Genesis 44:18-34 ▼

18 Then Judah came near to him and said, “O my lord, may your servant please speak a word in my lord’s ears, and do not be angry with your servant; for you are equal to Pharaoh.

19 My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’

20 And we said to my lord, ‘We have an old father and a little child of his old age. Now his brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’

21 Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may set my eyes on him.’

22 And we said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; if he should leave his father, his father would die.’

23 You said to your servants, however, ‘If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.’

24 Thus it happened that when we went up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord.

25 And our father said, ‘Go back, buy us a little food.’

26 But we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down; for we cannot see the man’s face if our youngest brother is not with us.’

27 And your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons;

28 and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn to pieces,” and I have not seen him since.

29 If you take this one also from me and harm befalls him, you will bring my gray hair down to Sheol in evil.’

30 So now, when I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us—and his life is bound up in the boy’s life—

31 so it will be that when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die. Thus your servants will bring the gray hair of your servant our father down to Sheol in sorrow.

32 For your servant became a guarantee for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the sin before my father all my days.’

33 So now, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a slave to my lord, and let the boy go up with his brothers.

34 For how shall I go up to my father if the boy is not with me, lest I see the evil that would overtake my father?”