Texts in Conversation
In Genesis 42, Joseph bluntly accuses his brothers of spying out the land’s weak points. Jubilees reshapes this into a question about the paths of the land and lets the brothers stay silent, keeping them from incriminating themselves.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 42:9
Hebrew Bible
8 Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. 9 Then Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them, and he said to them, “You are spies; you have come to see if our land is vulnerable!” 10 But they exclaimed, “No, my lord! Your servants have come to buy grain for food! 11 We are all the sons of one man; we are honest men! Your servants are not spies.”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 42:5
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
4 Now the famine was very severe in the land of Canaan, and Jacob heard that there was food in Egypt, and he sent his ten sons that they should obtain food for him in Egypt; but he did not send Benjamin, and the ten sons of Jacob arrived in Egypt among those that went (there). 5 And Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him, and he spoke to them and questioned them, and he said to them: 'Are you not spies and have you not come to explore the approaches of the land?' And he put them in custody. 6 And after that he set them free again, and detained Simeon alone and sent off his nine brothers.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... Jubilees truncates the paragraph. The writer reports that Joseph spoke with and questioned them, but the only quoted words are Joseph's accusation in Genesis 42:9, the first part of which reads as a question: Genesis 42:9 “You are spies; you have come to see nakedness of the land!” Jubilees 42:5 “Are you not spies? You have come to investigate the paths of the land.” So, the brothers, who say nothing in Jubilees, do not divulge too much about their family—although in verse 8 the narrator discloses that they had told him their father and youngest brother were alive. ...
James C. VanderKam, Jubilees 2: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 22-50 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 1062.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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