BERESHIS 42

16 Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be kept in prison, that your words may be proved, whether there be any truth in you: or else by the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies.

They are most obsequious in their deference. He uses the whip severely, because he knows the end will be sweetness for all. He speaks roughly to them, and puts them through direful exercises of mind, until he can stand it no longer.

Ways of Providence Ch 8

21 And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.

See, also, how naturally God brought about Joseph's sweet revenge on his brothers. They came to buy corn. They did not know him; for, whereas he was seventeen when they sold him, he is now over thirty-seven, and attired as an Egyptian official, speaking the Egyptian language, which he has learnt during his servitude.

But he knows them, for they were grown men when he saw them last, and they are in the main unaltered, and they are dressed in the same way as when they handed him over to the Ishmaelites.

Ways of Providence Ch 8

24 And he turned himself about from them, and wept; and returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes.

 It is part of a story yet unfinished, for Joseph has yet to reappear in the land of the living to learn of the deliverance of his people from Egypt, and of the long, sad, yet God-illuminated history coming after; and to take part in a still more thrilling situation when another, who, like himself, was hated by his brethren, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, makes himself known to his misguided brethren for the joy of Israel and the blessedness of all mankind.

Ways of Providence Ch 8