Genesis 44:18–34

¹⁸Then Judah went up to him and said, “O my lord, let your servant, I pray you, speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant; for you are like Pharaoh himself. ¹⁹My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ ²⁰And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children; and his father loves him.’ ²¹Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes upon him.’ ²²We said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’ ²⁴When we went back to your servant my father we told him the words of my lord. ²⁵And when our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food,’ ²⁶we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother goes with us, then we will go down; for we cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; ²⁸one left me, and I said, Surely he has been torn to pieces; and I have never seen him since. ²⁹If you take this one also from me, and harm befalls him, you will bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to Sheol.’ ³⁰Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the lad’s life, ³¹when he sees that the lad is not with us, he will die; and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. ³²For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame in the sight of my father all my life.’ ³³Now therefore, let your servant, I pray you, remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord; and let the lad go back with his brothers. ³⁴For how can I go back to my father if the lad is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would come upon my father.”