22. Reuben spoke up, “Didn't I tell you not to harm the boy? But you wouldn't listen, and now we have to pay the price for killing him.”
23. They did not know that Joseph could understand them, since he was speaking through an interpreter.
24. Joseph turned away from them and cried, but soon he turned back and spoke to them again. Then he had Simeon tied up and taken away while they watched.
25. Joseph gave orders for his brothers' grain sacks to be filled with grain and for their money to be put in their sacks. He also gave orders for them to be given food for their journey home. After this was done,
26. they each loaded the grain on their donkeys and left.
27. When they stopped for the night, one of them opened his sack to get some grain for his donkey, and straight away he saw his money bag.
28. “Here's my money!” he told his brothers. “Right here in my sack.”They were trembling with fear as they stared at one another and asked themselves, “What has God done to us?”
29. When they returned to the land of Canaan, they told their father Jacob everything that had happened to them:
30. The governor of Egypt was rude and treated us like spies.
31. But we told him, “We're honest men, not spies.
32. We come from a family of twelve brothers. The youngest is still with our father in Canaan, and the other is dead.”
33. Then the governor of Egypt told us, “I'll find out if you really are honest. Leave one of your brothers here with me, while you take the grain to your starving families.