The Living Bible by Inc. Tyndale House Publishers Page A

bring your youngest brother back to me. Then I shall know whether you are spies or honest men; if you prove to be what you say, then I will give you back your brother and you can come as often as you like to purchase grain.’”
         35  As they emptied out the sacks, there at the top of each was the money paid for the grain! Terror gripped them, as it did their father.
         36  Then Jacob exclaimed, “You have bereaved me of my children—Joseph didn’t come back, Simeon is gone, and now you want to take Benjamin too! Everything has been against me.”
         37  Then Reuben said to his father, “Kill my two sons if I don’t bring Benjamin back to you. I’ll be responsible for him.”
         38  But Jacob replied, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother Joseph is dead and he alone is left of his mother’s children. If anything should happen to him, I would die.”
    Genesis 43
    But there was no relief from the terrible famine throughout the land. 2  When the grain they had brought from Egypt was almost gone, their father said to them, “Go again and buy us a little food.”
         3-5  But Judah told him, “The man wasn’t fooling one bit when he said, ‘Don’t ever come back again unless your brother is with you.’ We cannot go unless you let Benjamin go with us.”
         6  “Why did you ever tell him you had another brother?” Israel moaned. “Why did you have to treat me like that?”
         7  “But the man specifically asked us about our family,” they told him. “He wanted to know whether our father was still living and he asked us if we had another brother, so we told him. How could we know that he was going to say, ‘Bring me your brother’?”
         8  Judah said to his father, “Send the lad with me and we will be on our way; otherwise we will all die of starvation—and not only we, but you and all our little ones. 9  I guarantee his safety. If I don’t bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame forever. 10  For we could have gone and returned by this time if you had let him come.”
         11  So their father Israel finally said to them, “If it can’t be avoided, then at least do this. Load your donkeys with the best products of the land. Take them to the man as gifts—balm, honey, spices, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. 12  Take double money so that you can pay back what was in the mouths of your sacks, as it was probably someone’s mistake, 13  and take your brother and go. 14  May God Almighty give you mercy before the man, so that he will release Simeon and return Benjamin. And if I must bear the anguish of their deaths, then so be it.”
         15  So they took the gifts and double money and went to Egypt, and stood before Joseph. 16  When Joseph saw that Benjamin was with them, he said to the manager of his household, “These men will eat with me this noon. Take them home and prepare a big feast.” 17  So the man did as he was told and took them to Joseph’s palace. 18  They were badly frightened when they saw where they were being taken.
         “It’s because of the money returned to us in our sacks,” they said. “He wants to pretend we stole it and seize us as slaves, with our donkeys.”
         19  As they arrived at the entrance to the palace, they went over to Joseph’s household manager, 20  and said to him, “O sir, after our first trip to Egypt to buy food, 21  as we were returning home, we stopped for the night and opened our sacks, and the money was there that we had paid for the grain. Here it is; we have brought it back again, 22  along with additional money to buy more grain. We have no idea how the money got into our sacks.”
         23  “Don’t worry about it,” the household manager told them; “your God, even the God of your fathers, must have put it there, for we collected your money all right.”
         Then he released Simeon and brought him out to