GUILTY — culpable, liable, bearing the fault; the root behind asham, the guilt-offering of Leviticus. Not the language of regret but of an unpaid debt. It carries the brothers' confession in a foreign cell twenty-two years after the fact: 'truly we are GUILTY concerning our brother — that we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we did not listen' (42:21). Note what that sentence reveals: Genesis never told us, back at the pit (37:24), that Joseph begged. The narrator withheld it for five chapters so the reader would hear it for the first time in the mouths of the men who ignored it. KJV 'we are verily guilty concerning our brother.' → first discussed at Gen 42:21