INTRODUCTION At one of our elders’ meetings, we were talking about how we have so much detail about this part of Joseph’s life but we get so little detail about so many others. Methusela lived 969 years but we don’t know anything about his life. Without him, the chain of progression to Noah and beyond would have been broken. And yet, we have so few details about him. With the telling of Joseph’s story, we have a dramatic slow down in the storytelling. Where before we traveled through time at breakneck speeds just pausing long enough to catch a moment here and there, in these last few chapters we camp out on Joseph and how he is the one by which God moves Jacob and his family into Egypt. When we consider the immediate recipients of this book it makes sense. The descendants of Israel were waiting on the verge of Jordan looking across to the Promised Land. Many generations had lived and died in Egypt. They were sojourners in a land that was not theirs and would eventually become enslaved to the Egyptians. Miraculously, God had set his people free but because of their disobedience, the people of that generation were not allowed access to the Promised Land. Their children would be the ones to receive the five books of Moses and carry them into their homeland. How did the people end up here? What were they to do once they crossed the Jordan? Well, that’s what the five books that they carried in their hands were all about. The reason why they had to return to Canaan as a family was because of what happens in these events with Joseph. The lessons learned by Joseph’s brothers would be a help to the righteous and a warning to the wicked. Far from being just a strange pause in the action, these stories point out the ultimate struggle between good and evil. Last time we left the brothers drinking and making merry with Joseph. The twelve were reunited and all seemed to be well. However, Joseph is still not convinced that his brothers have truly repented of their sin and so he has one last test to try their hearts. They are sinners, like all humanity, but have his brothers been changed by God? Have they left behind the evil of their youthful years? Have they sorrow for their sin? Joseph, and we along with him, are about to find out. In verses 1-17, we find the heart of what is going on when Judah declares that God has found out the guilt. And in verses 18-34, we have the record of Judah’s speech that he gives to Joseph as he requests that he stay “instead of the boy.”