1. Where was Joseph? 2. Why was he in prison? 3. What did God make him able to tell the king? 4. How many years was there to be much corn? 5. What was to be done with the corn? 6. Who managed the buying it? 7. When was the corn wanted? 8. Who came to buy corn? 9. Who did not come? 10. Why did not Joseph's brothers know him? 11. What did he make believe to think? 12. Whom did he tell them to fetch? 13. What did he give back to them? 14. What did their father say about Benjamin's going? 15. Why was he afraid to trust them with Benjamin? 16. What is the way to be believed?
SECOND READING.
"God Almighty give you mercy before the man."—Genesis 43:14.
JOSEPH'S brothers were soon obliged to go again and buy more corn in Egypt. Joseph had said they must bring the young brother they had told him of, or he should not believe their story; and when they said Benjamin must go, their father Jacob was greatly grieved, and showed how little he could trust them now, after the way they had behaved to Joseph. He would not have let Benjamin go at all if Judah had not promised to take the greatest care of him; and Judah could be trusted.
The story is so beautiful, and so easy to understand in the Bible, that I hardly like to tell it in my own words. Only think of Joseph's heart being so full when he saw his own dear youngest brother, that he could not stay with him for his tears, and went away to weep in his chamber! And yet he still tried the brothers. He wanted to see if they still were envious of the one their father loved best; so he made his steward hide his cup in Benjamin's sack of corn, and then go after them, and pretend to think they had stolen it.
The sons of Jacob were no thieves, and they said the steward might search their sacks. They took them down and looked, and there was the cup in Benjamin's sack!
They were all shocked; and the steward said that Benjamin must go back and be punished.