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.’”
35. When they were emptying their sacks, there in each one’s sack was his moneybag! At the sight of their moneybags, they and their father were afraid.
36. Their father Jacob said to them: “Must you make me childless? Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin away! All these things have happened to me!”
37. Then Reuben told his father: “You may kill my own two sons if I do not return him to you! Put him in my care, and I will bring him back to you.”