Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

45:1-15 - After Judah made his impassioned plea to Joseph to take him as a slave instead of Benjamin, who in the eyes of the law was guilty of theft, “Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him.” He sent out everyone who wasn’t his brother and wept so loudly that “the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard.” He revealed to his brothers saying, “I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.” Now this could have gone many different ways. I wonder what these guys think happened to Joseph after they sold him, they probably thought that his soft, favored teenage boy would have died in slavery, and maybe that’s what happened to slaves during that time. I know that there were many instances where the work that slaves were made to perform was so brutal that the life expectancy was very low, and maybe that was standard at that time. I wondered how Joseph could have proved to his brothers that it was indeed him, I imagine it wouldn’t have taken a lot, he probably ...

44:1-13 - The super personal and bizarre dinner is over and I bet the brothers all sigh with relief while they pack and plan for their journey home the next day. Joseph, however, is up to some shenanigans during the night by telling his head servant to not only fill the brothers’ sacks with food “as much as they can carry,” but also return the men’s money in the sacks just like last time, and additionally “put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack’s mouth of the youngest.” TB notes that this isn’t just some random piece of Joseph’s housewares, but instead is a large silver bowl which is used by Egyptian leadership for divination, which is a type of false seership. It’s not just like Benjamin put a fork into his pocket during dinner, this would have been equivalent to Rachel stealing her father’s household gods, these pieces are expensive, and have a deep spiritual implication. The men leave the city to head home, “and when they were gone out of the city, and not yet far off,” Joseph tol...

I know I’ve been MIA for several weeks but work has been crazy busy and I’ve driven almost 2,000 miles on and off on different road trips to pick up my daughter’s car and drive it from was she was training in Texas to where she was permanently stationed, as well as he being home on leave for the first time in several months. And my sister had another adorable baby boy with so many boys already at home and this new baby was in the NICU for the first 3 weeks, so anyway, it’s been a very wild and crazy last several weeks, but hopefully I’m back, even if I can only do a small amount here and there. 43:16-30 - The remaining 10 of Jacob’s sons leave to go back to Egypt and when Joseph sees them again, he tells his servants to make a big feast and bring all the men inside. At this point the men must have been so perplexed as to why they were receiving so much attention from this guy, the attention and extremes of emotion being so completely disproportionate to their social status and signifi...