Genesis 42:1-6

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Joseph’s Brothers Go to Egypt

42 When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you keep looking at one another?^{(A) 2} I have heard,” he said, “that there is grain in Egypt; go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.”^{(B) 3} So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. ⁴ But Jacob did not send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he feared that harm might come to him.^{(C) 5} Thus the sons of Israel were among the people who came to buy grain, for the famine had reached the land of Canaan.^(D)

⁶ Now Joseph was governor over the land; it was he who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.^(E)