C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Genesis 43:8-10

Gen 43:8-10

He then repeated the only condition on which they would go to Egypt again, referring to the death by famine which threatened them, their father, and their children, and promising that he would himself be surety for the youth (הנּער, Benjamin was twenty-three years old), and saying, that if he did not restore him, he would bear the blame (חטא to be guilty of a sin and stone for it, as in 1Ki 1:21) his whole life long. He then concluded with the deciding words, “for if we had not delayed, surely we should already have returned a second time.”