And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.
Joseph knew his brothers at once when they came with the crowd of buyers to purchase grain and bowed before him with their faces to the earth, but they did not know him. His Egyptian name and the change in his appearance from the youth they had sold into slavery helped conceal who he was. He deliberately hid that he knew them, carrying himself as a stranger toward them and speaking roughly to them through an interpreter. He asked them where they had come from and charged them with being spies come to see the nakedness of the land.
Because he spoke to them through an interpreter, they did not know that he understood their private talk among themselves. His charge was not made because he believed they were spies, but to test their character and learn whether they still had the same haughty spirit as when he had been with them before. He also acted so to draw from them information about his father and Benjamin.
When they insisted they had come only to buy food and said they were twelve brothers with the youngest at home with their father and one gone, he professed to doubt the truthfulness of their story. He told them they would be proved by bringing their youngest brother down to Egypt. Seeing them bow brought the past vividly to mind and fulfilled the dreams he had dreamed about them, which he remembered in that moment.
Joseph knew his brothers at once when they came with the crowd of buyers to purchase grain and bowed before him with their faces to the earth, but they did not know him. His Egyptian name and the change in his appearance from the youth they had sold into slavery helped conceal who he was. He deliberately hid that he knew them, carrying himself as a stranger toward them and speaking roughly to them through an interpreter. He asked them where they had come from and charged them with being spies come to see the nakedness of the land.
Because he spoke to them through an interpreter, they did not know that he understood their private talk among themselves. His charge was not made because he believed they were spies, but to test their character and learn whether they still had the same haughty spirit as when he had been with them before. He also acted so to draw from them information about his father and Benjamin.
When they insisted they had come only to buy food and said they were twelve brothers with the youngest at home with their father and one gone, he professed to doubt the truthfulness of their story. He told them they would be proved by bringing their youngest brother down to Egypt. Seeing them bow brought the past vividly to mind and fulfilled the dreams he had dreamed about them, which he remembered in that moment.