An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis Chapter 42

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Thanks to God and Joseph, Egypt is the only country with reserves of food during a seven year global famine in which Joseph personally sells food to people who can take it back to their own communities. Need breakfast in Venezuela? Send someone to Cairo and have them ask Joseph for some food. In Canaan, Joseph’s brothers, who cast him into Egyptian slavery twenty years before, find that they need to go to Egypt for food too. Their ageing father, Jacob sends ten of them, but he decides that the brother called Benjamin should not go, because Jacob inexplicably fears Benjamin will come to be hurt on the journey if he goes. We are not told if Jacob has been given this conviction by God or not. Joseph, now governor of Egypt on behalf of the Pharaoh, is selling food to the World’s needy when his brothers join the queue (presumably number in thousands if not millions, so worse than the queue to get on the best rides in Disneyland). Joseph recognizes his brothers, but they fail to recognize him. He falsely accuses them of coming to Egypt as spies. He claims that they are looking for the weakest parts of Egypt’s defences in preparation for an invasion. He ignores their honest assertion that they just want food like everyone else. They tell him that they are ten of twelve brothers, and how one brother died (they think Joseph is dead) and the last brother (Benjamin) is looking after their frail father, Jacob. Joseph insists that all but one of the brothers remain in Egypt as hi captives while one brother will go back to Canaan to fetch Benjamin to Egypt so he can verify their claims. Joseph has his brothers arrested and imprisoned for three days. Joseph then changes his mind about them sending just one brother to fetch Benjamin, as he has decided to let all but one of the sons of Jacob go, retaining the tenth brother, as a hostage. Failure to agree with this will lead to their execution, Joseph insists. The brothers confer to consider their options and lament that they are being punished by God for leaving Joseph to die in the desert as they did. The brother called Reuben reminds them that he was against killing Joseph from the start, even though he went along with it in the end. They are unaware that Joseph can hear all this through his interpreter. Why he needs an interpreter when theirs is his native language is unclear. He is now however only talking Egyptian. Their words make him cry. Joseph selects the brother called Simeon tied up and taken away from the cell containing the brothers, to serve as his hostage. He then gives the others food for the whole family and the liberated brothers ride off on their now heavily laden donkeys. When the brothers stop to eat they find that Joseph has returned to them all the silver he confiscated from them on arresting them. The silver was for use buying the food. The brothers are mystified to be getting the food for free. They attribute the return of their silver to God rather than Joseph. The brothers make their report to Jacob back in Canaan, telling him all that happened to them from being accused of spying to having to leave Simeon as a hostage until they go back to Egypt with Benjamin. Jacob is upset, having lost Joseph (who he thinks is dead) and Simeon, and now he feels as if Benjamin might be next to disappear. Even when Reuben promises Jacob that Joseph can kill Reuben’s sons, Jacob’s grandsons if Benjamin is harmed, Jacob still refuses to let Benjamin accompany the brothers on any second journey to Egypt. Joseph is being pretty mean, especially knowing his innocent ageing father needs food as much as his ratbag brothers. He is obviously unhappy at them trying to kill him and leaving him in a well, to become any Egyptian slave. The tease of sending them away only to have to return is quite a sadistic revenge unworthy of a respected religious figure. Arthur Chappell