An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis Chapter Forty Three

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The famine continues throughout the World with only Egypt prepared for it in advance and now providing international aid as long as the hungry come to collect their food personally. Jacob and his family eat all the grain they got on their first visit to Egypt, where Joseph, who is running the food distribution programme, took his younger brother Simeon hostage, demanding that when the family revisit, they bring his then absent brother Benjamin along. The brothers have left Reuben rotting in an Egyptian prison until they have run out of food again. Judah reminds the brothers that unless they take Benjamin with them, they will have a wated trip the second time they go. Jacob, now called Israel, asks how they came to lose Benjamin in the first place. A good question, but why has it taken him several years to think of it? The brothers claim Joseph asked them lots of probing pertinent invasive questions about their absent family member though this was not mentioned in the relevant earlier chapters. Judah promises Israel that he will personally look after Benjamin through the journey to Egypt and bring him home safely. If he fails, Judah says, he will be burdened with the shame of his failure all his life. In the previous chapter when making the same promise to guard Benjamin, he told Israel to kill his (Judah’s) sons if he failed. He has now rather downgraded his own suggested and proposed punishment. He adds, perhaps sarcastically, that if not for arguing about whether to take Benjamin with them or not they could already have been to Egypt and back twice (without food to give them energy for the journey in search of food during the famine). Israel finally agrees to let Benjamin go with the brothers to Egypt though at no point in any of this has anyone asked Benjamin what he wants to do. Israel suggests they take what little produce the Canaanite people can till produce, including honey, some myrrh and Pistachio nuts. Israel also advises that they take some silver as well as returning the silver that they assume Joseph accidentally gave them as they left Egypt last time they went (though he gave it to them on purpose). The brothers make the second journey to Egypt at last, taking Benjamin and the honey and the silver with them. Joseph greets them well and invites his chief steward (Joseph is now a slave with slaves of his own) to slaughter an animal with which to prepare a feast in their honour. The brothers fear a trap and expect to be cast into prison or slavery over the accidental theft of the silver. They confess to having the silver to Joseph’s steward, but he tells them the silver was a gift to them from God (actually a gift from Joseph who the brothers have still not recognised). The brothers are granted full hospitality and their gifts of honey, pistachios, etc. are gratefully accepted. Joseph arrives home and asks about their father (his father too of course), he accepts their gifts, and then he sees Benjamin. To avoid the family seeing his tears of joy he goes outside alone. He ends up crying in his own bedroom, before composing himself and returning to join the brothers. Joseph eats alone, the brothers eat separately, as do the Egyptians and then again, the various family slaves as custom keeps them all dining apart – charming. The brothers find themselves seated at the table in order from the oldest to the youngest, Benjamin, who is served five times more food and wine than everyone else, but the brothers all enjoy the feast laid on in their honour. Lots of petty one-upmanship and social politics, slavery condoned, and encouraged, elitism and snobbery. Joseph is still playing games with the brothers who left him for dead. Arthur Chappell