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Genesis 43:15: The same road a second time, with Benjamin in the party

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AfghanistanAlgeriaAustriaAzerbaijanBeninBosnia and Herz.BulgariaBurkina FasoChadCyprusDjiboutiEgyptEritreaFranceGeorgiaGreeceHungaryIranIraqIsraelItalyJordanLebanonLibyaMaliMaltaMauritaniaMoroccoNigerNigeriaOmanPakistanPalestinePortugalQatarRomaniaSaudi ArabiaSerbiaSomalilandSpainSudanSwitzerlandSyriaTunisiaTurkeyTurkmenistanUnited Arab EmiratesUzbekistanYementhe eleven down to Egypt, Benjamin among themHebron, and Judah standing suretyBenjamin is with them this timedouble the money in the sacksthe coast road, southward againthe Nile deltaEgyptEgypt

Genesis 42:29ESV

When they came to Jacob their father in the land of , they told him all that had happened to them, saying,

Genesis 43:15ESV

So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to and stood before Joseph.

Genesis 45:25ESV

So they went up out of and came to the land of to their father Jacob.

Genesis 42:29
Genesis 45:25

"So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph." The grain ran out. That is the whole of Genesis 43:2, and it is what breaks a deadlock that has run for chapters: Jacob will not let Benjamin go, the Egyptian will not see them without him, and hunger settles it. Judah puts himself up as surety — if I do not bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame forever — and the old man gives way with one of the saddest lines in Genesis: if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. So they load the present. A little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds — the best fruits of the land, which is a strange cargo to carry into a famine and a stranger one to carry to Egypt, because gum, balm and myrrh is exactly the manifest of the caravan that bought Joseph. The same goods go down the same road a second time, and this time the family is paying instead of being paid. Double the money, because of what they found in the sacks. Benjamin, because there is no alternative left. And at the end of two hundred and fifty miles they stand before Joseph, which is the fourth time in three chapters that the text has them standing or bowing in front of him without knowing who he is. The map draws the coast road southward for the third time on this walk, in Egypt's red, from the ridge at Hebron to the point the sources fix the country at. It is the same line as Genesis 42:3 and it is given its own frame, because the second journey is not the first: this one has Benjamin on it, and it does not come back the way it went.

Map of Genesis 43:15: The same road a second time, with Benjamin in the party — 1 sites plotted
1 sites from Genesis 43:15 on one frame. The map at the top of the page is the same drawing, and it walks the verses with you.

Regions on this map

The grain ran out, which is what finally prises Benjamin out of his father's hands. They carry balm, gum and myrrh as a present — the exact cargo of the caravan that bought Joseph — and double the money, and they stand in front of him again without knowing him.

  • The country with the granaries, pinned as this whole series pins it at the single representative point its 500 votes resolve to. Joseph is its second man and the brothers have now made this journey twice in a few months. The present in the wagons — a little balm, a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds — is the produce of a starving country going to a fed one, and three of those items are what the Ishmaelites were carrying the day they bought him.

    Today: Heliopolis, at the head of the Nile delta (representative point)

Genesis 43:15 in full

  1. Genesis 43:15So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to and stood before Joseph.