19. My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’
20. And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’
21. “You said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, so that I may set my eyes on him.’
22. We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’
23. You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again.’
24. When we went back to your servant, my father, we told him the words of my lord.
25. “Our father said, ‘Go again and buy us a little food.’
26. We said, ‘We cannot 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.’
27. “Your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons.
28. And the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he was torn in pieces,” and I have not seen him since.
29. And if you take this one also from me and he is harmed, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.’
30. “Now therefore when I come to your servant, my father, and the boy is not with us, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life,
31. when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to the grave.
32. For your servant became surety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I fail to bring him to you, then I shall bear the blame to my father forever.’
33. “Now therefore, please let your servant stay as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go up with his brothers.
34. For how can I go up to my father if the boy is not with me, lest perhaps I see the evil that would find my father?”