16. And Judah said, “What can we say to my lord? What can we speak? Now how can we show ourselves innocent? God has found the guilt of your servants! Behold, we are slaves to my lord, both we and also he in whose hand the cup was found.”
17. But he said, “Far be it from me to do this! The man in whose hand the cup was found, he will become my slave. But as for you, go up in peace to your father.”
18. But Judah drew near to him and said, “Please my lord, let your servant speak a word in the ears of my lord, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself.
19. My lord had asked his servants, saying, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’
20. And we said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and a younger brother, the child of his old age, and his brother died, and he alone remains from his mother, and his father loves him.’
21. Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may set my eyes upon him.’
22. Then we said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; if he should leave his father, then he would die.’
23. Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not again see my face.’
24. And it happened that we went up to your servant, my father, and told him the words of my lord.
25. And when our father said, ‘Buy a little food for us,’
26. then we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we shall go down. For we will not be able to see the face of the man unless our youngest brother is with us.’
27. Then your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You yourselves know that my wife bore two sons to me.
28. One went out from me, and I said, “Surely he must have been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since.
29. And if you take this one also from me, and he encounters harm, you will bring down my gray head in sorrow to Sheol.’