The brothers are barely out the city gate. The donkeys have not yet settled into their travel rhythm. Then a shout comes from behind them.
"They had not gone far from city, when Joseph said to Menasheh whom he had appointed the intendant of his house, Arise, follow after the men, overtake them and say to them, Why have ye returned evil for good?" (Genesis 44:4). So Targum Pseudo-Jonathan frames the pursuit.
The phrase madua shilamtem ra'ah tachat tovah — why have you returned evil for good — is the prosecutorial heart of the whole Joseph narrative. It is the question his brothers should have been asked, and should have asked themselves, twenty-two years earlier when they threw him into the pit. He fed his father's flock. He carried news. He obeyed his father's instruction. And they returned his good with a pit, a bloodied coat, and slavery in Egypt.
Now the same sentence comes flying back at them from behind, spoken by a steward they cannot see is their nephew, on behalf of a vizier they do not know is their brother. The Hebrew Bible is, among other things, a book that knows how to return exact phrasing to its rightful moment.
The Targum lets the accusation land without softening it. Joseph is not being cruel. He is staging the exact question that should have been asked the day he was sold — so that this time, his brothers can answer it not with silence but with their bodies. Judah, in the speech that follows in Genesis 44:18-34, will finally provide the answer Joseph waited two decades to hear: take me instead.