VBM Yehuda’s Guarantee By Harav Yaakov Medan

Let us examine the words of Yehuda in our parasha, as a continuation of his words in the previous parasha: Then Yehuda came near to him, and said: “Oh my lord, let your servant, I pray you, speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant; for you are even as Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants, saying: ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ And we said to my lord: ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’ And you said to your servants: ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes upon him.’ And we said to my lord: ‘The lad cannot leave his father; for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ And you said to your servants: ‘Unless your little brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’ And it came to pass when we came up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. And our father said: ‘Go again, buy us a little food.’ And we said: ‘We cannot go down; if our little brother be with us, then will we go down; for we may not see the man's face, unless our little brother is with us.’ And your servant my father said to us: ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; and the one went out from me, and I said: Surely he is torn in pieces; and I have not seen him since; and if you take this one also from me, and harm befalls him, you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.’” (Bereishit 44:18-29)