There is a kind of tear a powerful man cannot afford to show in public. Joseph, vizier of all Mizraim, feels it rising, and runs.
"Joseph made haste," the Targum reports, "for his compassions were moved upon his brother, and he sought to weep, and he went into the chamber the house of sleep, and wept there" (Genesis 43:30). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan specifies the room — beit damkha, the house of sleep, his private bedchamber — because this weeping is not for anyone to see.
The trigger is Benjamin. Seeing his one full brother, the child of Rachel, has undone Joseph's composure. The Aramaic word the Targum uses for "compassions" is rachamohi, the plural of rechem — womb. The word literally means his womb-feelings were churning. Joseph's mother-love for his little brother rises from the body.
The sages treasure this scene because it rewrites everything we think we know about the righteous man. Joseph is still wearing the crown. He still controls the grain supply of an empire. And yet when the weight of memory hits, he does what Jewish heroes repeatedly do in the Hebrew Bible: he goes into a private room and weeps. David will do it. Hannah will do it. Rabbi Akiva's students will do it when he is arrested.
Tears, in this tradition, are not weakness. They are a kind of Torah — a response accurate to the thing in front of you. Joseph does not suppress his compassion. He merely delays its public release until the plot can bear it. For now, alone, he lets the twenty-two years come out of his eyes in silence.