"And Judah approached him" (Genesis 44:18). The verse says Judah "approached him"—but does not specify whom. Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk takes the ambiguity and runs with it: the tzaddik (a righteous person), here called Judah, approached God.
This is a prayer, not a negotiation. "Please my Lord, do not be angry with your servant"—Judah is asking God for grace, not demanding justice. And then the pivotal phrase: "For like you, like Pharaoh." Rebbe Elimelech reads this as a confession of spiritual oscillation.
The tzaddik is saying: why be exacting with me when my mind cannot hold a single focus? Sometimes my thoughts soar to the highest levels—to the rank of the great righteous ones who can issue decrees that the Holy One sustains. Other times my mind collapses into emptiness and delusion, "like Pharaoh"—whose Hebrew letters rearrange to spell oref, the stiff neck, representing the broken shells of materiality.
This is not weakness dressed as piety. It is raw honesty about the human condition. The spiritual life is not a steady ascent. It is a constant oscillation between fire and ash, between vision and blindness. The tzaddik does not pretend otherwise. Instead, Judah asks God to look past the oscillation and respond with goodness and grace—not because the servant deserves it, but because the struggle itself is the service.