Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G Message"For how could I ever face my father without the boy at my side? I could not bear to watch what his grief would do to him."
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.G"For how could I go up to my father if the lad is not with me? Let me not look upon the evil that would come upon my father!"
KJV
King James VersionFor how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleFor how can I go back to my father without the boy? I could not bear to see the misery that would overwhelm him.”
Footnotes
אֵיךְ אֶעֱלֶה (eikh e'eleh) — "how can I go up?" — the verb עָלָה (alah) means literally "to go up," accurate both geographically (Canaan sits at higher elevation than Egypt) and symbolically: Yehudah cannot ascend, cannot return, cannot be restored, without the one he was charged to protect. The final clause — "let me not look upon the evil that would come upon my father" — is one of the most emotionally raw lines in all of Genesis. The man who once calculated profit in his brother's blood (Genesis 37:26) now offers himself as a slave to spare his father's heart. The narrative has completed one of Scripture's most quietly devastating moral transformations.
