How can I go back to my father if the lad is not with me?: Judah’s question is a rhetorical way of saying emphatically “I cannot go home to my father if the boy is not with me.”

I fear to see the evil that would come upon my father is literally “lest I look on the evil that will find my father.” Several good models for Judah’s final thought are “I could not bear to see the misery which my father would suffer” (Revised English Bible), “I would be unable to bear seeing the misfortune that would happen to my father” (Bible en français courant), and “I don’t want to see the injury that my father would suffer” (Biblia Dios Habla Hoy).

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .