Welcome to Joseph: A Beautiful Patience, the companion podcast to Harry Peter De La Savane's literary retelling of an ancient family story of betrayal, patience, and forgiveness. In this thirteenth episode, the brothers enter Egypt's capital through different gates, following Jacob's instructions.

Benjamin walks among them. The chapter begins with a quiet observation that no human caution shields anyone from what God has set in motion. Inside the audience hall, Joseph takes Benjamin aside into a private chamber, dismisses the interpreter, and speaks for the first time in decades in the language of their childhood. The words are simple and absolute: I am indeed your brother. Benjamin's whispered "Joseph?" hangs in the air. Joseph asks him to carry the secret a little longer.

The next morning, the brothers depart with grain and provisions. Hours later, hoofbeats catch up to them on the desert road. A herald's voice cries out: O people of the caravan, you must be thieves. A royal cup is missing. Their own law, spoken in the certainty of innocence, becomes the verdict against them when the cup is drawn from Benjamin's grain.

Harry walks the chapter from the brothers' protests through the search, through Joseph's refusal to take any but the brother in whose bag the cup was found, to Reuben's refusal to face Jacob with another lost son, to Benjamin alone in a locked room watching the desert swallow his brothers' caravan. The chapter is the deepest test in the book, and Harry holds the reader inside it the whole way.

In this episode:

• The different gates, and the limits of human caution before God's decree
• Joseph and Benjamin alone, the language of Canaan, "I am indeed your brother"
• The cup hidden, the herald's pursuit, the brothers' protest of innocence
• The trap closing on words spoken with the confidence of the innocent
• The cup drawn from Benjamin's grain, the chaos, Simeon's old bitterness erupting
• Judah on his knees pleading the words they had never used for Joseph
• Reuben staying behind, the message the brothers must carry to Jacob, and Benjamin alone in the palace's western wing

About the book: Joseph: A Beautiful Patience is a literary retelling of the story of Joseph and his family: the dream, the betrayal by his brothers, the years in slavery and prison, and the unlikely path to forgiveness. Harry Peter De La Savane writes from Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada, between English, French, and Arabic. The book is the first in a planned trilogy; novels devoted to Mary and to Jesus are also in preparation.

Get the book: Order Joseph: A Beautiful Patience at hpdelasavane.com, the perfect companion to this audio series.

Next episode: nine brothers return to Canaan with the unspeakable to tell. Jacob hears them out, weeps until his eyes turn white with grief, and then sends them back to Egypt with a command that sounds like madness, until it is not.

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