Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me, and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’
“Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as 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 Sheol. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.’ Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.”
Comment: Judah reveals the duplicity with which they, his brothers, had covered the truth to their father about what had happened to Benjamin’s brother, Joseph – before whom they now stood not thinking that he knew them. He pleads for Joseph to take him and possibly some of the others as payment for the evil that had been done in this stealing. Subconsciously he must have had jumbled, hurting feelings for he knew that they weren’t guilty and must have suspected Joseph of being nasty and spiteful in his dealings with Benjamin.
Prayer: Sometimes our prayers are just desperate hopes as we throw ourselves on Your mercy, merciful Father. And Your answers aren’t always what we’d choose to hear.
As I read it! 