18 Then Judah approached him, and said, “Oh my lord, may your servant please speak a word in my lord’s ears, and 1ado not be angry with your servant; for byou are equal to Pharaoh.

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

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

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

22 “But we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, 1his father would die.’

23 “You said to your servants, however, ‘aUnless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again.’

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

25 “aOur 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 unless our youngest brother is with us.’

27 “Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that amy wife bore me two sons;

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

29 ‘If you take this one also from 1me, and harm befalls him, you will abring my gray hair down to Sheol in 2sorrow.’

30 “Now, therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, since 1ahis life is bound up in the lad’s life,

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

32 “For your servant abecame surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then 1let me bear the blame before my father forever.’

33 “Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers.

34 “For how shall I go up to my father if the lad is not with me—for fear that I see the evil that would 1overtake my father?”