Texts in Conversation
In Genesis 44, Judah delivers a long plea to Joseph, offering to stay as a slave so Benjamin can go free. Jubilees 43 retells this moment but shortens Judah’s speech to a few lines and trims its emotional appeal.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 44:18
Hebrew Bible
18 Then Judah approached him and said, “My lord, please allow your servant to speak a word with you. Please do not get angry with your servant, for you are just like Pharaoh. 19 My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ 20 We said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young boy who was born when our father was old. The boy’s brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him.’ 21 “Then you told your servants, ‘Bring him down to me so I can see him.’ 22 We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father. If he leaves his father, his father will die.’ 23 But you said to your servants, ‘If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.’ 24 When we returned to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. 25 “Then our father said, ‘Go back and buy us a little food.’
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 43:11
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
11 And Judah said: 'My lord, let your servant, please, speak a word in my lord's ear: your servant's mother bore two brothers to our father: one went away and was lost, and has not been found, and he alone is left of his mother, and your servant our father loves him, and his life also is bound up with the life of this (boy). 12 And when we go to your servant our father, and the boy is not with us, he will die, and we shall bring down our father with sorrow to death. 13 Now rather let me, your servant, remain instead of the boy as an enslaved servant to my lord, and let the boy go with his brothers, for I guaranteed his safety to your servant our father, and if I do not bring him back, your servant will bear the blame to our father forever.'
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Search:
Notes and References
... The reply of Judah should be the highlight of the drama in that what he has to say finally induces Joseph to end his pretense and disclose to them what is really going on. The narrator in Genesis assigns seventeen verses to his emotional outpouring before Joseph; these become just three verses in Jubilees. The writer of Jubilees leaves out most of the section in which his older brother rehearses the previous encounters between the Egyptian official (Joseph) and the brothers and the discussions with Jacob about sending Benjamin with them on the return trip to Egypt. He largely omits Genesis 44:19-29 (using one line from verse 20 and some words from verses 27-28), and then reproduces more of Genesis 44:30-33 but nothing from verse 34. ...
James C. VanderKam, Jubilees 1: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 1–21 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 1079–1081.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,