In this verse Joseph, now alone with his brothers, begins for the first time to speak to them in their own language.

I am Joseph: it is appropriate in many languages to show this as an exclamation.

Joseph immediately follows this stunning disclosure with a question about his father: is my father still alive? The urgency of knowing the truth is quite different from Joseph’s inquiry in 43.27. There Joseph maintained a social and emotional distance: “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke?” Here the Hebrew has “my father,” as in Revised Standard Version. In this context languages will differ in the way my father is translated. For example, Anchor Bible translates “Is father still alive?”—for English the absence of the pronoun makes father the father of the brothers and of Joseph and so builds on Joseph’s disclosure that they are all brothers. This sense is expressed in many other languages by making the question “Is our [inclusive] father still living?” Some translations also express the feeling of urgency by saying “Is it true that…?”

The brothers are unable to say “Yes” or “No” because they have just learned that this powerful ruler is the very boy they abandoned years before in a rain pit. They are now dumbfounded and frightened.

They were dismayed at his presence: dismayed translates a form of a verb meaning to be “frightened,” “terrified,” “stunned.” We may translate, for example, “They were so frightened to find themselves face to face with Joseph that they could not answer his question.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .