Then Joseph could not refrain himself
That he should not weep, as the Targum of Jonathan adds; at least
he could not much longer refrain from tears, such an effect
Judah's speech had on his passions: before all them that
stood before him;
his servants that attended him and waited upon him, the steward
of his house, and others, upon whose account he put such a force
upon himself, to keep in his passions from giving vent, that they
might not discover the inward motions of his mind; but not being
able to conceal them any longer, and he cried;
or called out with a loud voice, and an air of authority:
cause every man to go out from me;
out of the room in which he and his brethren were; perhaps this
order was given to the steward of the house to depart himself,
and to remove every inferior officer and servant upon the spot;
or other people that might be come in to hear the trial of those
men, and to see how they would be dealt with: and there
stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known
unto
his brethren;
not that Joseph was ashamed of them, and of owning before them
the relation he stood in to them; but that they might not see the
confusion his brethren would be thrown into, and have knowledge
of the sin they had been guilty of in selling him which could not
fail of being mentioned by him, and confessed by them; and
besides, it was not suitable to his grandeur and dignity to be
seen in such an extreme passion he was now going into.