Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Zebulun · Chapter 10
About this work
A collection of farewell discourses attributed to the twelve sons of Jacob, combining ethical exhortation, autobiographical retelling, and eschatological material. The transmitted text preserves Jewish traditions alongside Christian material or interpolation, and its compositional history remains debated.
- Author
- Anonymous
- Date
- Second Temple Jewish material; transmitted form includes later Christian elements.
- Origin
- Unknown
- Genre
- Testamentary Literature / Pseudepigrapha
- Textual language
- Greek textual tradition; earlier sources and layers are debated.
- Translator
- R. H. Charles
- Translation / Edition
- R. H. Charles translation, first published 1908.
And now, my children, grieve not that I am dying, nor be cast down in that I am coming to my end.
For I shall rise again in the midst of you, as a ruler in the midst of his sons; and I shall rejoice in the midst of my tribe, as many as shall keep the law of the Lord, and the commandments of Zebulun their father.
But upon the ungodly shall the Lord bring eternal fire, and destroy them throughout all generations.
But I am now hastening away to my rest, as did also my fathers.
But do ye fear the Lord our God with all your strength all the days of your life.
And when he had said these things he fell asleep, at a good old age. And his sons laid him in a wooden coffin.
And afterwards they carried him up and buried him in Hebron, with his fathers.