One Year Pray for America Bible - Flipbook - Page 89
79
the boy?” Reuben asked. “But you
wouldn’t listen. And now we have to
answer for his blood!”
23 Of course, they d
idn’t know that
Joseph understood them, for he had
been speaking to them through an
interpreter. 24 Now he turned away
from them and began to weep. When
he regained his composure, he spoke
to them again. Then he chose Simeon
from among them and had him tied up
right before their eyes.
25 Joseph then ordered his servants
to fill the men’s sacks with grain, but
he also gave secret instructions to
return each brother’s payment at the
top of his sack. He also gave them supplies for their journey home. 26 So the
brothers loaded their donkeys with
the grain and headed for home.
27 But when they stopped for the
night and one of them opened his
sack to get grain for his donkey, he
found his money in the top of his sack.
28 “Look!” he exclaimed to his brothers. “My money has been returned;
it’s here in my sack!” Then their hearts
sank. Trembling, they said to each
other, “What has God done to us?”
29 When the brothers came to their
father, Jacob, in the land of Canaan,
they told him everything that had
happened to them. 30 “The man who
is governor of the land spoke very
harshly to us,” they told him. “He accused us of being spies scouting the
land. 31 But we said, ‘We are honest
men, not spies. 32 We are twelve brothers, sons of one father. One brother is
no longer with us, and the youngest
is at home with our father in the land
of Canaan.’
33 “Then the man who is governor of the land told us, ‘This is how
I will find out if you are honest men.
Leave one of your brothers here with
me, and take grain for your starving
families and go on home. 34 But you
must bring your youngest brother
back to me. Then I will know you are
honest men and not spies. Then I will
give you back your brother, and you
may trade freely in the land.’”
35 As they emptied out their sacks,
January 21
there in each man’s sack was the bag
of money he had paid for the grain!
The brothers and their father were
terrified when they saw the bags of
money. 36 Jacob exclaimed, “You are
robbing me of my children! Joseph is
gone! Simeon is gone! And now you
want to take Benjamin, too. Everything is going against me!”
37 Then Reu
ben said to his father,
“You may kill my two sons if I don’t
bring Benjamin back to you. I’ll be
responsible for him, and I promise to
bring him back.”
38 But Jacob replied, “My son will
not go down with you. His brother Jo
seph is dead, and he is all I have left.
If anything should happen to him on
your journey, you would send this
grieving,
white-
haired man to his
grave.*”
43:1 But the famine continued to ravage
the land of Canaan. 2 When the grain
they had brought from Egypt was almost gone, Jacob said to his sons, “Go
back and buy us a little more food.”
3 But Judah said, “The man was serious when he warned us, ‘You won’t
see my face again unless your brother
is with you.’ 4 If you send Benjamin
with us, we will go down and buy
more food. 5 But if you don’t let Ben
jamin go, we won’t go either. Remember, the man said, ‘You won’t see my
face again unless your brother is with
you.’”
6 “Why were you so cruel to me?”
Jacob* moaned. “Why did you tell him
you had another brother?”
7 “The man kept asking us questions about our family,” they replied.
“He asked, ‘Is your father still alive?
Do you have another brother?’ So we
answered his questions. How could
we know he would say, ‘Bring your
brother down here’?”
8 Ju
dah said to his father, “Send
the boy with me, and we will be on
our way. Otherwise we will all die
of starvation—and not only we, but
you and our little ones. 9 I personally
guarantee his safety. You may hold
me responsible if I d
on’t bring him
