Parashat Vayigash

Judah Pleads for Benjamin

¹⁸ Then Judah approached him and said, “I beg your pardon, my lord. Please let your servant say a word in my lord’s ears, and don’t be angry with your servant, since you are like Pharaoh. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants saying, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ ²⁰ So we said to my lord, ‘We have a father who is old, a child born to him of his old age is young. Now his brother is dead, so he is the only one of his mother’s children left, and his father loves him.’ ²¹ Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me so that I can look at him.’ ²² But we said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father. If he were to leave his father, he would die.’ ²³ Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you won’t see my face again.’

²⁴ “Now when we went up to your servant, my father, we told him my lord’s words. ²⁵ Then our father said, ‘Go back, buy us a little grain for food.’ ²⁶ So we said, ‘We won’t go down unless we have our youngest brother with us—then we’ll go down. For we won’t see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’

²⁷ “Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You yourselves know that my wife bore me two sons. ²⁸ One went out from me, so I said, “He must have been torn to shreds,” and I haven’t seen him since. ²⁹ And if you also take this one away from before me and an accident happens to him, then you’ll bring my grey hair down to the evil of Sheol.’

³⁰ “Now if I come to your servant my father and the boy isn’t with us, since his life is bound to his life,