The promised land is crumbling under the dry rot of a severe famine, and Jacob's lost-and-found son Joseph has invited the family to move down to Egypt, where there would be food and a place for them to wait it out.

JOSEPH wants to know if his 10 older brothers are still mean and unkind. So he says: ‘You are spies. You have come to find where our country is weak.’ ‘No, we are not,’ they say. ‘We are honest men. We are all brothers. We were 12. But one brother is no more, and the youngest is home with our...