“My silver has been returned!” he said to his brothers. “It is here in my sack.” Their hearts sank, and trembling, they turned to one another and said, “What is this that God has done to us?”
28. What is this that God has done unto us? They do not expostulate with God, as if they thought this danger had come upon them without cause: but, perceiving that God was angry with them in many ways, they deplore their wretchedness. But why do they not rather turn their thoughts to Joseph?
Here is, I. The penitent reflection Joseph's brethren made upon the wrong they had formerly done to him, Gen 42:21. They talked the matter over in the Hebrew tongue, not suspecting that Joseph, whom they took for a native of Egypt, understood them, much less that he was the person they spoke of. 1.
Commenting on Genesis 42:21-28
We be twelve brethren, sons of our father,.... All brethren by the father's side, though not by the mother's, and by one father; they had been twelve, and were so now, though they knew it not, supposing that one was dead, as is next observed: one is not; is not alive, but dead; the Targum of Jonathan is,"what is become of one we know not"...