Genesis 43:8-10 - Exposition

And Judah said unto Israel his father, Send the lad with me (Benjamin, though styled a lad, must have been at this time upwards of twenty years of age), and we will arise and go; that we may (literally, and we shall ) live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones. I will be surety for him (the verb conveys the idea of changing places with another); of my hand shalt thou require him ( vide Genesis 9:5 ): if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee ,—the words are even more emphatic than those of Reuben ( Genesis 42:37 )— then let me bear the blame for ever —literally, and I shall be a sinner ( i.e. liable to punishment as a sinner) against thee all the days ( sc . of my life). The thought is elliptical. Judah means that if he does not return with Benjamin he shall both have failed in his promise and be guilty of a dire transgression against his father (cf. 1 Kings 1:21 ). For except we had lingered, surely now we had returned this second time —literally, these two times . The nobility of character which shines out so conspicuously in Judah's language is afterwards signally illustrated in his pathetic pleading before Joseph, and goes far to countenance the suggestion that a change must have taken place in his inner life since the incidents recorded of him in Genesis 37:1-36 and Genesis 38:1-30 .