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.
29. If you take this one away from me too, and a disaster befalls him, you will send my white head down to Sheol in grief.’
30. “So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, whose very life is bound up with his, he will die as soon as he sees that the boy is missing;
31. and your servants will thus send the white head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief.
32. Besides, I, your servant, have guaranteed the boy’s safety for my father by saying, ‘If I fail to bring him back to you, father, I will bear the blame before you forever.’
33. So now let me, your servant, remain in place of the boy as the slave of my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers.
34. How could I go back to my father if the boy were not with me? I could not bear to see the anguish that would overcome my father.”