Bible Synapse
Did Joseph’s brothers find their money at the lodging place or when they reached home?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
At the lodging place one of the brothers opens his sack to feed his donkey, “he espied his money; for, behold, it was in his sack’s mouth”; he tells the others, and they are afraid.
And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn, he espied his money; for, behold, it was in his sack’s mouth. And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and, lo, it is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?
At home, as they empty their sacks, “every man’s bundle of money was in his sack”, and they and their father are afraid.
And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man’s bundle of money was in his sack: and when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid.
Back in Egypt, the brothers tell Joseph’s steward, “when we came to the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, every man’s money was in the mouth of his sack”.
And it came to pass, when we came to the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, every man’s money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight: and we have brought it again in our hand.
The objection
Genesis 42:27 says that one brother found his money at the lodging place on the way home, and 42:35 says that the brothers found the money in each man’s sack when they emptied them at home, to their alarm. But in 43:21 they tell Joseph’s steward that they all found their money when they opened their sacks at the lodging place. Critics ask where the money was found.
The answer
Chapter 42 tells the events as they happened. On the first night one brother opened his sack to feed his donkey and saw his money in the mouth of it (42:27–28). Nothing says that the others opened theirs. They had been given “provision for the way” (42:25), and they went on in fear. Only at home, when all the sacks were emptied, did each man find his own bundle of money (42:35). Adam Clarke suggests why: in one sack the money lay at the top, in the others further down. (The ‘inn’, Hebrew malon, was only a camping place for the night, as Keil notes.)
Genesis 43:21 is not the narrator’s account but the brothers’ anxious speech to Joseph’s steward at the door of the house. They feared they were about to be seized as slaves (43:18), and they wanted to show at once that they were honest men: the money had turned up, all of it, “our money in full weight: and we have brought it again in our hand”. In such a speech it was natural to tell the discovery in a few words, from where it began, on the first night of the journey, to where it ended, with every man’s money found in his own sack. They are pleading their innocence, not giving a careful itinerary. The writer, who set the two accounts within a page of each other, evidently saw no conflict between them.
Other answers Christians give
All found it on the way
Gill took 43:21 at its word: all the brothers opened their sacks at the lodging place, though 42:27 names only one. He thought they then packed the money away again and opened the sacks afresh before their father, who had not been told. This fits a family that had hidden things from Jacob before, but the text does not say so.
Two sources
Many critical scholars see two versions of the story woven together, one in which the money was found on the way and one in which it was found at home. As told in Genesis, the two belong to one account: the finding began on the road and was completed at home.
From the classic commentators
the money was put in the mouth of the sack of one only, in the sacks of the others it was placed at or near to the bottom; hence only one discovered it on the road, the rest found it when they came to empty their sacks at their father's house.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, on Genesis 42:27 (1810–1826)