Abstract
Genesis 43.31a contains the only description of someone washing his or her face in the Hebrew Bible. Did the author purposefully select his words to signify a crucial junction in the narrative? Few examples from the biblical corpus and extra-biblical witnesses can be cited for comparison. Locating the narrative of Genesis 42–43 in its specific context, descriptions of face-washing from recovered Egyptian witnesses suggest that a foreign motif is the influence for the terse, yet precise, description of a Hebrew protagonist coping with his emotions in another part of the world.
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