So this guy Joseph, right...

Yet the chief cupbearer did not think of Joseph; he forgot him.

And, behold, there came up out of the River seven cows, well favoured, and fat of flesh; and they fed in the reed grass.

And, behold, seven other cows came up after them out of the River, ill favoured and lean of flesh; and stood by the other cows upon the brink of the River.

And the ill favoured and leanfleshed cows ate up the seven well favoured and fat cows. So Par῾o awoke.

Pharaoh then gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-paneah; and he gave him for a wife Asenath daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On. Thus Joseph emerged in charge of the land of Egypt.—

Before the years of famine came, Joseph became the father of two sons, whom Asenath daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On, bore to him.

But Binyamin, Yosef’s brother, Ya῾aqov sent not with his brethren; for he said, Lest mischief befall him.

Now Joseph was the vizier of the land; it was he who dispensed rations to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed low to him, with their faces to the ground.

When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them; but he acted like a stranger toward them and spoke harshly to them. He asked them, “Where do you come from?” And they said, “From the land of Canaan, to procure food.”

And Yosef knew his brethren, but they knew him not.

כי ערות הארץ באתם לראות, “for you came to seek out the country’s nakedness.” Rashi comments on this that the brothers had used ten different border crossing points when entering Egypt. If you want to know how Joseph knew all this, Midrash Tanchumah explains that Joseph had issued 3 decrees. 1) No slave was to be allowed entry into Egypt in order to buy grain on behalf of his master. 2) No person was allowed to walk behind two donkeys; 3) no one was to be allowed entry unless he registered with his own name and that of his father and grandfather. Moses collected this information day after day, and examined if any of his brothers had registered. Seeing his brothers had entered at ten different border crossings, he had knowledge of this, and could challenge them, so that they would reveal in self defense that they were all brothers of one father. Their father had instructed them not to draw attention to themselves; when each one came to the border crossing and the border guard would ask about his name and the name of his father and grandfather, he would answer truthfully: Reuven son of Yaakov and grandfather Yitzchok.

כי ערות הארץ באתם לראות, you have agreed among your selves to claim to be brothers so that this would provide you with a pretext to act as spies in the land and to find weak spots in our security system.

But they said, each one to his brother:
Truly,
we are guilty:
concerning our brother!
—that we saw his heart’s distress
when he pleaded with us,
and we did not listen.
Therefore this distress has come upon us!

Then Reuben spoke up and said to them, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do no wrong to the boy’? But you paid no heed. Now comes the reckoning for his blood.”

ויקח מאתם את שמעון, “he took from amongst them Shimon.” He kept Shimon in jail longer than the other brothers in order to keep him apart from Levi. He remembered that when it came to killing the males of the town of Shechem, Shimon and Levi had acted as a team. Yaakov referred to the matter on his deathbed when he said (Genesis 49,5-6) “Shimon and Levi are brothers (comrades), violence is their stock-in trade.”
When the Torah writes in 42, 27: “The one opened his sack,” the words “the one” are a reference to Levi the other half of that team of brothers. Seeing the brothers had not been prepared to select one of their number who should remain behind as a hostage that they would return with Binyamin, Joseph had to make the selection himself. From this incident our sages derived an important ruling, i.e. that when Gentiles demand from Israelites that they hand over one of their number without specifying which person they are to hand over, that the Israelites must not make such a selection but must rather all face death than to condemn someone in their midst. (If however, the Gentiles selected a particular individual from amongst the Israelites and they threaten to kill all the Israelites unless that individual is handed over, the Israelites (in order to save their lives) must hand over the individual demanded from them) (Jerusalem Talmud Terumot 5,4).
There is a well known example in Samuel II 20, 1-22 when Sheva ben Bichri, a rebel against the regime of King David, happened to be trapped amongst other Jews and David had given orders to liquidate this Sheva ben Bichri as a dangerous rebel. His commander-in-chief Yoav and his brother Avishai had surrounded the town in which Sheva ben Bichri found himself. A woman in that town saved the other townsfolk by persuading them to hand over the rebel and thus to save the inhabitants of the town from becoming victims of Yoav’s army. [This was during the period of Avshalom’s uprising against his father. Ed.]

And Yehuda said to Yisra᾽el his father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go; that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones.

And Yisra᾽el said, Why did you treat me so ill, as to tell the man whether you had another brother?

And they said, The man asked us particularly of our state, and of our kindred, saying, Is your father yet alive? have you another brother? and we told him according to the tenor of these words: could we possibly know that he would say, Bring your brother down?

שובו שברו לנו, for he thought that their intent in wanting to take Binyamin with them was in order to lose him as they had lost Joseph. He had previously accused them of bereaving him (deliberately) when he had said (42,36) אותי שכלתם, “you have bereaved me,” (transitive active conjugation). He meant to deny that what they had told him at the time had been the truth.

אתי שכלתם ME YE HAVE BEREAVED OF CHILDREN — The inference is that he suspected them of having slain or sold him (Simeon) as they had done to Joseph (Genesis Rabbah 91:9).

את שני בני תמית, “you may kill my two sons, etc.” some commentators who cannot believe that Reuven could make such a statement, [as it is commonly understood, Ed.] prefer to understand the word תמית as a feminine mode of the future tense, meaning “may be killed by a force which is feminine, i.e. מגפה, a plague.”
Nachmanides understands what Reuven said as similar to when Yehudah said that if he would fail to bring Binyamin back alive and well that he would consider himself as remaining guilty of a sin against his father for the remainder of his life (both on earth and beyond) (43,9). Reuven chose different words to convey a similar meaning, i.e. “you would be morally entitled to kill two of my sons if I were to fail you so tragically as not to bring him back alive and well.” Even though Reuven had four sons, he meant to tell his father that the loss of one son, Binyamin, would be tantamount to he, Reuven, losing two of his sons. Yaakov did not reject Reuven’s offer because he considered him foolish and rash, but he placed more confidence in Yehudah’s ability and personality. Yehudah had waited with applying pressure to his father until their food supplies had almost run out, and his refusal would put the whole family at risk.

With that, Joseph hurried out, for he was overcome with feeling toward his brother and was on the verge of tears; he went into a room and wept there.

And he took and sent portions to them from before him: but Binyamin’s portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry with him.

behold, the money, which we found in our sacks’ mouths, we brought again to thee out of the land of Kena῾an: how then should we steal out of thy lord’s house silver or gold?

With whomever of thy servants it be found, let him die, and we also will be my lord’s bondmen.