Genesis 41:46-57 and Genesis 42
There came seven good years in Egypt, just as the Lord had shown Joseph, when ever so much grain grew in the fields: the people had all they could use, yet each year there was ever so much left. Each harvest Joseph had all the grain not needed, stored in safe places in the towns; at first they kept count of the measures, but every year so much more was brought that at last they did not keep, count; we read it was “as the sand of the sea.”
Then seven years of famine came, just as the Lord had also shown Joseph, when the grain did not grow and people had not enough to make bread. They came to the king-for grain, and he told them, “Go to Joseph”, for he had charge of the great storehouses.
In other lands there was this bad time of drouth and famine also, and people came to Egypt to buy grain. One day ten men came from Canaan and stood before Joseph. At once he knew that they were his brothers; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. They bowed down to the ground before him, as was proper to such a high ruler, and Joseph remembered his dreams of their sheaves bowing to his sheaf. But he did not tell them who he was, nor let them know he understood their language but spoke by an interpreter. And they did not think of this great man being the boy they had sold for a slave over twenty years before. They asked to buy grain to take home to their families, and told of their aged father and of a younger brother.
Joseph said he would prove if they were speaking truly, or if they were spies who had come to see the land, and he had them all put in prison for three days. This seems a hard way to treat them, and Joseph really longed to treat them kindly, but he had wisdom to know they needed to think of their past wrong doings, which had been very wicked; and it did make them sorry, as you will see if you read verses 21 and 22 of Genesis 42nd, for they spoke of how they had not cared for Joseph’s cries at the pit.
Joseph overheard their talk, and turned away to weep. Then he had their sacks filled with grain; their money put back inside; and let them return home, all excepting Simeon, whom he kept bound, until they should come back with the youngest brother to prove their story was true.
ML 11/08/1936