23. You said to your servants, ‘If your youngest brother doesn’t come down with you, you’ll never see my face again.’
24. "When we went back to my father your servant, we told him what you said.
25. Our father told us, ‘Go back and buy for us a little food.’
26. But we said, ‘We can’t go down. We will go down only if our youngest brother is with us. We won’t be able to gain an audience with the man without our youngest brother with us.’
27. Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife gave birth to two sons for me.
28. One disappeared and I said, "He must have been torn up by a wild animal," and I haven’t seen him since.
29. And if you take this one from me too, something terrible will happen to him, and you will send me—old as I am—to my grave in despair.’
30. When I now go back to your servant my father without the young man—whose life is so bound up with his—
31. and when he sees that the young man isn’t with us, he will die, and your servants will have sent our father your servant—old as he is—to his grave in grief.