Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?”
Joseph's brothers stand before the Egyptian ruler they do not recognise, caught with his silver cup in Benjamin's sack. His second question raises two puzzles: what knowledge is he claiming, and why is a man who fears God staging a false theft?
Dothan Revisited
The planted cup is not a random trap. It puts the brothers back into the exact situation of the day they sold Joseph, with Benjamin now in his place.
J. G. BellettWhile they are preparing to return to Canaan a second time with food, Joseph's cup is put in Benjamin's sack. Then they set out. But this, simple as it seems, is the crisis. Their own lips will now have to give the verdict. The question is about to be put: are they as they once were, or has a heart of flesh been given to them? Will the sorrows of Benjamin move them, as the cries of Joseph once failed to do?... This place, this moment, was the field of Dothan again.
A Charge With No Crime
They have done nothing wrong with the cup, and Joseph knows it. The accusation works on something older than the theft it names.
W. T. P. WolstonTell me, what wrong was there about the cup? None; but it served to rouse conscience. It brought up the twenty pieces of silver, and the wickedness of their history in days gone by. Well said the poet, "Conscience makes cowards of us all"... But the truth must come out. And it is a great thing when God reaches the conscience like this.
The Divining Cup
The claim Joseph makes would sound ordinary in an Egyptian court. Cups served as tools for fortune-telling.
Morrish Bible DictionaryAmong the means of divination named is "divining by the cup," Genesis 44:5, 15. The Egyptians and Persians practised it. It is described like this: they threw small pieces of metal and stones, marked with signs, into the cup, and gathered answers from the marks as they fell. Sometimes they filled the cup with water, and as the sun fell on the water, they saw or imagined images on its surface.
Commentators differ over the word itself. Some take it as the Egyptian practice his position implied. Others follow the margin, which reads that such a man can "certainly make trial" — that is, test and search out.
Knowing the Worst About Us
Read that second way, the question is not about magic. It claims a knowledge that leaves nothing hidden. One writer sees the same searching in how Jesus spoke to a woman whose past He named.
Hamilton SmithUnder the searching questions of Joseph they confess the whole truth. Joseph can say, "What deed is this that you have done?" "Do you not know that such a man as I can certainly make trial?" And this is always the way grace takes. So the Lord dealt with a sinful woman "near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph." "Go, call your husband" was only another way of saying, "What deed is this that you have done?" And how truly He made Himself known to that guilty sinner as the One who can "certainly divine," for she said, "He told me all that I ever did." And none can be happy and at home in the presence of the Lord of glory until they have learnt that the Lord knows the very worst thing about them, and yet loves them.
Love Behind the Severity
Why cause the pain at all? Because a real work in them mattered more to Joseph than his own relief.
William KellyIt was for God's sake and their sakes, rather than his own, that there might be the reality and the evidence of a divine work in their conscience and heart. This dictated the cup in Benjamin's sack. No doubt the shock of its discovery there deeply troubled the brothers. But so it must be where sin of the deepest kind lay at the bottom of all... After all, the pain of the means he used was very brief, and the same day brought forgiveness and joy and tender love.
The same writer refuses to turn Joseph's method into a model, and that honesty is part of how Scripture works.
William KellySevere as the trial was, love dictated it in the fear of God. Yet we may feel that the way he chose was in no way what the New Testament would suggest to a Christian... Joseph acted according to his measure, weakened no doubt by the Egyptian life around him. Scripture tells us the facts as they were, without approval or excuse.
Summary
- Crisis. The planted cup rebuilds the day at Dothan. The brothers must choose again: save themselves, or stand by their brother.
- Conscience. The charge is false, and that is the point. A harmless matter drags a twenty-year-old guilt into the open.
- Cup. Divining by cup was a known Egyptian and Persian practice; the margin also allows the sense that such a man can "certainly make trial."
- Knowledge. Grace searches before it comforts. No one is at ease before the Lord until they know He sees the worst in them and loves them still.
- Love. The pain was short and deliberate. It aimed at a real work in their hearts, and the same day ended in forgiveness.