You meant it for evil

The famine drives ten brothers to Egypt to buy grain, and they bow — exactly as the dream said — to a governor they do not recognise. Joseph could end them with a word. Instead he takes his time: he tests them, to find out whether they are the same men who sold a brother, or different ones. When Judah finally offers himself in place of the youngest, Joseph breaks. He sends the Egyptians out of the room and weeps so loudly the palace hears it. Years later, when their father dies and the brothers panic that revenge has only been postponed, he says the sentence that holds the whole book together: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Not that the evil was good. That God was not absent from it.