18 Then Yehuda went closer to Yosef and said quietly, “Please, my master, please let your servant speak a word in my master’s ears, and don’t get angry with me, since you’re as powerful as Far’oh. 19 My master previously asked his servants if we had a father or another brother? 20 And we answered to my master, ‘Yes, we have an elderly father and also the youngest son of his old age. But that son’s brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’ 21 Then you told your servants, ‘Bring the other son here so I can see him myself.’ 22 And we said to my master, ‘The young man isn’t able to leave his father, because if he does, then the old man will die.’ 23 But then you said to your servants, ‘If your youngest brother doesn’t come with you, you won’t get access to me again.’

24 “After all that, when we went back to your servant my father, we explained your words to him, my master. 25 Eventually, our father told us, ‘Return there to buy some food for us.’ 26 But we told him, ‘We can’t go back unless our youngest brother is with us, because we wouldn’t be able to get access to that man if our youngest brother wasn’t with us.’ 27 Then your servant my father told us, ‘You know that my wife gave birth to two sons for me. 28 One of them went away from me, and I’ve assumed that he was torn to pieces, and I’ve never seen him again. 29 So if you also take this son away and something happened to him, then you’d bring my gray head down to the grave in misery.’

30 “So now, if I was to return home to your servant my father without that young man, since his father’s soul is bound to his soul, 31 then as soon as he sees that the young man isn’t will us, then he’ll have a heart attack and so your servants will bring the gray head of your servant our father down to the grave in misery. 32 But your servant guaranteed the young man to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t get him back to you, then I will have sinned against my father all my life.’

33 “So now, please let your servant stay as a slave for my master instead of the young man, and let the young man go home with his brothers. 34 So now, how could I possibly go home to my father if that young man isn’t with me? I wouldn’t be able to cope with my father’s misery.”