18. On the third day Joseph said to them: “Do this, and you shall live; for I am a God-fearing man.
19. If you are honest men, let one of your brothers be confined in this prison, while the rest of you go and take home grain for your starving families.
20. But you must bring me your youngest brother. Your words will thus be verified, and you will not die.” To this they agreed.
21. To one another, however, they said: “Truly we are being punished because of our brother. We saw the anguish of his heart when he pleaded with us, yet we would not listen. That is why this anguish has now come upon us.”
22. Then Reuben responded, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do no wrong to the boy’? But you would not listen! Now comes the reckoning for his blood.”
23. They did not know, of course, that Joseph understood what they said, since he spoke with them through an interpreter.
24. But turning away from them, he wept. When he was able to speak to them again, he took Simeon from among them and bound him before their eyes.
25. Then Joseph gave orders to have their containers filled with grain, their money replaced in each one’s sack, and provisions given them for their journey. After this had been done for them,
26. they loaded their donkeys with the grain and departed.
27. At the night encampment, when one of them opened his bag to give his donkey some fodder, he saw his money there in the mouth of his bag.
28. He cried out to his brothers, “My money has been returned! Here it is in my bag!” At that their hearts sank. Trembling, they asked one another, “What is this that God has done to us?”
29. When they got back to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them.
30. “The man who is lord of the land,” they said, “spoke to us harshly and put us in custody on the grounds that we were spying on the land.
31. But we said to him: ‘We are honest men; we have never been spies.
32. We are twelve brothers, sons of the same father; but one is no more, and the youngest one is now with our father in the land of Canaan.’
33. Then the man who is lord of the land said to us: ‘This is how I will know if you are honest men: leave one of your brothers with me, then take grain for your starving families and go.
34. When you bring me your youngest brother, and I know that you are not spies but honest men, I will restore your brother to you, and you may move about freely in the land.’”