For Teaching

Genesis 42: What the Passage Says

130 claims across 38 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Genesis 42 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jacob hears there is grain in Egypt and sends ten of his sons to buy some, keeping Benjamin at home. Joseph, who is the ruler over Egypt, recognizes his brothers when they bow before him, but they do not recognize him; he accuses them of being spies, holds them three days, and tells them to bring their youngest brother to prove their words. He keeps Simeon in custody, sends the rest home with grain and with their money secretly put back in their sacks, and they find it on the way and at home. When they tell their father everything, Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go, even after Reuben offers his own two sons as a pledge.

Claim by Claim

42:1
- Jacob saw that there was grain for purchase in Egypt.
- Jacob said to his sons, asking why they were looking at one another.
42:2
- Jacob said he had heard that there was grain for purchase in Egypt.
- Jacob told his sons to go down there.
- Jacob told his sons to buy grain for the family from there.
- Jacob said the purpose was that they might live and not die.
42:3
- Ten of Joseph's brothers went down.
- They went down to buy grain from Egypt.
42:4
- Benjamin was Joseph's brother.
- Jacob did not send Benjamin with his brothers.
- Jacob said that harm might befall Benjamin.
42:5
- The sons of Israel came to buy grain among those who were coming.
- The famine was in the land of Canaan.
42:6
- Joseph was the ruler over the land.
- Joseph was the one who sold grain to all the people of the land.
- Joseph's brothers came.
- Joseph's brothers bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.
42:7
- Joseph saw his brothers.
- Joseph recognized them.
- Joseph made himself unrecognizable to them.
- Joseph spoke harshly to them.
- Joseph asked them where they had come from.
- They said they came from the land of Canaan.
- They said they came to buy food.
42:8
- Joseph recognized his brothers.
- His brothers did not recognize him.
42:9
- Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them.
- Joseph said to them that they were spies.
- Joseph said they had come to see the exposed and undefended parts of the land.
42:10
- They said to him, No, my lord.
- They said that his servants had come to buy food.
42:11
- They said they were all the sons of one man.
- They said they were honest men.
- They said his servants were not spies.
42:12
- Joseph said to them, No.
- Joseph said they had come to see the exposed and undefended parts of the land.
42:13
- They said his servants were twelve brothers.
- They said they were the sons of one man in the land of Canaan.
- They said the youngest was that day with their father.
- They said one brother was no more.
42:14
- Joseph said to them that this was what he had spoken to them.
- Joseph repeated that they were spies.
42:15
- Joseph said they would be tested by this.
- Joseph swore by the life of Pharaoh.
- Joseph said they would not leave that place.
- Joseph said the exception was their youngest brother coming there.
42:16
- Joseph told them to send one of them.
- Joseph said that one should fetch their brother.
- Joseph said the rest of them would be held in confinement.
- Joseph said the purpose was that their words might be tested.
- Joseph said the test was whether there was truth in them.
- Joseph said that if not, then by the life of Pharaoh they were spies.
42:17
- Joseph gathered them into custody.
- The custody lasted three days.
42:18
- Joseph spoke to them on the third day.
- Joseph told them to do this and live.
- Joseph said he feared God.
42:19
- Joseph said, If you are honest men.
- Joseph said one of their brothers should be bound in their place of confinement.
- Joseph told the rest to go.
- Joseph told them to carry grain for the hunger of their households.
42:20
- Joseph told them to bring their youngest brother to him.
- Joseph said their words would then be verified.
- Joseph said they would not die.
- They did so.
42:21
- They said to one another that they were truly guilty concerning their brother.
- They said they had seen the distress of his soul.
- They said he had pleaded with them.
- They said they did not listen.
- They said that therefore this distress had come upon them.
42:22
- Reuben answered them.
- Reuben asked whether he had not told them not to sin against the boy.
- Reuben said they would not listen.
- Reuben said that his blood was now being required.
42:23
- They did not know that Joseph understood them.
- There was an interpreter between them.
42:24
- Joseph turned away from them.
- Joseph wept.
- Joseph returned to them.
- Joseph spoke to them.
- Joseph took Simeon from them.
- Joseph bound Simeon before their eyes.
42:25
- Joseph gave orders to fill their containers with grain.
- Joseph gave orders to return each man's silver to his sack.
- Joseph gave orders to give them provisions for the journey.
- This was done for them.
42:26
- They loaded their grain on their donkeys.
- They departed from there.
42:27
- One of them opened his sack at the lodging place.
- He opened it to give feed to his donkey.
- He saw his silver.
- The silver was in the mouth of his bag.
42:28
- He said to his brothers that his silver had been returned.
- He said it was there in his bag.
- Their heart failed them.
- They trembled toward one another.
- They said, What is this that God has done to us?
42:29
- They came to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan.
- They told him all that had happened to them.
42:30
- They said the man who was lord of the land spoke harshly to them.
- They said he treated them as spies of the land.
42:31
- They said they had told him they were honest men.
- They said they had told him they were not spies.
42:32
- They said they were twelve brothers, sons of their father.
- They said one was no more.
- They said the youngest was that day with their father in the land of Canaan.
42:33
- They said the man, the lord of the land, said to them that by this he would know they were honest men.
- They said he told them to leave one of their brothers with him.
- They said he told them to take food for the hunger of their households and go.
42:34
- They said he told them to bring their youngest brother to him.
- They said he would then know they were not spies but honest men.
- They said he would give their brother back to them.
- They said they would be allowed to trade in the land.
42:35
- As they were emptying their sacks, each man's bundle of silver was in his sack.
- They and their father saw the bundles of silver.
- They were afraid.
42:36
- Jacob their father said to them that they had bereaved him of his children.
- Jacob said Joseph was no more.
- Jacob said Simeon was no more.
- Jacob said they would take Benjamin.
- Jacob said all these things were against him.
42:37
- Reuben spoke to his father.
- Reuben said his father could put his two sons to death if he did not bring Benjamin back to him.
- Reuben told his father to put Benjamin in his hand.
- Reuben said he would return him to his father.
42:38
- Jacob said his son would not go down with them.
- Jacob said that his brother was dead.
- Jacob said that he alone was left.
- Jacob said harm might befall him on the road they would travel.
- Jacob said they would bring his gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

42:1: The King James word "corn" means grain of any kind, here wheat, not maize or sweetcorn, which were unknown outside the Americas in 1611.
42:2: Travelers always spoke of going "down" to Egypt and "up" from it: Canaan is hill country, Egypt a low river valley and delta. Egypt's crops depended on the Nile's annual flood rather than on rainfall, so it could still have grain in store when drought had emptied the countries around it.
42:3: These are the same brothers who, about twenty years earlier, sold Joseph to slave traders and told their father he had been killed by a wild animal (Genesis 37). As far as the family knows, he is long dead.
42:4: Benjamin is Joseph's only full brother; both were sons of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel, who died giving birth to Benjamin. The other ten had different mothers. "Mischief" in the King James means serious harm or disaster, not the mild sense the word carries now.
42:5: "Israel" is the second name given to Jacob himself, so "the sons of Israel" here means simply Jacob's own sons, not yet a nation.
42:6: Joseph had been made second in command of Egypt and put in charge of the grain stored up during the seven good years (chapter 41). Bowing with the face to the ground was the ordinary way of approaching a high Egyptian official, a gesture of respect before power, not an act of worship.
42:7: "Made himself strange" means he deliberately behaved as though he did not know them: he was disguising who he was, not merely being cold.
42:8: Joseph was a boy when his brothers last saw him. More than twenty years had passed. Now he dressed and talked like an Egyptian.
42:9: The dreams are those of chapter 37, in which his brothers' sheaves of grain, and then the sun, moon and stars, bowed down to him, the dreams that made them hate him. "To see the nakedness of the land" is a Hebrew expression for scouting out a country's undefended points. Egypt's north-eastern frontier was the road by which invaders came, so a group of Canaanite men arriving together was exactly what border officials watched for.
42:10: "My lord" was a polite way to speak to a powerful man. Calling themselves his servants was also polite. It was their way of saying "we" to someone important.
42:11: "True men" in the King James means honest, truthful men, men whose account of themselves can be believed.
42:13: "One is not" renders a Hebrew phrase used of a person who is dead or gone for good. The brothers give no explanation of what happened to Joseph, and the wording deliberately leaves it vague.
42:15: "By the life of Pharaoh" is an oath formula: the speaker binds his words to the ruler's life, roughly "as certainly as Pharaoh is alive." Egyptians swore this way, and it fits the Egyptian identity Joseph is keeping up.
42:16: "Proved" here means tested or put to the proof, not proved true. Joseph is setting up an experiment, not announcing a conclusion.
42:17: "Ward" is an old word for custody or a guardhouse. It is the same kind of detention Joseph himself was held in earlier in Egypt.
42:18: "I fear God" means he holds God in awe. In the ancient world this was a statement about character: a God-fearing man was one who could be trusted to deal justly even with foreigners, who had no family or patron in the country to protect them.
42:21: They are talking about what they did in chapter 37, where they threw Joseph into a dry pit and sold him to passing traders. That account never mentioned him pleading with them; this is the first time the story reports it.
42:22: Reuben was the eldest brother, and had argued against killing Joseph (37:21–22). "His blood is required" is legal language: when a person was killed unlawfully, the life of whoever was responsible was owed in payment. Reuben means they are now being called to account for Joseph's death.
42:23: Joseph is dealing with them in Egyptian through a court interpreter, so the brothers speak freely to one another in their own language in front of him, not knowing he understands every word.
42:24: Simeon was the second-oldest of the brothers. With Reuben the eldest having tried to protect Joseph, Simeon was the next in line and the next most responsible.
42:25: Coined money did not yet exist. Payment was made in weighed pieces of silver carried in a pouch, so putting back "every man's money" means returning the silver they had weighed out for the grain.
42:26: The King James says they "laded their asses." Asses are donkeys, the usual animals for carrying heavy loads on a journey.
42:27: "Inn" in the King James does not mean a building with rooms for hire; it is a recognized stopping place on the road where travelers camped for the night. "Provender" is feed for the animals.
42:28: Their fear is practical. Grain paid for and silver still in the sack looks exactly like theft, and they are foreigners already accused of spying by a man who can jail them at will and who is holding their brother.
42:34: "Traffick" in the King James means to trade. Foreign merchants needed permission to do business in Egypt, so the promise of trading rights is a real concession, offered alongside the return of their brother.
42:35: Each man's silver had been tied up in its own pouch. Finding it returned was frightening, not welcome: it made them look like men who had walked off with both the grain and the payment, a charge that in Egypt could cost them their freedom.
42:36: Jacob believes Joseph is dead because the brothers brought him Joseph's coat covered in blood, back in Genesis 37.
42:37: Reuben offers his own two sons as security: if he fails, Jacob may put them to death. Staking lives on a promise was a recognized, if extreme, form of guarantee, but the pledge would cost Jacob his own grandsons, and he does not take it up.
42:38: "Gray hairs" stands for old age. "The grave" here translates Sheol, the Hebrew name for the shadowy place below to which all the dead go, good and bad alike; it is not a picture of punishment. Jacob means the grief would put him in his grave.

Read Genesis 42