Reuben was not at dinner. He was not a participant in the criminal intent and conspiracy, nor was he at the feast at which the successful villainy was celebrated. Secretly he came to the moat and called the buried. There is no answer. Again he is calling, there is no answer! In despair, he tears his clothes, runs to his brothers, says to them: "There is no young man in the ditch! Where will I go now?.." In response, the gold coins sounded. There were twenty of them: the nine brothers who were present at the sale proved that they had not forgotten the missing tenth. Meanwhile, the sons of Jacob were thinking of how to hide their deed with Joseph from the elder father. They slaughtered the kid, stained the motley clothes in its blood, and sent it to the father with a stern question: "We have found this; Know whether this is your son's garment or not?" "He recognized her; He said, "This is my son's garment: has the fierce beast eaten it? A fierce beast has stolen Joseph!" Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and mourned for his son for many days. Sons and daughters gathered to him; they consoled the elder. But he did not want to be comforted, he said: "I will go down with groaning to my son into hell." He repeated these words for a long time and wept for a long time.

The Ishmaelites brought Joseph to Egypt [33]; there they resold it to Pentephrius, to the nobles of Pharaoh - the kings of Egypt were called pharaohs - to the commander of the king's bodyguard. And the Lord was with Joseph, mysteriously watching over him, helping him. Soon the lord noticed the blessing of heaven over his servant and loved him very much. The consequence of this special love was that Pentephrius entrusted Joseph with the administration of all his household and all his possessions. The Lord, for Joseph's sake, blessed the inheritance of the Egyptian: the grace of God was poured out on all his possessions, on his house and on his fields. Pentephrius gave himself up to his disposition with all careless credulity, he did not even inspect anything himself, did not pay attention to anything. Joseph was very stately and handsome. His beauty attracted the eyes of his wife Pentephrius. Passion seized her: openly, directly she declared her passion to the young man. The young man did not agree to lawlessness. He admonished his wife, who was burning with insane and criminal lust; he said to her: "My lord has so entrusted himself to me, and has so rested in my cares, that he does not even know anything that is in his house. He has delivered all his goods indistinctly into my hands: in his house there is no one higher than me; everything is in my possession except you, his wife. How then shall I act according to thy words? How can I sin against God?" - The wicked wife does not hear the wise words of the son of Jacob: the passion that has taken possession of her says something else in her. She hears only the voice of passion: Joseph's words flew past her ears like empty sounds without meaning or significance. From time to time the wife repeats the proposal, always with the same open, fiery insolence. One day Joseph was studying in the house according to his office; it happened that there was no one from the household, except the mistress. She grabs him by the clothes, begs him, demands that her wish be immediately fulfilled. Joseph escapes from her arms and runs away; his outer garment remained in the hands of the Egyptian woman. Unsatisfied criminal love suddenly turns into frenzied hatred: the one who sought to enjoy the delights of beautiful flesh for a minute is now frantically thirsty to drink blood. A frenzied Egyptian woman cries, with a loud screech and scream, calls her family. They come running. "Behold," said the Egyptian woman, "this young Hebrew has been brought into our house to mock us.. He came to me, he said to me, I cried out with a loud voice, when I heard my cry, he fled from me, behold, his outer garment is in my hands!" Once again, the garment is a mute, heard false witness against Joseph. When the nobleman returned, his wife told him the event. She spoke piteously and quietly: "A young Jew came to me, whom you brought to us to dishonor us, and offered me iniquity. When I screamed loudly, he ran away, leaving his outer garment with me." Hearing a plausible legend, in which the simplicity and coldness of the story were skilfully concealed by a terrible spiritual storm and infernal slander, seeing in the hands of his wife the proof of the incident - Joseph's clothes - proof against which, apparently, there was no refutation, Pentephrius became very indignant. He recognized the questioning and the trial as superfluous, unnecessary, so the slave's crime was clear, vivid, and obvious in his eyes. He ordered Joseph to be thrown into the prison in which the state criminals were kept - into a stronghold: this is how the Scriptures call this prison.

The Lord, who had chosen Joseph from the days of his childhood, the Lord who had helped him in captivity and in the house of Pentephrius, did not leave him in prison. The heart of the prison governor was well disposed towards Joseph: he entrusted the young prisoner with the entire prison, all the prisoners imprisoned in it, and, like Pentephrius, he rested with all his trust in the care of Joseph. After some time, two of his nobles sinned before the Egyptian king: the elder cupbearer and the elder over the bread [34]. The angry Pharaoh imprisoned them in the same prison in which Joseph was kept. The captain of the prison entrusted them to Joseph. When they had been in prison for several days, each of them had a dream on the same night. In the morning, Joseph came to them and noticed that they were both confused. He asks the nobles of Pharaoh: "Why is there sorrow on your faces?" They answer: "Each of us has had a dream, but there is no one to interpret our dreams." Joseph said, "Does not God give the gift of explaining the dreams that are sent from Him? Tell me your dreams." From Joseph's words one can see his spiritual progress, the fruit of temptations. When he had dreams as a child, he felt only that there was a meaning in them, and he recounted them to his father and brothers, as if seeking an explanation, but not daring to add any interpretation. And here, as soon as he heard that the elders had dreamed, he already hoped to find the solution of his mysterious dreams in God, to Whom he had drawn near, to Whom he had assimilated through sorrows, faith, purity, and prayer. Dreams led him into the furnace of sorrows; dreams will lead him out of this furnace, into which Providence usually plunges people destined for great deeds. The elder cupbearer began to tell his dream: "I dreamed," he said, "that before me was a vineyard; in the garden I see three vines, juicy, sprouting and giving ripe fruit. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand. I took a bunch of grapes, squeezed the juice into a bowl and gave it to Pharaoh." Joseph answered, "This is the meaning of this dream: three vines for three days. Three more days will pass, and Pharaoh will remember you, and restore you to your former rank as cupbearer: you will give the cup to Pharaoh as before. Then, in thy well-being, remember me. Have mercy on me: tell Pharaoh about me and lead me out of these gloomy walls. I was stolen from the Jewish land and did nothing wrong here, and I was cast into this terrible prison." The elder above the barns, hearing the favorable interpretation, also related his dream to Joseph: "And I," he said, "have had a dream. I imagined that I was holding three baskets of bread on my head. In the upper basket were all kinds of biscuits used by the pharaoh. All of a sudden, birds swooped in, started pecking at cookies." Joseph answered: "This is the meaning of the dream: three baskets - three days. Three more days will pass, and Pharaoh will take your head off you. thy corpse shall be hanged on a tree; the birds of the air shall devour thy body." The third day came: it was Pharaoh's birthday. He gave a feast to his courtiers; In conversation with them, the king remembered the two imprisoned elders: he restored the former dignity to the elder cupbearer, and he again began to give the cup to Pharaoh, and ordered the elder over the granaries to be executed, according to Joseph's prediction. And the cupbearer elder forgot about Joseph. The righteous man also needed to languish in prison! He also needed solitude and the darkness of prison, so that his soul would sink deeper into prayer, with it it would draw even closer to God, and be illumined even more brightly by spiritual reason.

Two years have passed, and Pharaoh has a dream [35]. It seemed to him that he was standing by the river: seven cows, fat and beautiful, came out of the river, and began to walk along the coastal pasture. Behind them, seven other cows, skinny and unpleasant-looking, came out of the river, and also began to walk with the first along the bank of the river. Suddenly, the lean cows devoured the fat ones, and it was not noticeable that the fat ones rose in them: they retained their former appearance of exhaustion. Pharaoh woke up. Then he falls asleep again, sees another dream: he sees that seven ears of corn filled with ripe grains grew from one stalk, and after them grew another seven ears, thin, as if dried up by heat and wind. These thin ears of corn swallowed up the first seven full ears. Pharaoh woke up, his soul was troubled; when morning came, he ordered all the scholars and sages of Egypt to be summoned and told them his dream. But they could not interpret the dream, which made the king thoughtful and embarrassed. Then the elder cupbearer said to Pharaoh, "Now I remember my transgression! And when thou, O king, was angry with thy servants, with me, and with the elder over the granaries, and commanded us to be locked up in prison, which was in the house of the chief of the guards, each of us, on the same night, had a dream. There was a young Jew with us, a slave to the chief of the bodyguard; We told him our dreams, and he interpreted them. I was predicted to be restored to my dignity, and my comrade to be executed. And so it happened to both of us."

Pharaoh sent to prison for Joseph and ordered him to be brought to him. They led Joseph out of the stronghold: the hand of God brought him out. According to the custom of the country, they cut off his hair, changed his clothes: he appeared before the face of Pharaoh. The Egyptian king told him his dreams and complained about the wise men that they could not interpret these visions. "I have heard of you," Pharaoh said to Joseph, "that you explain dreams when they are told to you." Joseph answered, "Without God, Pharaoh cannot get a satisfactory answer." Unwittingly, Joseph reveals his spiritual state! He confesses a manifest, miraculous, essential Divine action, the action of the Holy Spirit, independent of man, visiting man according to the Higher Will and revealing mysteries to him. This invisible communion with God, this grace-filled action was felt in Joseph in his soul: to such a height of spiritual progress was raised his constancy in virtue, calamities, sufferings, or, more correctly, the grace of the Holy Spirit, which constantly overshadows the virtuous, and especially the innocent sufferers. "Both of your dreams," he said to Pharaoh, "have the same meaning; Your dreams are one dream. Seven fat cows portend seven years of fertility; seven full ears of grain portend the same. Seven lean cows and seven ears of withered corn mean seven years of hunger. God shows Pharaoh what He intended to do. Seven years will come: during them there will be abundant harvests in Egypt. The other seven years will come, and because of their poverty the abundance of the first seven years will be forgotten. Famine will afflict and destroy the earth. The very traces of the preceding abundance will be blotted out by the poverty that follows it, because the famine will be very strong. Pharaoh's dream was repeated twice: this is a confirmation of God's utterance and a sign that God will hasten the fulfillment of His decree. Tsar! look for a reasonable man among you, and entrust him with the land of Egypt. Let a fifth of the total harvest be gathered in seven fruitful years; The harvested wheat should come under the jurisdiction of the pharaoh and be stored in the cities. In this way, grain reserves will be built up for seven years of poor harvests, and the land will not perish of hunger." - Pharaoh and those around him liked Joseph's words. Pharaoh said to them, "Where then shall we find another man who has the Spirit of God in him like this?" Then, turning to Joseph, he said to him, "God reveals mysteries to you, and therefore there is no man who can compare with you in wisdom and understanding. Be thou the head of my house, let all my people obey thee. Will I be one throne higher than you? I set thee over all the land of Egypt."

Pharaoh took the ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, dressed him in scarlet clothes, put a golden grivna on him and commanded him to be put on his second chariot: in it the new dignitary was carried through the city; a herald walked in front of the chariot, announcing to the people the dignity and authority of Joseph. Then Joseph was thirty years old. Pharaoh married his confidant to Asenech, the daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, and renamed him, calling him Psomphomphanikh. What would this name mean? It means the Savior of the world [36]. Joseph foreshadowed the descent of the God-Man to earth to the fallen and lost human race, when he was sent by his father to his brothers, who were tending cattle far from their father's tabernacle. He foreshadowed Him when He was sold by His brothers to foreigners. He foreshadowed His burial by His imprisonment in prison; by his sudden exaltation and glory he foreshadowed the glory of his resurrection. The daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, who entered into marriage with Joseph, prefigured the Church of Christ, which was composed of pagans. The salvation of the people from death foreshadowed the salvation of mankind from eternal death. The Giver of material bread was a prefiguration of the One Who came down from heaven and the Giver of this heavenly bread [37]. From the midst of the mysterious Old Testament transformations, for the first time, a consoling name was heard: the Savior of the world! Wonderfully did God's Providence foreshadow the great work of God, the redemption of mankind, with Biblical foreshadows. At what a distance of time these shadows began to appear! How vividly they depicted the truth! what mystery they were covered with for their contemporaries! How clear they became is evident when God revealed to men the understanding of His inspired Scriptures.

Joseph began to fulfill the duties to which God Himself had called him and which, according to the dispensation of God, the ruler of Egypt had entrusted to him. He undertook a journey throughout Egypt and, surveying the country, made the necessary orders. The land yielded a bountiful harvest for seven years. During these seven years, Joseph accumulated grain reserves, which he kept in the cities under reliable supervision and guards in extensive storerooms. He gathered innumerable quantities of wheat: it lay in folded places, like mountains of sand. During the same fertile seven years, Asenetha gave birth to two sons. Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh. Calling it so, he included in the name of his eldest son a deep thought: God has arranged me so that I have forgotten my sufferings. The second he called Ephraim, connecting with this name another deep and pious thought: God has raised me up in the land of my humility. Such thoughts contain these names in their meaning in the Hebrew language [38].

Seven years of fertility have passed, as everything that is subject to time passes; The years of famine came. According to Joseph's prediction, a famine began to rage throughout the land. The people of Egypt cried out to Pharaoh, asking for bread. Pharaoh answered his subjects, "Go to Joseph and do what he tells you." - Joseph opened the spare granaries, began to sell grain to the Egyptians from there. Famine raged over the face of the earth. The inhabitants of neighboring countries, hearing that corn was sold in Egypt, and, oppressed by hunger, began to come to Egypt to buy wheat. A wise, prudent ruler prepared spare bread in an amount capable not only of feeding his own people, but also of attracting money from other peoples to the Egyptian state.

Among the other lands oppressed by famine, the land of Canaan languished. The family of the holy patriarch also suffered a lack of food. A rumor that bread was being sold in Egypt reached the elder [39]. And he said to his sons, I have heard that there is wheat in Egypt: why do you not pay attention to it? Go there, buy some bread to sustain our life; otherwise, so that we do not have to die of hunger." In obedience to their father's will, Joseph's ten brothers went to Egypt to buy bread. Jacob and his brothers did not let Benjamin go; he said: "So that nothing bad happens to him on the way."

When the sons of Jacob arrived in Egypt, they came with the rest of the buyers to the place where the corn was sold. Joseph himself was engaged in the sale of grain. When the brothers came before him, he immediately recognized them; but they did not suspect in the least that they were standing before their brother, who had been sold as a slave for twenty pieces of gold. And how could they recognize him? When they parted from him, he was barely seventeen years old; now he was approaching the age of forty. Changed over the years, it was no less changed by the greatness and splendor of the rank, the first in the kingdom of Egypt, which outstripped almost all other states in education, power, and internal structure. Standing before Joseph, the brothers bowed low to him, with their foreheads to the ground. Joseph remembered his dreams Wise, virtuous Joseph! He postponed until another time to declare himself to the brothers. How much power this great soul had over himself! Did not his heart be consumed with a desire to immediately give the most joyful news about himself to his aged holy father, who for more than twenty years knew nothing about him and, considering him irretrievably lost, grieved inconsolably? He does not heed the inclination of a merciful, magnanimous heart, and chooses a way of acting that is necessary for the benefit of both himself and his brethren. Joseph knew the coarse, unbridled manners of these people; they were half-savage shepherds, who had grown up on nomadic camps, who had spent their whole lives with herds, in the freedom of exuberant freedom, in the open air, in deserts. They did not know any power over themselves, they did not know any reins: they disobeyed their father; inflicted frequent insults on him; every wish, no matter how criminal, was carried out; their hands were often stained with the blood of innocents. This is how the Scripture portrays the sons of Jacob. They needed a lesson. For their own well-being, it was necessary to acquaint them with obedience, with good manners. Cruel souls, accustomed to trampling on conscience and the fear of God, could not otherwise be shaken, brought to their senses and self-knowledge, as by the torture of human fear. Foreseeing a prolonged famine, Joseph also foresaw the need to resettle the family of Jacob from Palestine to Egypt. Is it not for this reason that he called his brothers, when they first came to Egypt, spies?.. If his brothers had brought with them into the new fatherland their unbridledness, their turbulence, they would soon have incurred the indignation of the Egyptians; soon the well-being of the family of Jacob, the well-being of Joseph himself, would have fallen; this family and he would have been subjected to the greatest calamities. What was acquired through long-term suffering was supposed to protect and preserve by wise behavior.

Joseph treated his brothers seriously, severely, like a strict sovereign. "Where are you from?" he asked them. They answered, "From the land of Canaan: they have come to buy bread." He replied: "You spies: you have come to look out for our country!" Your servants have come to buy bread. We are all brothers, sons of the same elder. We have come with a peaceful disposition: your servants are not spies." He said, "No, no: you have come to look out for the land!" and they answered, "We are twelve brethren. Your servants are from the land of Canaan. The youngest of us remained with our father, and one was gone." Joseph remarked: "There is a lie in your words! I told you the truth that you were spies. By Pharaoh's immunity, you will not leave here unless your younger brother comes to me. You have to justify yourself with this. Send one from among you: let him bring a brother. But you will remain here in custody until it is clear whether your words are just or not. If they turn out to be unjust, I swear by the sanctity of Pharaoh, you are spies!" - and with these words he put them into custody.

Three days passed. On the third he calls them and says: "I am one of those who fear God. This is what you should do: if you are in a peaceful disposition, then go and take the wheat you bought; one of you will be kept here in custody. Next time bring your brother to me: by this you will prove the truth of your words. But if you do not bring a younger brother, then below [not even not. - Ed.] Joseph spoke to his brethren through the intermediary of an interpreter. He had not yet completely dismissed them, and while he was busy with the other buyers, the sons of Jacob began to converse quietly among themselves in the Hebrew language. Could they have imagined that the formidable Egyptian nobleman understood them! And he follows every word with intense hearing and attention; His every word is caught by his soul, full of holy love, acting with holy, salvific wisdom. "Rightly," said the sons of Jacob to one another, "the sin which we have committed against our brother pursues us! We have despised his deep sorrow, we have not listened to him when he begged us, 'This misfortune has come upon us for him!'" Reuben said to the others, "Did I not tell you, do not offend the young man? You have not listened to me: behold, his blood is being exacted." The words of the brothers pierced Joseph's sensitive heart. He left them for a moment and relieved his burdened heart with streams of tears. Then he came to them again, chose Simeon from among them, and commanded them to put fetters on him before their eyes. In the actions of the wise Joseph everything has its reason. The Scriptures are silent about the reason why chains became the lot of the wild and ferocious Simeon, not any other of the brothers; but from the same Scripture it is clear that it was he who needed a stricter lesson. All ten brothers indulged in grave misdeeds, but Simeon stained himself with the terrible murder of the Shechemites, by which he exposed the entire family of the holy patriarch to terrible danger, from which they were delivered by the special intercession of Providence. And was it not his hands that were raised to another murder, more horrible and criminal?.. Joseph gave a secret order to fill the sacks of the brothers with wheat, and to put into the sack of each the money given for the wheat, and in addition to that, to give them food for the journey. Evidently, each one paid separately for the wheat he took: this is one of those traits that depict before us the remote customs of Biblical antiquity.

Having loaded the donkeys with wheat, the sons of Jacob set off on their return journey. At the first camp, one of them, with the intention of feeding the donkey, took off the sack from it, which somehow untied, and saw a bundle of his money in a sack, on top of the wheat. He shouted to his brothers: "My money has been returned to me! here they are in my sack." Their hearts were terrified, and they were troubled, and said to one another, What is God doing to us? - When they arrived in the land of Canaan, to their father, they told everything that had happened to them, saying: "My husband, the lord of that land, has treated us very harshly, even put us in prison like spies. We said to him: "No! Sir, we are not spies! We came with a peaceful disposition. We are twelve brethren, we are the sons of our father; one of us is gone, and the least is with his father, in the land of Canaan." The man, the lord of the land, answered us: "This will be a proof to me that you are not spies, but people of peaceful disposition: leave one of you here with me; yourselves, having taken the wheat bought for your house, go; but bring your younger brother to me. By this I will know that you are not spies, but people of peace, and then I will give you your brother, who now remains a hostage to me, and you will trade freely in the land of Egypt." When they poured the wheat out of the sacks, each of them had a bundle with his money given for the wheat. When they saw the bundles of their money, they were frightened. Their father saw these bundles and was also afraid. "You," he said to them, "have made me childless! Joseph is gone, Simeon is gone, and do you want to take Benjamin? All these misfortunes have fallen on my head for you." Reuben answered him, "Kill my two sons, if I do not bring Benjamin back to you." The elder answered: "My son will not go with you! His brother died; he is left alone: if evil befalls him on the road on which you are going, then you will bring my old age with sorrow to hell."

The famine intensified, intensified, overcame the land [40]. Jacob's house ran out of wheat brought from Egypt, and the elder said to his sons: "Go down to Egypt again, buy us some bread." Judas answered him, "A man, the lord of the land, has told us, confirming his words with an oath, that we will not see his face unless our younger brother comes with us." Jacob said, "Why have you done this evil deed, why have you told your husband that you have a brother?" He asked: is your father still alive? Do you still have a brother? We answered his questions. Did we know that he would say, "Bring your brother?" Then Judas began to persuade his father: "Let the young man go with me; we will get up, go, and get bread to feed you and ourselves, so that we may not die of hunger. I will take Benjamin upon my responsibility: from my hand you shall demand him. If I do not bring him back and set him before you, let your wrath be against me all my life. If we had not delayed so long, we would have had time to visit Egypt twice." To this the father said: "If so, then do this: take the works here and bring them to that man as a gift. Take frankincense, honey, styraxes and nuts. Take double money, so that you can return the money found in your bags: perhaps they got there due to some misunderstanding. And take your brother. Get ready for the journey and go to your husband. May my God incline the man to mercy, that he may let your brother and Benjamin go. I have become completely childless!"