Jacob, Joseph & Egypt

My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’

We said to my lord, ‘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; and his father loves him.’

You said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’

We said to my lord, ‘The boy can’t leave his father: for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’

You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will see my face no more.’

When we came up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord.

Our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food.’

We said, ‘We can’t go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down: for we may not see the man’s face, unless our youngest brother is with us.’

Your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons:

and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn in pieces”; and I haven’t seen him since.

If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.’

Now therefore when I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us; since his life is bound up in the boy’s life;

it will happen, when he sees that the boy is no more, that he will die. Your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol.

For your servant became collateral for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t bring him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever.’

Now therefore, please let your servant stay instead of the boy, my lord’s slave; and let the boy go up with his brothers.

For how will I go up to my father, if the boy isn’t with me?—lest I see the evil that will come on my father.”

Then Joseph couldn’t control himself before all those who stood before him, and he cried, “Cause everyone to go out from me!” No one else stood with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

He wept aloud. The Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard.

Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Does my father still live?” His brothers couldn’t answer him; for they were terrified at his presence.

Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” They came near. “He said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.

Now don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are yet five years, in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance.

So now it wasn’t you who sent me here, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

Hurry, and go up to my father, and tell him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says, “God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me. Don’t wait.