t12papocrypha
Testament of Dan 2
Dan, dying, charges his children against two linked spirits: lying and anger. He traces the mechanism precisely — anger does not merely distort judgment, it replaces it, substituting a sight and a heart of the wrathful man's own making for the truth. The blindness is graduated: father, mother, brother, prophet, righteous man, friend — all become enemies in sequence. The prophet of the Lord appears as a distinct category, and disobedience to him is named as a symptom of anger's grip. Hatred of heart toward a brother is identified as the channel through which the spirit of anger operates, feeding envy and completing the deception.
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And now, my children, I am dying, and I tell you of a truth, that unless ye keep yourselves from the spirit of lying and of anger, and love truth and long-suffering, ye shall perish. There is blindness in anger, my children, and no wrathful man regardeth any person with truth: for though it be a father or a mother, he behaveth towards them as enemies; though it be a brother, he knoweth him not; though it be a prophet of the Lord, he disobeyeth him; though a righteous man, he regardeth him not; a friend he doth not acknowledge. For the spirit of anger encompasseth him with the nets of deceit, and blindeth his natural eyes, and through lying darkeneth his mind, and giveth him a sight of his own making. And wherewith encompasseth he his eyes? In hatred of heart; and he giveth him a heart of his own against his brother unto envy.
