To preserve their family from starvation, Joseph’s brothers journey to Egypt with their brother Benjamin, money to buy new grain, and money to pay again for the first quantity of grain they had purchased (Gen 43:15). When they arrive, however, they are taken directly to Joseph’s personal house (43:16-17).
Joseph’s brothers do not recognize that this is a dinner invitation (43:16). Being taken to Joseph’s personal house frightens them; previously accused of being spies, now they expect to be enslaved (43:18). They reason among themselves that it is because of the money in their sacks (43:18); if the Egyptians’ records indicated that the money was not paid, they could be accused of having failed to pay (and thus essentially of having stolen the grain) and therefore could be enslaved to cover the debt. One of this official’s rank would not have much personal need for more slaves and their donkeys, but as an efficient administrator he would want the debt covered.
Again, they have attributed the money in their sacks to God (42:28), but as a punishment and not as a gift (contrast 43:23). They are aware of their horrendous guilt concerning their brother Joseph years earlier (42:21), when they valued money more than their brother. In the world of their fears, they are now in the same position that Joseph was in many years earlier: about to be enslaved for money (37:28). This fear also foreshadows the apparent danger of Benjamin being enslaved for what would be found in his sack.
Their insistence that they “do not know” who put the money in their sacks (43:22) is a protestation of innocence (cf. 4:9; 21:26). Joseph’s steward, however (who holds the rank in Joseph’s household that Joseph once held in Potiphar’s), responds that he received their money, and the treasure in their sacks is simply a gift from their God and the God of their father (43:23). Lest we think that Joseph and his steward are merely toying with the brothers without a strategy, however, the affirmation that God is the one who put the money in their sacks is meant to make them attribute to God the silver cup that would later appear in Benjamin’s sack. Thus, later, when the official is ready to take Benjamin as a slave, Judah acknowledges that God has exposed their sin, all of them along with Benjamin (44:16). Indeed, God has exposed their sin, though in a more direct way than they imagine!
They probably believe that God is now punishing them for their past sin against Joseph (cf. 42:22; 50:17). They soon discover that they have been invited instead to dinner. What they will not discover until the following day, however, is that God really has exposed their sin—yet is also giving them a second chance to prove that they have changed.
