⁴ But Jacob did not send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he feared that harm might come to him.^(A)

³⁸ But he said, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he alone is left. If harm should come to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”^(A)

²⁷ Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; ²⁸ one left me, and I said, Surely he has been torn to pieces, and I have never seen him since.^{(A) 29} If you take this one also from me and harm comes to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to Sheol.’^{(B) 30} Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, ³¹ when he sees that the boy 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. ³² For your servant became surety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I will bear the blame in the sight of my father all my life.’^{(C) 33} Now therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord in place of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers. ³⁴ For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father.”

²⁰ And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead; he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’^{(A) 21} Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, so that I may set my eyes on him.’ ²² We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’

²⁹ Then he looked up and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother’s son, and said, “Is this your youngest brother, of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son!”^(A)

¹⁴ may God Almighty^[a] grant you mercy before the man, so that he may send back your other brother and Benjamin. As for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”^(A)

The Birth of Benjamin and the Death of Rachel

¹⁶ Then they journeyed from Bethel, and when they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel was in childbirth, and she had hard labor. ¹⁷ When she was in her hard labor, the midwife said to her, “Do not be afraid, for now you have another son.”^{(A) 18} As her soul was departing, for she was dying, she named him Ben-oni,^[a] but his father called him Benjamin.^{[b] 19} And Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem,^(B)

Jacob and Esau Meet

33 Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids.^{(A) 2} He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all.

⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”^(A)

²² Then the Lord God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”^(A)—