The Set Up - Genesis 43:16-34

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 significance. I would be asking myself, “why is this important guy so interested in me? I’m not important.”

The head of Joseph’s servants is there and the brothers hit him up because they are terrified at this point, they don’t know why they were singled out initially, but they are pretty sure that the attention they are getting now is because of the money that was “mysteriously” put back into their sacks that they discovered on their way home with the grain. The brothers even explain to the head guy what happened, sort of a “you’re not going to believe what happened, you’ll laugh when I tell you…” kind of situation. But the head guy assures them that this is not about the money because “your God… hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money,” or basically “I was the one who put the money back into your bags, don’t worry this isn’t about that.”

Simeon was brought out of prison, the men’s feet were washed and their animals were cared for. When Joseph came out at noon, he inquired about their father, the men bowed down and answered, “Thy servant our father is in good health, he is yet alive.” Then Joseph sees Benjamin and “made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there.” All these men are his brothers, but Benjamin is his only full brother, meaning that they probably had a very strong emotional attachment to each other. Benjamin was probably Joseph’s best friend growing up, and even after all these years, Joseph still loves Benjamin so much that he can’t even stay in the same room initially because he becomes so emotional. Think about everything that Joseph had been through up to this point, he probably didn’t become overwhelmed by emotion very often, so this must have been a very powerful moment for him.

43:31:34 – Joseph composes himself and goes back out to eat lunch with these visitors, but the Egyptians ate separately from these Hebrews “for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” The IM notes that “several Egyptian dieties were represented by cattle, especially female cattle. Since the Hewbrews were herdsmen who slaughtered and ate cattle, regardless of sex, this practice would have been viewed by the Egyptians as a terrible abomination. Whatever the reason, Joseph seemed to respect the custom of Egyptians and Hebrews eating separately.” TB also makes a mention that because the Hebrews were shepherds, they probably smelled like animals so the Egyptians might have wanted to keep their distance for that reason.

Whatever the reason was, it seems like the room was set up to where Joseph was at the most prominent seat, which makes sense, he is the most important person in the room, socially. Then the rest of the Egyptians were seated away and the Hebrew visitors were seated separately. But here’s where it gets interesting, when sitting at the table, they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth.” I always read this as they just organically sat themselves in this order, which would be kind of weird but apparently, it was assigned seating and the men were assigned seats in their birth order, “and the men marvelled one at another.” How could anyone in Egypt have known what their birth order was? Maybe they reasoned that Simeon had told them while he was imprisoned, but at this point, he was back with them and could have denied doing so. It was already weird, but it kept getting more and more strange as time went on.

Finally, when the food came out, everyone got their food, but “Benjamin’s mess was five times as much as any of theirs.” TB suggests that Benjamin’s is five times larger because that was the amount that an heir apparent received in certain business or inheritance dealings, I didn’t really understand that part. But the one thought that I did have was that Joseph was spoiling Benjamin and designating him as the favorite, just like Jacob did to Joseph all those years ago. It seems to me like he is trying to simulate his own experience with Benjamin, perhaps in an attempt to see if his brothers would become bitter towards Benjamin for the unearned favor that he received. He knew he was going to send them on their way the next day and also set up the ultimate test, so maybe he wanted to see if his brothers were still so petty that they would turn on Benjamin out of jealousy, just like they turned on Joseph out of jealousy so long ago.