Aderet Eliyahu on Miketz - English

Breishit 42:9 - "And Yosef remembered the dreams etc" until verse 13.  At first glance, one could ask what this is trying to tell us at all, and indeed the Zohar raised this difficulty (199a).  And thus their answer "No, my master, etc, we are all, etc", and after words he said to them once "no, but rather you have come to see the nakedness of the land", etc, and they replied to him again "we are 12 brothers" etc, and he answered "this is what I have said" etc, and it is all surprising.  But rather the matter is that the reason that he proclaimed to them "you are spies" is because they all came, 10 strong looking men of great height, and if they just came to buy food, why would they come like that together.  And they answered "no my master" etc, the answer to your question is "we are all the sons of one man" etc, and therefore we are equal in strength and beauty and height, and therefore we come together.  And he said to them "no but rather" etc that this is a lie that one would give birth to 10 that are all strong etc.  And they replied, don't be surprised, that we are actually 12, etc, and the wonder is that the smallest brother is still at home with our father, with our form and strength.  And therefore he said to them "thus you shall be tested" etc.  And his intention was not, G-d forbid, to cause them pain, and all the more so to cause pain to his father for nothing, but because he knew that by his actions, the dreams would come about in order, and he did not want to transgress Hashem's will.  And the first dream was "my sheaf stood upright" etc, "and behold" etc, and they replied to him "will you rule over us" etc "if you will control us", and that is to say: 1. kingship, and 2. that they will fall in to his hand like prisoners, that thus it was in his dream: "My sheave stood upright, about kingship, "and behold yours encircle" etc, about memshalah (that they fall under his control), and then on to the second dream, etc.  And behold here the kingship came about, and afterwards "and he put them in to jail", the memshalah.  But still Binyamin did not come about here, therefore he made them bring Binyamin, and he took Shimon as collateral, and he arrested him in front of their eyes such that they would have mercy on Shimon and they would hurry to bring Binyamin so that afterwards he could announce himself to his father immediately, and when they brought him and he bowed before him, and afterwards in the matter of the cup, he took him as a slave, and therefore he said "he will be for me a slave and you all will go up" etc, and afterwards he became known to them and they came back with their father, and the 2nd dream was fulfilled.  Therefore the Torah gave this line as a prologue "and Yosef remembered the dreams", to let us know that all of what he did, he did from his great righteousness, that the dreams would be fulfilled, so as to not contradict the Divine Will and Decree, and that is a general principal of the Torah.