Judah offers himself in place of his brother

AI-assisted comparison with the cited narrative; not independent historical verification.

• GEN 44:18–34, engwebp

  ¹⁸Then Judah came near to him, and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and don’t let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even as Pharaoh.

  ¹⁹My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’

  ²⁰We said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother; and his father loves him.’

  ²¹You said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’

  ²²We said to my lord, ‘The boy can’t leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’

  ²³You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will see my face no more.’

  ²⁴When we came up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord.

  ²⁵Our father said, ‘Go again and buy us a little food.’

  ²⁶We said, ‘We can’t go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down: for we may not see the man’s face, unless our youngest brother is with us.’

  ²⁷Your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons.

  ²⁸One went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn in pieces;” and I haven’t seen him since.

  ²⁹If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.’

  ³⁰Now therefore when I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us; since his life is bound up in the boy’s life;

  ³¹it will happen, when he sees that the boy is no more, that he will die. Your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol.

  ³²For your servant became collateral for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t bring him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever.’

  ³³Now therefore, please let your servant stay instead of the boy, my lord’s slave; and let the boy go up with his brothers.

  ³⁴For how will I go up to my father, if the boy isn’t with me?—lest I see the evil that will come on my father.”

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