27. Our father said to us, ‘You know that my wife Rachel bore me only two sons.
28. One of them has already left me. He must have been torn to pieces by wild animals, because I have not seen him since he left.
29. If you take this one from me now and something happens to him, the sorrow you would cause me would kill me, old as I am.’
30-31. “And now, sir,” Judah continued, “if I go back to my father without the boy, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with me, he will die. His life is wrapped up with the life of the boy, and he is so old that the sorrow we would cause him would kill him.
32. What is more, I pledged my life to my father for the boy. I told him that if I did not bring the boy back to him, I would bear the blame all my life.
33. And now, sir, I will stay here as your slave in place of the boy; let him go back with his brothers.
34. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I cannot bear to see this disaster come upon my father.”