NOTES for Gen 43:1-34
Today's reading continues the story of how Joseph led his brothers to repentance. On the one hand, he placed them before a very difficult choice: they absolutely had to go to Egypt again for bread, and at the same time it was absolutely impossible for them to appear before Joseph without Benjamin (vv. 2-5). And now Joseph's brothers understood what it is like to deprive a father of his beloved son (vv. 6-7, 11-14). In essence, when they sold Joseph into slavery, they did the same thing to their father; but then, blinded by hatred for their younger brother, they could not understand what Jacob experienced when he was deprived of Joseph. Now Joseph forced them to understand it by ordering them to bring Benjamin and forbidding them to appear in Egypt without the younger brother. The lesson was extremely harsh, but it was the only way to make the brothers, apparently rough men and, like most nomads, by no means inclined either to reflection or to sentimentality, feel and understand to the end what they had done when they got rid of Joseph. But that was not all: one of the brothers had to take upon himself full responsibility for Benjamin's well-being (vv. 8-9), a responsibility he did not refuse even when, as later events showed, the situation became critical (Gen. 44:17-34). Toward Joseph the brothers had behaved with absolute irresponsibility; now Joseph himself began to teach them a responsible attitude toward one another. And this was not a whim: without the ability to take responsibility upon oneself, neither true repentance nor real turning to God is possible. On the other hand, the story with the money returned to the brothers, the money paid for the grain, continued. In this situation Joseph's brothers behaved impeccably, without making even the slightest attempt to deceive Joseph. Jacob and all the others were convinced that the money had been returned to them by mistake, and they were ready to give it back to its rightful owners (vv. 12, 18-22). And then Joseph lets them understand that with God no deed remains without consequences, neither good nor evil: in response to the brothers' honesty and conscientiousness, he effectively gives them the money they had brought in payment for the grain they had bought earlier (v. 23). Thus gradually, step by step, Joseph brings his brothers to an understanding of things without which there can be no normal spiritual life: good and evil, a person's responsibility for his actions, and the almighty power of God. And he does this practically, not by reading moral lectures to his brothers, but by placing them in situations where everything is learned through their own experience.