Genesis 44:4-6

"And when they were gone out of the city, and were not yet far off, Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this that in which my lord drinketh, whereby he indeed divineth? ye have done evil in so doing. And he overtook them, and he spake unto them these words."

"And when they were gone out of the city ..." Willis said, "Unfortunately it is impossible to know what city in Egypt is intended here."[4] Although our curiosity would be gratified by having such information, it is characteristic of the divine writings to ignore many things that men would have considered important. It is wrong, however, to make the omission of the name of the city where these events happened an excuse for supposing "some different tradition" is involved, at variance with the frequent mention of place-names connected with the life of Jacob, such as Bethel, Shechem, etc. Keller noted that, "The story of Joseph, like so much of what the Bible relates, has received the most astonishing confirmation."[5]

Joseph had taken his steward into his confidence, as indicated when the steward gave permission for all the brothers except Benjamin to return to Canaan.

One of the points of interest here is the matter of that silver cup and Joseph's use of it for "divination." "Whether Joseph is conceived of as really practicing divination, or only wishing his brothers to think so, does not appear."[6] Many have mentioned the various ways of divination by means of a cup. Sometimes, "Such a divination cup was filled with water, then oil was poured on the water; and the future was predicted on the basis of the forms that appeared on the surface."[7] "Mesopotamian sources indicate that ... water was poured into oil, or fragments of silver and gold were dropped into water or oil, and a priest or diviner read the message in the way the globules arranged themselves."[8] Dummelow gave the name of this type of magic as "hydromancy."[9] Regarding the question, whether or not Joseph actually practiced such a thing, we do not consider it out of reason that he actually did so. After all, his mother Rachel stole the false gods of her father, and we have already noted that the evidence in this part of Genesis points to a significant spiritual drift away from the truth in Joseph himself.