Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Kejadian 42:10

But (no)! I have delivered him that without cause was my enemy: – Not merely have I not requited evil unto him (who was) at peace with me, but (on the contrary) I have delivered him who without cause was my enemy. But to no purpose did I rescue him as indeed he rescued Saul from the power of Abishai, who, had he not withheld him, was about to kill him, as he said: “Let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear to the earth at one stroke, and I will not smite him the second time” (i Sam. 26:8); and so of the occasion when he was in the cave it is said: “so David checked his men with these words and suffered them not to rise against Saul” (i Sam. 24:7). And the waw in ואחלצה (“but [lit. and] I have delivered”) is like the waw (in ועבדיך in the verse) “but (and) thy servants came to buy food” (Gen. 42:10), of which (passage) the interpretation is: “It is not, my lord, as thou sayest, that we are spies; but thy servants are come to buy food.”

One difference between the first two and the third encounters with Yosef in Egypt is the leadership dynamic of the brothers. In the first meeting (Bereshit 42:10–22), the brothers are always speaking as a group, with the one exception of Reuven’s brief interjection of “I told you so” (verse 22) when they recognize their guilt in their earlier treatment of Yosef. In the second encounter, before Binyamin is framed, the brothers are still speaking as a group. Afterwards, when the brothers are arrested and there is a need for leadership, it is no longer Reuven who steps up but Yehudah. Now that Yehudah’s leadership has come to the fore, the text (Bereshit 44:14) describes the group as “Yehudah, and his brothers.” Yehudah now becomes the undisputed leader, to be confirmed by Yaakov later on (Bereshit 46:28, 49:8–12).