Reading the Bible, Genesis Chapter 10
By: Shachar Oz
Tags: Bible, History

Interestingly, Faroe also renames yos​​ef as “Tzofnat Paanach” (in Hebrew, Tzofnat = hidden, secret; Paanach = solves a riddle). Faroe also gives him a wife to marry. Osnat is a daughter of a priest (which is a jewish name, but at this time it’s a little unclear how they arrived there). We are also told of Efraim and Menashe, the sons of Yosef, who were born in Egypt.

Yosef goes to travel the country. Organizes a stack of food in the outskirts of each city.

And then the famine starts, exactly as Yosef predicted. All other countries suffer while Egypt has food. At some point in time, also civilians finish the food, and they come asking for food from Faroe. He directs them all to Yosef, giving full responsibility. As a king this is quite a weird move. Trusting a person that came out of nowhere with the future of the entire kingdom. But at this point, it’s probably a leadership test. If it were to fail, he would have been removed from duty. But Yosef turned out to be a great manager as he was a planner. He sells out the food back and makes the nation richer.

Not long time passes, and other people hear about the richness of Egypt. Yaakov and his sons as well. Yaakov sends his sons to go buy food from Egypt.

Interestingly the bible uses the Hebrew word “shever” (meaning Break), to describe the fact that one has food. We use it when we want to say that we start eating after a long fasting time. Break the fast. Therefore — breakfast…

So, 10 brothers go to Egypt (Benyamin, the youngest, was left with his father since he was worried something will happen to him as well. Since both Yosef and Benyamin came from Rachel).

They get to the leader, Yosef, asking for food. They don’t recognize him, while he recognizes them… And now he starts with his revenge. He immediately calls them spies. They reject the strong claims, and tell the story about their family. He jails them for three days, and says that one of them will be sent back home to bring the young brother as proof of their truthfulness. Otherwise, they will be accounted as spies.

Three days later Yosef changes his mind. I think this is a weird move for such a strong leader. Something must have happened during these days, but we are not told of it. Yosef says that only one brother will stay in prison, while the other nine will take the food back home. They will come back with the young brother as proof for their truthfulness.

At this point, the brothers start feeling sorry about the sorrow they caused Yosef all these years. And it says that they felt guilty for it, and that this is their punishment. They didn’t know that Yosef actually heard them, and he went to cry in his room about all this, while staying strong in front of them.

Then, Shimon is being taken to prison, while the others take loads of food and pay money for it. Yosef commands his servant to hide the money back into their packages. Later on, during their journey back home, they found that all the money was still there and they actually didn’t pay for it. They actually felt scared now, since they can be blamed for stealing…

When Yaakov hears the entire story, and grieves. “Not only Yosef and Shimon, now you want to take also Benyamin?”. Reuven, the eldest, promises that his two sons should be killed if Benyamin and Shimon will not be returned safely. But Yaakov refuses to let them take Benyamin to Egypt.

Things hult until food depleted again…

Yaakov asks the brothers to go there again. For some reason, Reuven is removed from being the leader. Probably his last trip has brought this as a punishment for him. Yehuda now responds, saying “if you don’t give us Benyamin, we will all be dead. So we prefer not to even make the travel”. Yehuda promises that he will get responsible for Benyamin. And finally Yaakov caves and allows that. But I guess he didn’t really had any other option.

So they arrive again to Yosef. He prepares a lunch for them in his house. They thought they were put there in order to get punished for stealing the food, and immediately start apologizing.

They say they have returned the previous payment as well as brought another one to pay for the new purchase. But the home manager said that he received payment, so perhaps God helped them and gave them more money, meaning they don’t owe anything to Egypt… He gives Shimon back to the party and they all go to the house of Yosef to prepare for the lunch. They clean up, and prepare the presents they brought.

Yosef couldn’t bear eating with the group, since he got so emotional from seeing Benyamin after so long. So he ate alone. The Egyptians ate by themselves as well, and the 11 brothers were left to eat by themselves. Although it was very weird for them at first, eventually they got drunk a lot. This was only lunch…

Anyway, Yosef commands his servant to load their cattle with as much food as it can, return their money once again, but also hide a silver cup under the young one’s horse.

In the morning the party is let loose. A few hours later, they are stopped by Yosef’s soldiers. The lead servant says that they stole something from the house. The brothers say that the one that is found as a thief will die, and the rest of the brothers will become slaves. The servant changes that, and says that only the thief shall become a slave. You can see that this servant was not only very loyal to Yosef, he also had a lot of power since he was independent and knew that Yosef don't want to kill the brothers.

Obviously, when they found Benyamin Is the thief, the brothers know they can’t return to Yaakov this way.

They go back to Yosef trying to convince him to give them Benyamin back. But they don’t know what to say. Yehuda says that they will all remain slaves together with Benyamin. But Yosef says that he cannot allow that sadly. They all must go to bring the food to their home and their father. Only Benyamin will stay here.

They obviously can’t object. And this the chapter ends…

the bible text in hebrew.