HKB
mind, and did not discover them unto them: and he said within himself, Ye are in a worse condition than us two; and GOD best knoweth what ye discourse about.
n It is related that Joseph, having invited his brethren to an entertainment, ordered them to be placed two and two together, by which means Benjamin, the eleventh, was obliged to sit alone, and bursting into tears, said, If my brother Joseph were alive, he would have sat with me. Whereupon Joseph ordered him to be seated at the same table with himself, and when the entertainment was over, dismissed the rest, ordering that they should be lodged two and two in a house, but kept Benjamin in his own apartment, where he passed the night. The next day Joseph asked him whether he would accept of himself for his brother, in the room of him whom he had lost, to which Benjamin replied, Who can find a brother comparable unto thee? yet thou art not the son of Jacob and Rachel. And upon this Joseph discovered himself to him.1 o Some imagine this to be a measure holding a saá (or about a gallon), wherein they used to measure corn or give water to the beasts. But others take it to be a drinking-cup of silver or gold. p Both by our behaviour among you, and our bringing again our money, which was returned to us without our knowledge. q This was the method of punishing theft used by Jacob and his family; for among the Egyptians it was punished in another manner. r Some suppose this search was made by the person whom Joseph sent after them; others by Joseph himself, when they were brought back to the city. s For there the thief was not reduced to servitude, but was scourged, and obliged to restore the double of what he had stolen.2 t The occasion of this suspicion, it is said, was, that Joseph having been brought up by his father's sister, she became so fond of him that, when he grew up, and Jacob designed to take him from her, she contrived the following stratagem to keep him: -Having a girdle which had once belonged to Abraham, she girt it about the child, and then, pretending she had lost it, caused strict search to be made for it; and it being at length found on Joseph, he was adjudged, according to the above-mentioned law of the family, to be delivered to her as her property. Some, however, say that Joseph actually stole an idol of gold, which belonged to his mother's father, and destroyed it; a story probably taken from Rachel's stealing the images of Laban: and others tell us that he once stole a goat, or a hen, to give to a poor man.3
1 Al Beidâwi. 2 Idem, Jallalo'ddin.