78 : The Brothers Return Home
So they loaded their asses with the grain and started home.
But when they stopped at an inn and one of them opened his sack to feed his ass,
he spied his money in the mouth of his sack.
"My money is back in my sack!" he said to his brothers.
Their hearts failed them and they were afraid, saying to one another:
"What is this that God has done to us?"
They came home to Jacob, their father, in the land of Canaan, and told him all that had happened.
"The man, who is the lord of the land, treated us harshly and took us for spies,
but we said to him: 'We are true men; we are not spies. We were twelve brothers.
One is no longer, and the youngest is with our father in the land of Canaan.'
Then the man who is the lord of the land said to us:
"'I will know if you are true men.
Leave one of your brothers here with me and take food to feed the hungry in your houses,
and be gone.
Then bring your brother to me, the youngest, and I shall know that you are not spies but true men. Then I will deliver your brother and you shall trade in the land."'
Now when they emptied their sacks,behold, every man found his bundle of money in his sack.
And when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid.
Jacob said to them:
"You have taken away my children from me.
Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin away.
All these things are against me."
Reuben said to his father: "You may kill my two sons if I do not bring Benjamin back to you.
Put him into my hands, and I will bring him to you again."
But Jacob said: "My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he alone is left.
If harm should come to him on the journey,
you would bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave."
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