Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Anonymous
Book Testament of Zebulun · Chapter 7
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.
[Now I will declare unto you what I did.
I saw a man in distress through nakedness in winter time, and had compassion upon him, and stole away a garment secretly from my father's house, and gave it to him who was in distress.
Do you, therefore, my children, from that which God bestoweth upon you, show compassion and mercy without hesitation to all men, and give to every man with a good heart.
And if ye have not the wherewithal to give to him that needeth, have compassion for him in bowels of mercy.
I know that my hand found not the wherewithal to give to him that needed, and I walked with him weeping for seven furlongs, and my bowels yearned towards him in compassion.