12. and when a search was made, starting with the oldest and ending with the youngest, the goblet turned up in Benjamin’s bag.
13. At this, they tore their garments. Then, when each man had loaded his donkey again, they returned to the city.
14. When Judah and his brothers entered Joseph’s house, he was still there; so they flung themselves on the ground before him.
15. “How could you do such a thing?” Joseph asked them. “Did you not know that such a man as I could discern by divination what happened?”
16. Judah replied: “What can we say to my lord? How can we plead or how try to prove our innocence? God has uncovered your servants’ guilt. Here we are, then, the slaves of my lord—the rest of us no less than the one in whose possession the goblet was found.”
17. Joseph said, “Far be it from me to act thus! Only the one in whose possession the goblet was found shall become my slave; the rest of you may go back unharmed to your father.”
18. Judah then stepped up to him and said: “I beg you, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord, and do not become angry with your servant, for you are the equal of Pharaoh.
19. My lord asked his servants, ‘Have you a father, or another brother?’
20. So we said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and a younger brother, the child of his old age. This one’s full brother is dead, and since he is the only one by his mother who is left, his father is devoted to him.’
21. Then you told your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I might see him.’
22. We replied to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; his father would die if he left him.’
23. But you told your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see me again.’
24. When we returned to your servant my father, we reported to him the words of my lord.
25. “Later, our father said, ‘Go back and buy some food for us.’
26. So we reminded him, ‘We cannot go down there; only if our youngest brother is with us can we go, for we may not see the man if our youngest brother is not with us.’
27. Then your servant my father said to us, ‘As you know, my wife bore me two sons.
28. One of them, however, has gone away from me, and I said, “He must have been torn to pieces by wild beasts!” I have not seen him since.