Audio Twenty years is a long time. And that is approximately how many years had passed since Joseph and his brothers last saw each other. You recall the details of that encounter. Joseph had been sent by his father to check up on his brothers, who were supposed to be shepherding their flocks their flocks in Shechem, but had wandered off to Dothan (37:12-17). When they saw Joseph coming from a distance, they immediately recognized him by his special robe that his father had made for him (37:3, 23). It was their father’s preferential treatment of Joseph that sparked a deep hatred in their hearts for him (37:4). On a previous occasion, he had given his father a “bad report” about the brothers (37:2), and now here he came again to spy on them once more. On another occasion, he shared with them about a dream he had in which all of his brothers were bowing down in homage to him. So, when they saw him coming toward them in Dothan, they said, “Here comes this dreamer! Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of these pits” (37:20). Of course, ultimately they opted not to kill him. Reuben had a self-serving strategy in mind to rescue Joseph and restore himself to his father’s good graces, but while he took leave momentarily, Judah devised another sinister plan. He said, “What profit is it for us to kill our brother and cover up his blood?” And by profit, he surely meant it in its truest sense, for there just happened to be a band of traders passing by. So Judahsaid, “Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” In other words, “Since he’s family, let’s not kill him, let’s just sell him off as a slave.” And so they did. Joseph was 17 years old at that time. Over the ensuing 13 years, Joseph experienced many rises and falls in Egypt. He was sold into slavery, but was blessed by God in such evident ways that he became the chief slave of Potiphar. The wife of Potiphar tried to have her way with Joseph, but he was a man of integrity, so he withstood her advances. Nonetheless, he was framed and wrongly imprisoned. In prison, again, the Lord’s blessing on his life became evident to the chief jailer, and he became the man in charge of the prison. After interpreting a dream for the royal cupbearer, Joseph was remembered before Pharaoh on the occasion of Pharaoh’s own unsettling dream. When Joseph was brought before Pharaoh, the Bible tells us that he was 30 years old. He interpreted Pharaoh’s dream concerning a time of 7 years of abundance and 7 years of famine that were coming. He also counseled Pharaoh about a plan to prepare for the years of famine, and Pharaoh took his counsel to heart and implemented Joseph’s plan. As a result of Joseph’s wisdom and insight into God’s word and will, Joseph was advanced to the second most powerful position in the land. Our text picks up after the famine has begun. The 7 years of abundance have come and gone. That means that at least 20 years have elapsed since Joseph had last seen his brothers there on the plains of Dothan when he was sold off to the caravan of traders as a slave. But this famine had reached far beyond the land of Egyptand was threatening the lives of those in many far away places as well, including Joseph’s homeland in Canaan. Word concerning Egypt’s abundant storehouses of grain had spread around the world, and people came from far and wide to buy grain. Jacob tells his sons in verse 1 of our text in no uncertain terms that with the survival of the family on the line, there is no time to be sitting around staring at each other. They needed to go to Egypt and get grain, in his words, “so that we may live and not die.” As far as we, the readers, know, Jacob was never the wiser about the truth about Joseph and the horrors that had befallen him at the hands of his brothers. But Jacob knew that his other sons had proven themselves untrustworthy on many occasion