The brothers returned to Canaan and retold the story to their father. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:33 preserves the terms as they remembered them: the lord of the land will know they are honest only if one brother stays in Egypt while the rest take grain for "the hunger of your houses."
A careful retelling
The brothers are summarizing for Jacob everything Joseph said in the Egyptian court. But they are also editing. They leave out some things — the harshness of the accusation, the three-day imprisonment, Simeon's singling out. They emphasize others — the ruler's offer of future trade, the conditional release of their brother. The Aramaic paraphrase, which took its final form in the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, preserves their diplomatic reconstruction.
Why the retelling matters
This is the moment the problem lands in Jacob's lap. The brothers need him to release Benjamin, Rachel's last surviving son, for a second trip to Egypt. They know he will resist. So their retelling is persuasive rhetoric, not neutral reporting. They frame the Egyptian ruler as demanding but reasonable. They frame the food as essential. They frame Simeon as hostage, not just prisoner. The rabbinic tradition in Bereishit Rabbah 91:10, compiled in the Land of Israel around the fifth century CE, notes how carefully the brothers are managing Jacob — because they know the truth of what they once did to his favorite son still sits unsaid between them.
The takeaway
Every retelling is a curation. The brothers are not lying to Jacob; they are choosing which true sentences to say. Even honesty has a rhetoric.