What Does Genesis 43:28 Mean?

And they said, "Your servant our father is well; he is still alive." And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves. The brothers' answer is precise and complete: your servant our father is well; he is still alive. Jacob lives; Jacob is in good health. Two facts that Joseph has waited twenty-two years to learn, delivered in a single sentence by the brothers who, in a different way, are also the reason he has been separated from his father for all those years. The "he is still alive" is the answer to the most urgent question behind the official's polite inquiry.

The brothers bow again after answering: "bowed their heads and prostrated themselves." The pattern of prostration continues: the brothers keep bowing before the official who is their brother, fulfilling the dream whose fulfillment none of them can yet see. The prostration after answering about their father is a reflexive acknowledgment of the official's authority: every interaction with him involves bowing; the dreams of Genesis 37 are being fulfilled not in one grand moment of recognition but in the accumulated gestures of successive interactions.

The inclusion of "your servant our father": using the deferential "servant" to describe Jacob: is the way the brothers naturally speak to an Egyptian official of superior rank. Everything in their world is framed in relation to the official's authority: we are your servants; our father is your servant; our brother is your servant. They are placing the entire family under the subordination that the official's position demands. And the man receiving this total subordination is their brother: the one they threw in a pit and sold. The language of servitude in which they address Joseph would have been applied to himself by that same Joseph twenty-two years ago when he was sold.