Joseph was waiting in his house when Judah and his brothers arrived. When they saw Joseph, they all fell to the ground before him. Joseph said to them, “What have you done? Don’t you know that divination would have given insight to a man like me?”
Judah replied, “What can we say, my lord? How can we plead our case? How can we prove our innocence? God has revealed the guilt of your servants, and here we are—our lord’s slaves, both we and the one in whose sack the silver goblet was found.”
“No,” Joseph commanded. “Only the one who stole my silver goblet will be my slave; the rest of you will go on home in peace to your father.”
Then Judah stepped forward and offered, “My lord, please, may I have a word with you? You are the equal of Pharaoh. Please don’t be angry with me, your servant. My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or another brother?’ We answered my lord, ‘We have an aged father and our youngest brother, who is a child of his old age. The child’s full brother is dead, so now he is the only child left of his mother, and his father loves him very much.’ Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him here to me so that I might see him myself.’ We said to my lord, ‘But he cannot leave his father; if he were to leave him, his father would die.’ Then you said to your servants, ‘You will not see my face again if I do not see your youngest brother.’ When we arrived home to your servant, my father, we told him every word you had spoken to us.
“Sometime later, our father said to us, ‘Go back and buy some more food for us.’ We answered, ‘We can only return to Egypt if we take our youngest brother with us. We won’t see the man’s face again, if he doesn’t see our youngest brother.’ Then, your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife Rachel only gave me two sons. One is gone from me—torn by a beast! I haven’t seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and something happens to him, you will send my gray hairs in grief down to the grave.’ ”
Judah continued, “My lord, if I went to your servant, my father, without the boy, and he saw that the boy was not with us, he would die! His very life is wrapped up with the life of the boy. Now he is so old that the grief of his loss would kill him. Furthermore, I, your servant, have guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I told him, ‘If I don’t return the boy back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, for the rest of my life!’
“So, please let me take the place of the boy, and I will remain here as a slave to you, my lord. Please let the boy go back with his brothers. How could I return to my father without the boy? I don’t want to witness the woe and grief that would overtake my father.”
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