When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the servant who was over his household, “Bring the men to the house. Slaughter an animal and prepare it, for the men will eat with me at noon.”

But the men were afraid when they were brought to Joseph’s house. They said, “We are being brought in because of ¹  the money that was returned in our sacks last time. ²  He wants to capture us, ³  make us slaves, and take ⁴  our donkeys!”

Then Judah approached him and said, “My lord, please allow your servant to speak a word with you. ¹  Please do not get angry with your servant, ²  for you are just like Pharaoh. ³ 

But we replied, ‘We cannot go down there. ¹  If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go, ²  for we won’t be permitted to see the man’s face if our youngest brother is not with us.’

Tell him, ‘Your servants have taken care of cattle ¹  from our youth until now, both we and our fathers,’ so that you may live in the land of Goshen, ²  for everyone who takes care of sheep is disgusting ³  to the Egyptians.”

When the money from the lands of Egypt and Canaan was used up, all the Egyptians ¹  came to Joseph and said, “Give us food! Why should we die ²  before your very eyes because our money has run out?”

When that year was over, they came to him the next year and said to him, “We cannot hide from our ¹  lord that the money is used up and the livestock and the animals belong to our lord. Nothing remains before our lord except our bodies and our land.

But he did not purchase the land of the priests because the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh and they ate from their allotment that Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

Israel stretched out his right hand and placed it on Ephraim’s head, although he was the younger. ¹  Crossing his hands, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, for Manasseh was the firstborn.

When Joseph saw that his father placed his right hand on Ephraim’s head, it displeased him. ¹  So he took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head.

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph bears a grudge and wants to repay ¹  us in full ²  for all the harm ³  we did to him?”

‘Tell Joseph this: Please forgive the sin of your brothers and the wrong they did when they treated you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sin of the servants of the God of your father.” When this message was reported to him, Joseph wept. ¹ 

And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma ¹  and said ²  to himself, ³  “I will never again curse ⁴  the ground because of humankind, even though ⁵  the inclination of their minds ⁶  is evil from childhood on. ⁷  I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.