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.