What Does Genesis 45:14 Mean?

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. The first physical embrace of the reunion is between the two full brothers: Joseph and Benjamin, the two sons of Rachel. "Fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck": the embrace that goes to the neck, the holding of a person to oneself in the ancient gesture of genuine reunion-weeping. Joseph weeps; Benjamin weeps. The two brothers who share a mother and who have been separated since one was seventeen and the other was a child are holding each other in Egypt, in the house of the prime minister, surrounded by the aftermath of the test and the revelation.

The order of the embraces: Benjamin first (v.14), then all the brothers (v.15): reflects the intimacy hierarchy. Benjamin is the full brother, first. The half-brothers follow. The graduated embrace is not a ranking of love or favor toward the others but the natural movement of reunion from closest to the full group. Joseph has been waiting twenty-two years to see Benjamin; the embrace that the narrative places first is the embrace that the entire test structure was oriented toward producing: Benjamin safely in Joseph's arms rather than in Egyptian slavery.

Both weeping: "Joseph wept upon Benjamin's neck, and Benjamin wept upon his neck": is mutual. Benjamin's weeping is not described in detail (the text gives Benjamin no words in all of Genesis 45), but his tears are as real as Joseph's. The brother who grew up after Joseph left, who came to Egypt under enormous pressure as the test's central figure, who was discovered with the planted cup, who watched Judah offer himself as a slave: Benjamin weeps when his brother holds him. The weeping is the release of everything the trip to Egypt contained.