Genesis 44:32
For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever.
Judah himself stood as pledge to his father for the boy, taking upon himself full personal responsibility to guarantee his safe return. The condition he accepted was plain: if he failed to bring the lad back to his father, he would carry the guilt before his father for all time.
He brought that pledge forward again when he pleaded for his father before the Egyptian ruler, stepping apart from his brothers to speak in deep distress. In that plea he laid out his father's unwillingness to let Benjamin go down to Egypt, his overwhelming grief over the loss of Joseph, and that Benjamin alone remained of the mother his father had loved. He declared that his father's life was wrapped up in the boy's life, so that to be parted from him would kill the old man and send his gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave, an evil he could not bear to see fall upon his father and could not face returning to meet without the lad beside him.
To honor his pledge he nobly asked to stay himself as slave and bondman in Benjamin's stead, that Benjamin might go up with his brothers and return home and their father be spared that grief, rather than go back without him. In that pledge and plea was seen that the sons had grown devoted to their father and dreaded bringing any further sorrow upon him.