Genesis 44:18-34

New King James Version

Judah Intercedes for Benjamin

¹⁸ Then Judah came near to him and said: “O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s hearing, and ^(A)do not let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even like Pharaoh. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’ ²⁰ And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and ^(B)a child of his old age, who is young; his brother is ^(C)dead, and he ^(D)alone is left of his mother’s children, and his ^(E)father loves him.’ ²¹ Then you said to your servants, ^(F)‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ ²² And we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³ But you said to your servants, ^(G)‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’

²⁴ “So it was, when we went up to your servant my father, that we told him the words of my lord. ²⁵ And ^(H)our father said, ‘Go back and 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 may not see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷ Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that ^(I)my wife bore me two sons; ²⁸ and the one went out from me, and I said, ^(J)“Surely he is torn to pieces”; and I have not seen him since. ²⁹ But if you ^(K)take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave.’

³⁰ “Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, since ^(L)his life is bound up in the lad’s life, ³¹ it will happen, when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. So your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave. ³² For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ^(M)‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever.’ ³³ Now therefore, please ^(N)let your servant remain instead of the lad as 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, lest perhaps I see the evil that would ^[a]come upon my father?”