us about our family,” they told him. “He wanted to know whether our father was still living and he asked us if we had another brother, so we told him. How could we know that he was going to say, ‘Bring me your brother’?”

⁸ Judah said to his father, “Send the lad with me and we will be on our way; otherwise we will all die of starvation—and not only we, but you and all our little ones. ⁹ I guarantee his safety. If I don’t bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame forever. ¹⁰ For we could have gone and returned by this time if you had let him come.”

¹¹ So their father Israel finally said to them, “If it can’t be avoided, then at least do this. Load your donkeys with the best products of the land. Take them to the man as gifts—balm, honey, spices, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. ¹² Take double money so that you can pay back what was in the mouths of your sacks, as it was probably someone’s mistake, ¹³ and take your brother and go. ¹⁴ May God Almighty give you mercy before the man, so that he will release Simeon and return Benjamin. And if I must bear the anguish of their deaths, then so be it.”

¹⁵ So they took the gifts and double money and went to Egypt, and stood before Joseph. ¹⁶ When Joseph saw that Benjamin was with them, he said to the manager of his household, “These men will eat with me this noon. Take them home and prepare a big feast.” ¹⁷ So the man did as he was told and took them to Joseph’s palace. ¹⁸ They were badly frightened when they saw where they were being taken.

“It’s because of the money returned to us in our sacks,” they said. “He wants to pretend we stole it and seize us as slaves, with our donkeys.”

¹⁹ As they arrived at the entrance to the palace, they went over to Joseph’s household manager, ²⁰ and said to him, “O sir, after our first trip to Egypt to buy food, ²¹ as we were returning home, we stopped for the night and opened our sacks, and the money was there that we had paid for the grain. Here it is; we have brought it back again, ²² along with additional money to buy more grain. We have no idea how the money got into our sacks.”

²³ “Don’t worry about it,” the household manager told them; “your God, even the God of your fathers, must have put it there, for we collected your money all right.”

Then he released Simeon and brought him out to them. ²⁴ They were then conducted into the palace and given water to refresh their feet; and their donkeys were fed. ²⁵ Then they got their presents ready for Joseph’s arrival at noon, for they were told that they would be eating there. ²⁶ When Joseph came home they gave him their presents, bowing low before him.

²⁷ He asked how they had been getting along. “And how is your father—the old man you spoke about? Is he still alive?”

²⁸ “Yes,” they replied. “He is alive and well.” Then again they bowed before him.

²⁹ Looking at his brother Benjamin,^[l] he asked, “Is this your youngest brother, the one you told me about? How are you, my son? God be gracious to you.” ³⁰ Then Joseph made a hasty exit, for he was overcome with love for his brother and had to go out and cry. Going into his bedroom, he wept there. ³¹ Then he washed his face and came out, keeping himself under control. “Let’s eat,” he said.

³² Joseph ate by himself, his brothers were served at a separate table, and the Egyptians at still another; for Egyptians despise Hebrews and never eat with them. ³³ He told each of them where to sit, and seated them in the order of their ages, from the oldest to the youngest, much to their amazement! ³⁴ Their food was served to them from his own table. He gave the largest serving to Benjamin—five times as much as to any of the others! They had a wonderful time bantering back and forth, and the wine flowed freely!

44 When his brothers were ready to leave,^[m] Joseph ordered his household manager to fill each of their sacks with as much grain as they could carry—and to put into the mouth of each man’s sack the money he had paid! ² He was also told to put Joseph’s own silver cup at the top of Benjamin’s sack, along with the grain money. So the household manager did as he was told. ³ The brothers were up at dawn and on their way with their loaded donkeys.

⁴ But when they were barely out of the city, Joseph said to his household manager, “Chase after them and stop them and ask them why they are acting like this when their benefactor has been so kind to them? ⁵ Ask them, ‘What do you mean by stealing my lord’s personal silver drinking cup, which he uses for fortune-telling? What a wicked thing you have done!’” ⁶ So he caught up with them and spoke to them along the lines he had been instructed.

⁷ “What in the world are you talking about?” they demanded. “What kind of people do you think we are, that you accuse us of such a terrible thing as that? ⁸ Didn’t we bring back the money we found in the mouth of our sacks? Why would we steal silver or gold from your master’s house? ⁹ If you find his cup with any one of us, let that one die. And all the rest of us will be slaves forever to your master.”

¹⁰ “Fair enough,” the man replied, “except that only the one who stole it will be a slave, and the rest of you can go free.”

¹¹ They quickly took down their sacks from the backs of their donkeys and opened them. ¹² He began searching the oldest brother’s sack, going on down the line to the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin’s! ¹³ They ripped their clothing in despair, loaded the donkeys again, and returned to the city. ¹⁴ Joseph was still home when Judah and his brothers arrived, and they fell to the ground before him.

¹⁵ “What were you trying to do?” Joseph demanded. “Didn’t you know such a man as I would know who stole it?”

¹⁶ And Judah said, “Oh, what shall we say to my lord? How can we plead? How can we prove our innocence? God is punishing us for our sins. Sir, we have all returned to be your slaves, both we and he in whose sack the cup was found.”

¹⁷ “No,” Joseph said. “Only the man who stole the cup, he shall be my slave. The rest of you can go on home to your father.”

¹⁸ Then Judah stepped forward and said, “O sir, let me say just this one word to you. Be patient with me for a moment, for I know you can doom me in an instant, as though you were Pharaoh himself.

¹⁹ “Sir, you asked us if we had a father or a brother, ²⁰ and we said, ‘Yes, we have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one. And his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him very much.’ ²¹ And you said to us, ‘Bring him here so that I can see him.’ ²² But we said to you, ‘Sir, the lad cannot leave his father, for his father would die.’ ²³ But you told us, ‘Don’t come back here unless your youngest brother is with you.’ ²⁴ So we returned to our father and told him what you had said. ²⁵ And when he said, ‘Go back again and buy us a little food,’ ²⁶ we replied, ‘We can’t, unless you let our youngest brother go with us. Only then may we come.’

²⁷ “Then my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife had two sons, ²⁸ and that one of them went away and never returned—doubtless torn to pieces by some wild animal; I have never seen him since. ²⁹ And if you take away his brother from me also, and any harm befalls him, I shall die with sorrow.’ ³⁰ And now, sir, if I go back to my father and the lad is not with us—seeing that our father’s life is bound up in the lad’s life— ³¹ when he sees that the boy is not with us, our father will die; and we will be responsible for bringing down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. ³² Sir, I pledged my father that I would take care of the lad. I told him, ‘If I don’t bring him back to you, I shall bear the blame forever.’ ³³ Please sir, let me stay here as a slave instead of the lad, and let the lad return with his brothers. ³⁴ For how shall I return to my father if the lad is not with me? I cannot bear to see what this would do to him.”

45 Joseph could stand it no longer.

“Out, all of you,” he cried out to his attendants, and he was left alone with his brothers. ² Then he wept aloud. His sobs could be heard throughout the palace, and the news was quickly carried to Pharaoh’s palace.

³ “I am Joseph!” he said to his brothers. “Is my father still alive?” But his brothers couldn’t say a word, they were so stunned with surprise.

⁴ “Come over here,” he said. So they came closer. And he said again, “I am Joseph, your brother whom you sold into Egypt! ⁵ But don’t be angry with yourselves that you did this to me, for God did it! He sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives. ⁶ These two years of famine will grow to seven, during which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. ⁷ God has sent me here to keep you and your families alive, so that you will become a great nation. ⁸ Yes, it was God who sent me here, not you! And he has made me a counselor to Pharaoh, and manager of this entire nation, ruler of all the land of Egypt.

⁹ “Hurry, return to my father and tell him, ‘Your son Joseph says, “God has made me chief of all the land of Egypt. Come down to me right away! ¹⁰ You shall live in the land of Goshen so that you can be near me with all your children, your grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all that you have. ^11-12 I will take care of you there”’ (you men are witnesses of my promise, and my brother Benjamin has heard me say it) ‘“for there are still five years of famine ahead of us. Otherwise you will come to utter poverty along with all your household.”’ ¹³ Tell our father about all my power here in Egypt, and how everyone obeys me. And bring him to me quickly.”

¹⁴ Then, weeping with joy, he embraced Benjamin and Benjamin began weeping too. ¹⁵ And he did the same with each of his brothers, who finally found their tongues! ¹⁶ The news soon reached Pharaoh—“Joseph’s brothers have come”; and Pharaoh was very happy to hear it, as were his officials.

¹⁷ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Tell your brothers to load their pack animals and return quickly to their homes in Canaan, ¹⁸ and to bring your father and all of your families and come here to Egypt to live. Tell them, ‘Pharaoh will assign to you the very best territory in the land of Egypt. You shall live off the fat of the land!’ ¹⁹ And tell your brothers to take wagons from Egypt to carry their wives and little ones, and to bring your father here. ²⁰ Don’t worry about your property, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.”

²¹ So Joseph gave them wagons, as Pharaoh had commanded, and provisions for the journey, ²² and he gave each of them new clothes—but to Benjamin he gave five changes of clothes and three hundred pieces of silver! ²³ He sent his father ten donkey-loads of the good things of Egypt, and ten donkeys loaded with grain and all kinds of other food, to eat on his journey. ²⁴ So he sent his brothers off.

“Don’t quarrel along the way!” was his parting shot! ²⁵ And leaving, they returned to the land of Canaan, to Jacob their father.

²⁶ “Joseph is alive,” they shouted to him. “And he is ruler over all the land of Egypt!” But Jacob’s heart was like a stone; he couldn’t take it in. ²⁷ But when they had given him Joseph’s messages, and when he saw the wagons filled with food that Joseph had sent him, his spirit revived.

²⁸ And he said, “It must be true! Joseph my son is alive! I will go and see him before I die.”