Then Judah said to his father Israel, “Please, send the boy with me and we’ll get up and go, so that we’ll live and not die—we and you, and our children.
But he said, “My son will not go down with you—for his brother is dead and he alone remains. And if harm should happen to him along the way you’re going, you’ll bring my grey hair down to Sheol in grief.”
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.’
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.’
You are also commanded to say: “Do this! Take for yourselves wagons from the land of Egypt for your little children and for your wives, and pick up your father and come.
along with all of Joseph’s house, his brothers, and his father’s household. Only their children and their flocks and cattle were left in the land of Goshen.
But one of his courtiers answered and said, “Please let some men take five of the remaining horses left in the city—look, they are just like the whole multitude left in it, and look, they will be just like the whole multitude of Israel that has already perished—so let’s send and see.”
If we say: ‘Let’s go into the city,’ then the famine is in the city, so we will die there; but if we sit still here, we’ll die also. So come, let’s go into the camp of the Arameans. If they spare us, we’ll live; and if they kill us, we’ll just die.”
Then I proclaimed a fast there at the Ahava River so that we might humble ourselves before our God and seek from Him a straight way for us, our little ones, and all of our possessions.