The seven years of famine happened not only in Egypt. Things became very bad in most of the world. Many people learned for the first time what it felt like to go to bed hungry with very little food to eat. When Jacob, Joseph’s father, heard that there was corn in Egypt he said to his sons, “I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down and buy some for us, so we may live and not die.” So Joseph’s ten brothers went from the land of Canaan down to Egypt to buy corn. They were the same brothers that had thrown him into a pit and then sold him to be a slave in Egypt. Joseph now has a younger brother, Benjamin, who stayed in Canaan because his father was afraid something might happen to him. When Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt and appeared before Joseph to buy corn, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground. They did not recognize Joseph, but he recognized them right away. Do you think Joseph remembered his childhood dream of tying sheaves of grain together in a field and all at once his sheaf stood upright and his brother’s sheaves bowed down to it? What do you think Joseph will do? Will he do something bad to his brothers to get even with them for all the bad stuff they did to him? What would you do if you were Joseph?
If you were Joseph what would you do to these brothers that had treated you so badly?