Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves.

They said to them, “We can’t do such a thing; we can’t give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us.

Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We’ll settle among you and become one people with you.

But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we’ll take our sister and go.”

“These men are friendly toward us,” they said. “Let them live in our land and trade in it; the land has plenty of room for them. We can marry their daughters and they can marry ours.

But the men will agree to live with us as one people only on the condition that our males be circumcised, as they themselves are.

Won’t their livestock, their property and all their other animals become ours? So let us agree to their terms, and they will settle among us.”

But they replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”

Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?

Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.

Now a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. We told him our dreams, and he interpreted them for us, giving each man the interpretation of his dream.

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.

Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On.

Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.”

“No!” he said to them. “You have come to see where our land is unprotected.”

But they replied, “Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more.”

They said to one another, “Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us.”

We were twelve brothers, sons of one father. One is no more, and the youngest is now with our father in Canaan.’

If you will send our brother along with us, we will go down and buy food for you.

They replied, “The man questioned us closely about ourselves and our family. ‘Is your father still living?’ he asked us. ‘Do you have another brother?’ We simply answered his questions. How were we to know he would say, ‘Bring your brother down here’?”

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die.

Now the men were frightened when they were taken to his house. They thought, “We were brought here because of the silver that was put back into our sacks the first time. He wants to attack us and overpower us and seize us as slaves and take our donkeys.”

“We beg your pardon, our lord,” they said, “we came down here the first time to buy food.

But at the place where we stopped for the night we opened our sacks and each of us found his silver—the exact weight—in the mouth of his sack. So we have brought it back with us.

We have also brought additional silver with us to buy food. We don’t know who put our silver in our sacks.”