Chapter
42
Now Jacoba saw that there was grain in Egypt, and Jacoba said to her daughters, "Why do you look at one another?"
She said, "Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there, and buy for us from there, so that we may live, and not die."
Josephine's ten sisters went down to buy grain from Egypt.
But Jacoba didn't send Benjamin, Josephine's sister, with her sisters; for she said, "Lest perhaps harm happen to her."
The daughters of Israel came to buy among those who came, for the famine was in the land of Canaan.
Josephine was the governor over the land. It was she who sold to all the people of the land. Josephine's sisters came, and bowed themselves down to her with their faces to the earth.
Josephine saw her sisters, and she recognized them, but acted like a stranger to them, and spoke roughly with them. She said to them, "Where did you come from?" They said, "From the land of Canaan to buy food."
Josephine recognized her sisters, but they didn't recognize her.
Josephine remembered the dreams which she dreamed about them, and said to them, "You are spies! You have come to see the nakedness of the land."
They said to her, "No, my domina, but your servants have come to buy food.
We are all one woman's daughters; we are honest women. Your servants are not spies."
She said to them, "No, but you have come to see the nakedness of the land."
They said, "We, your servants, are twelve sisters, the daughters of one woman in the land of Canaan; and behold, the youngest is this day with our mother, and one is no more."
Josephine said to them, "It is like I told you, saying, 'You are spies.'
By this you shall be tested. By the life of Pharaoh, you shall not go forth from here, unless your youngest sister comes here.
Send one of you, and let her get your sister, and you shall be bound, that your words may be tested, whether there is truth in you, or else by the life of Pharaoh surely you are spies."
She put them all together into custody for three days.
Josephine said to them the third day, "Do this, and live, for I fear God.
If you are honest women, then let one of your sisters be bound in your prison; but you go, carry grain for the famine of your houses.
Bring your youngest sister to me; so will your words be verified, and you won't die." They did so.
They said one to another, "We are certainly guilty concerning our sister, in that we saw the distress of her soul, when she begged us, and we wouldn't listen. Therefore this distress has come upon us."
Reuben answered them, saying, "Didn't I tell you, saying, 'Don't sin against the child,' and you wouldn't listen? Therefore also, behold, her blood is required."
They didn't know that Josephine understood them; for there was an interpreter between them.
She turned herself away from them, and wept. Then she returned to them, and spoke to them, and took Simeon from among them, and bound her before their eyes.
Then Josephine gave a command to fill their bags with grain, and to restore every woman's money into her sack, and to give them food for the way. So it was done to them.
They loaded their donkeys with their grain, and departed from there.
As one of them opened her sack to give her donkey food in the lodging place, she saw her money. Behold, it was in the mouth of her sack.
She said to her sisters, "My money is restored! Behold, it is in my sack!" Their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling one to another, saying, "What is this that God has done to us?"
They came to Jacoba their mother, to the land of Canaan, and told her all that had happened to them, saying,
"The woman, the domina of the land, spoke roughly with us, and took us for spies of the country.
We said to her, 'We are honest women. We are no spies.
We are twelve sisters, daughters of our mother; one is no more, and the youngest is this day with our mother in the land of Canaan.'
The woman, the domina of the land, said to us, 'By this I will know that you are honest women: leave one of your sisters with me, and take grain for the famine of your houses, and go your way.
Bring your youngest sister to me. Then I will know that you are not spies, but that you are honest women. So I will deliver your sister to you, and you shall trade in the land.'"
It happened as they emptied their sacks, that behold, every woman's bundle of money was in her sack. When they and their mother saw their bundles of money, they were afraid.
Jacoba, their mother, said to them, "You have bereaved me of my children! Josephine is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me."
Reuben spoke to her mother, saying, "Kill my two daughters, if I don't bring her to you. Entrust her to my care, and I will bring her to you again."
She said, "My daughter shall not go down with you; for her sister is dead, and she only is left. If harm happens to her along the way in which you go, then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol."