Genesis 44:18-34 ▼

18 And Judah comes near to him and says, “O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in the ears of my lord, and do not let your anger burn against your servant—for you are as Pharaoh.

19 My lord has asked his servants, saying, Do you have a father or brother?

20 And we say to my lord, We have a father, an aged one, and a child of old age, a little one; and his brother died, and he is left alone of his mother, and his father has loved him.

21 And you say to your servants, Bring him down to me, and I set my eye on him;

22 and we say to my lord, The youth is not able to leave his father, when he has left his father, then he has died;

23 and you say to your servants, If your young brother does not come down with you, you do not add to see my face.

24 And it comes to pass, that we have come up to your servant my father, that we declare to him the words of my lord;

25 and our father says, Return, buy for us a little food,

26 and we say, We are not able to go down; if our young brother is with us, then we have gone down; for we are not able to see the man’s face, and our young brother not with us.

27 And your servant my father says to us, You have known that my wife bore two to me,

28 and one goes out from me, and I say, Surely he is torn—torn! And I have not seen him since;

29 when you have taken also this from my presence, and harm has met him, then you have brought down my grey hairs with evil to Sheol.

30 And now, at my coming to your servant my father, and the youth not with us (and his soul is bound up in his soul),

31 then it has come to pass, when he sees that the youth is not, that he has died, and your servants have brought down the grey hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol;

32 for your servant obtained the youth by guarantee to my father, saying, If I do not bring him to you—then I have sinned against my father all the days.

33 And now, please let your servant abide instead of the youth [as] a servant to my lord, and the youth goes up with his brothers,

34 for how do I go up to my father, and the youth not with me? Lest I look on the evil which finds my father.”