Yūsuf

وَجَآءَ إِخْوَةُ يُوسُفَ فَدَخَلُوا عَلَيْهِ فَعَرَفَهُمْ وَهُمْ لَهُ مُنْكِرُونَ

58. “And the brothers of Yusuf came and entered unto him, then he knew them but they did not recognize him.”

Eventually, as had been predicted, during the first seven consecutive years, agriculture in Egypt thrived due to the abundance of rainfall and water in the Nile River. After the harvests, Yusuf had ordered the people to reserve the required amount for their needs for themselves and sell the rest to the government, thus the grain stocks were high and the storehouses were filled with food supplies. Those seven years of affluence and blessings went by, and then famine and drought reared their ugly heads.

The little rain that fell from the sky was not enough to quench the thirst of the palm trees, and the suffering of the people began grew greater and greater as their stockpiles began to run out. At this point, Yusuf sold them grain on the basis of the schedule which he had preplanned for this emergency and in this way he adequately met all their food requirements. This drought did not affect Egypt alone; it had affected the countries neighboring Egypt as well, devastating large areas. Thus the people of Palestine and the land of Kan‘an northeast of Egypt, where the House of Ya‘qub was established, were also affected by the drought.

It was for this reason that Ya‘qub decided to send all his children to Egypt to purchase food supplies except Benjamin who stayed with his father. They joined a camel caravan going to Egypt and according to some sources, arrived there after 18 days of travel. According to historians, foreigners who entered Egypt had to report to the authorities on their arrival, who would inform Yusuf about them. When they reported the arrival of a camel caravan from Palestine, Yusuf quickly recognized his brothers’ names among the arrivals and ordered them summoned to his court without letting anyone know who they were.

The verse says:

“And the brothers of Yusuf came and entered unto him, then he knew them but they did not recognize him.”

Thirty to forty years had passed since the time they had thrown him into well. The possibility of him remaining alive was remote, and the last time they had come to Egypt had also been forty yeas before. It is not surprising, therefore, that they would not have recognized their brother when they saw him. Moreover, they did not have the slightest idea that he had become a great ‘Aziz of Egypt.