The nine brothers stopped for the night, and one of them discovered something impossible. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:27 names him: Levi, "who had been left without Simeon his companion."
The broken partnership
The Torah's Hebrew says only that "one of them" opened his sack to feed his donkey. The Aramaic paraphrase, which took its final form in the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, identifies him as Levi and specifies why: Simeon had been taken, and Levi was now traveling without his longtime pair. Simeon and Levi were lifelong companions — the two brothers who had planned and executed the massacre at Shechem together (Genesis 34:25). They rode side by side, ate together, slept near each other. With Simeon now chained in an Egyptian prison, Levi was traveling alone.
The silver in the mouth of the bag
Levi opens his pannier at the lodging place and sees his silver sitting on top of the grain. Not buried — on top. The Targum's detail is precise: "behold, it was in the mouth of his pannier." It was placed where it could not be missed. Joseph wanted them to find the money before they got home. He wanted them to feel hunted, watched, known, so that the rest of the test — the return trip with Benjamin — would carry maximum weight.
The takeaway
The Targum turns a minor detail — which brother opened his sack — into a picture of a family beginning to fray. Simeon is absent. Levi is alone. The silver is on top. The test is working.