1. NOW WHEN Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, Why do you look at one another?
2. For, he said, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt; get down there and buy [grain] for us, that we may live and not die.
3. So ten of Joseph's brethren went to buy grain in Egypt.
4. But Benjamin, Joseph's [full] brother, Jacob did not send with his brothers; for he said, Lest perhaps some harm or injury should befall him.
5. So the sons of Israel came to buy grain among those who came, for there was hunger and general lack of food in the land of Canaan.
6. Now Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was who sold to all the people of the land; and Joseph's [half] brothers came and bowed themselves down before him with their faces to the ground.
7. Joseph saw his brethren and he recognized them, but he treated them as if he were a stranger to them and spoke roughly to them. He said, Where do you come from? And they replied, From the land of Canaan to buy food.
8. Joseph knew his brethren, but they did not know him.
9. And Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them and said to them, You are spies and with unfriendly purpose you have come to observe [secretly] the nakedness of the land.
10. But they said to him, No, my lord, but your servants have come [only] to buy food.
11. We are all one man's sons; we are true men; your servants are not spies.
12. And he said to them, No, but you have come to see the nakedness of the land.