Genesis 42:17-24

And he put them all together into ward three days.

Put them all together into ward three days. Their confinement had been designed to bring them to salutary reflection. And this object was attained; because they looked upon the retributive justice of God as now pursuing them in that foreign land. The drift of their conversation is one of the most striking instances of the power of conscience on record.

And live - literally, you shall live. Their conscience being awakened by the sudden perils in which they were involved, brought to their remembrance their relentless cruelty toward their brother; the recollection of what they had done filled them with remorse, while they saw and confessed the equity of Providence in measuring to them according to the measure they meted to him. Strauss pronounces the alleged affinity between sin and its punishment a 'common, Hebrew notion;' but a conviction of it, from a strong sense of demerit, is deeply seated in the human heart, and the conscience of the trembling sinner tells him, his 'sin has found him out.'

Verse 23. He spake unto them by an interpreter - (cf. Psalms 81:5; Psalms 114:1.)

Verse 24. Took from them Simeon, and bound him. He had probably been the chief instigator-the most violent actor in the outrage upon Joseph; and if so, his selection to be the imprisoned and fettered hostage for their return would, in the present course of their reflections, have a painful significance.