³But Judah said, “The man was serious when he warned us, ‘You won’t see my face again unless your brother is with you.’ ⁴If you send Benjamin with us, we will go down and buy more food. ⁵But if you don’t let Benjamin go, we won’t go either. Remember, the man said, ‘You won’t see my face again unless your brother is with you.’ ”

⁶“Why were you so cruel to me?” Jacob moaned. “Why did you tell him you had another brother?”

⁷“The man kept asking us questions about our family,” they replied. “He asked, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ So we answered his questions. How could we know he would say, ‘Bring your brother down here’?”

⁸Judah said to his father, “Send the boy with me, and we will be on our way. Otherwise we will all die of starvation—and not only we, but you and our little ones. ⁹I personally guarantee his safety. You may hold me responsible if I don’t bring him back to you. Then let me bear the blame forever. ¹⁰If we hadn’t wasted all this time, we could have gone and returned twice by now.”

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