What Does Genesis 43:33 Mean?

And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. The brothers are seated at their table in birth order: oldest to youngest, left to right. The seating by birth order is the detail that stuns them: "the men looked at one another in amazement." No one who did not know the family's precise birth order could have arranged this seating. An Egyptian official who had interrogated ten Canaanite strangers once on a prior visit has somehow arranged them in the exact order of their actual birth. The amazement is the natural response to the impossible knowledge displayed in the seating arrangement.

What they do not know is that Joseph arranged them. Joseph, who grew up with all his brothers and knows their birth order from childhood, simply had the steward seat them appropriately. But to the brothers, the official's casual arrangement of them from eldest to youngest is a sign of something beyond ordinary knowledge. It is one more piece of the uncanny quality of all their interactions with this particular Egyptian: he knows about their family structure, he demands the youngest brother, and now he seats them in their exact birth order. The sense of something supernatural at work in this official's dealings with them grows.

The amazement at the seating is the narrative's signal to the reader that the brothers are getting closer to recognition without yet arriving there. The accumulation of uncanny details: the birth-order seating, the special attention to Benjamin in verse 34, the previous family interrogation: is Joseph's identity pressing against the surface of the official persona without yet breaking through. The revelation will come, and when it does, the accumulated uncanny details will make immediate sense. But for now, the brothers look at each other in amazement at a table arranged in the order that only their brother would know.