only want to be preserved, as supposing your humanity might be a refuge
for us from the miseries which our country labors under, we having heard
that you proposed to sell corn, not only to your own countrymen, but to
strangers also, and that you determined to allow that corn, in order
to preserve all that want it; but that we are brethren, and of the same
common blood, the peculiar lineaments of our faces, and those not so
much different from one another, plainly show. Our father's name is
Jacob, an Hebrew man, who had twelve of us for his sons by four wives;
which twelve of us, while we were all alive, were a happy family; but
when one of our brethren, whose name was Joseph, died, our affairs
changed for the worse, for our father could not forbear to make a long
lamentation for him; and we are in affliction, both by the calamity of
the death of our brother, and the miserable state of our aged father. We
are now, therefore, come to buy corn, having intrusted the care of our
father, and the provision for our family, to Benjamin, our youngest
brother; and if thou sendest to our house, thou mayst learn whether we
are guilty of the least falsehood in what we say."

4. And thus did Reubel endeavor to persuade Joseph to have a better
opinion of them. But when he had learned from them that Jacob was alive,
and that his brother was not destroyed by them, he for the present put
them in prison, as intending to examine more into their affairs when he
should be at leisure. But on the third day he brought them out, and said
to them, "Since you constantly affirm that you are not come to do any
harm to the king's affairs; that you are brethren, and the sons of the
father whom you named; you will satisfy me of the truth of what you say,
if you leave one of your company with me, who shall suffer no injury
here; and if, when ye have carried corn to your father, you will come
to me again, and bring your brother, whom you say you left there, along
with you, for this shall be by me esteemed an assurance of the truth of
what you have told me." Hereupon they were in greater grief than before;
they wept, and perpetually deplored one among another the calamity of
Joseph; and said, "They were fallen into this misery as a punishment
inflicted by God for what evil contrivances they had against him."
And Reubel was large in his reproaches of them for their too late
repentance, whence no profit arose to Joseph; and earnestly exhorted
them to bear wit