Verse

Genesis 44:20

ESV And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’
NIV And we answered, 'We have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age. His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother's sons left, and his father loves him.'
NASB And we said to my lord, ‘We have an old father and a little boy born in our father’s old age. Now his brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’
CSB and we answered my lord, 'We have an elderly father and a younger brother, the child of his old age. The boy's brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother's sons left, and his father loves him.'
NLT And we responded, ‘Yes, my lord, we have a father who is an old man, and his youngest son is a child of his old age. His full brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him very much.’
KJV And we said unto my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him.

What does Genesis 44:20 mean?

Facing the loss of his innocent youngest brother, Benjamin, Judah is making his plea (Genesis 44:16–18). He is begging the Egyptian governor on behalf of his father Jacob and the rest of his family. This ruler, in fact, is Judah's own brother, Joseph (Genesis 42:7–8). This is the same man the oldest ten brothers had sold into slavery twenty years ago (Genesis 37:24–28). Joseph, for his part, has kept that secret and is in the process of testing his estranged family.

Judah reminds Joseph that during their first trip to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph had asked about their father and brother (Genesis 44:19). They told him then that they had a much younger brother who was the child of their father's old age (Genesis 35:16–18). That child, Benjamin, had one brother of the same mother (Genesis 35:24). The other brother has since died, or so he says. In saying this, Judah reveals once more that the family thinks Joseph is dead. Joseph is the only one who knows that he stands alive before his brothers right now, with their fate in his hands.

Judah makes clear that Benjamin, as the only remaining son of his mother, is deeply loved by their father Jacob (Genesis 43:14).
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