Vayigash 44:18–45:02 · SKIP

44:18

Then Judah went up to him and said, “Please, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord, and do not be impatient with your servant, you who are the equal of Pharaoh.”

44:19

My lord asked his servants, “Have you a father or another brother?”

44:20

We told my lord, “We have an old father, and a child of his old age, the youngest; his full brother is dead, so that he alone is left of his mother, and his father dotes on him.”

44:21

Then you said to your servants, “Bring him down to me, that I may set eyes on him.”

44:22

We said to my lord, “The boy cannot leave his father; if he were to leave him, his father would die.”

44:23

But you said to your servants, “Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, do not let me see your faces.”

44:24

When we came back to your servant my father, we reported my lord’s words to him.

44:25

Later our father said, “Go back and procure some food for us.”

44:26

We answered, “We cannot go down; only if our youngest brother is with us can we go down, for we may not show our faces to the man unless our youngest brother is with us.”

44:27

Then your servant my father said to us, “You know that my wife bore me two sons.”

44:28

And one went out from me, and I said, “Alas, he must have been torn by beasts,” and I have not seen him since.

44:29

If you take this one from me too and disaster befalls him, you will send my gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow.

44:30

Now, if I come to your servant my father and the boy is not with us—since his life is bound up with his—

44:31

When he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will send the gray head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief.

44:32

For your servant became surety for the boy to my father, saying, “If I do not bring him back to you, I shall bear the guilt before my father forever.”

44:33

Therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers.

44:34

For how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me? Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father.

45:01

Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” So there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

45:02

His sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear, and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace.