Joseph and his Brethren
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looked forward to the future with perplexity. They talked despondingly
to one another in regard to being able to supply their families with
food. Want and starvation stared them in the face. At length Jacob
heard of the wonderful provisions which the king of Egypt had made;
that he was instructed of God in a dream seven years before the famine
to lay up large supplies for the seven years of famine which were
to follow, and that all the countries journeyed to Egypt to buy corn.
He said unto his sons, “Why do ye look one upon another? And he
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said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt. Get you down
thither, and buy for us from thence, that we may live, and not die. And
Joseph’s ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt. But Benjamin,
Joseph’s brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren, for he said, Lest
peradventure mischief befall him.”
Jacob’s sons came with the crowd of buyers to purchase corn of
Joseph, and they “bowed down themselves before him with their faces
to the earth.” And Joseph knew his brethren, but he appeared not to
know them, and spake roughly unto them. “And he said unto them,
Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan, to buy
food. And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them,
and said unto them, Ye are spies. To see the nakedness of the land ye
are come.”
They assured Joseph that their only errand into Egypt was to buy
food. Joseph again charges them with being spies. He wished to learn
if they possessed the same haughty spirit they had when he was with
them, and he was anxious to draw from them some information in
regard to his father and Benjamin. They feel humbled in their adversity,
and manifest grief, rather than anger, at the suspicions of Joseph. They
assure him that they are no spies, but the sons of one man; that they
are twelve brethren; that the youngest is then with their father, and
one is not. His father and Benjamin are the very ones Joseph wishes to
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learn in regard to. He professes to doubt the truthfulness of their story,
and tells them he will prove them, and that they shall not go forth from
Egypt until their youngest brother come hither. He proposes to keep
them in confinement until one shall go and bring their brother, to prove
their words, whether there was any truth in them. If they would not
consent to this, he would regard them as spies.
The sons of Jacob felt unwilling to consent to this arrangement. It
would require some time for one to go to their father, to get Benjamin,