t12papocrypha
Testament of Gad 5
Gad's deathbed teaching anchors hatred as the root sin that inverts perception — making small things great, darkness light, sweetness bitter — and traces it through his own eleven months of heart-disease, a judgment proportioned exactly to the duration of his envy against Joseph. Repentance is the mechanism that reverses the inversion: it destroys unbelief, restores sight, and imparts knowledge the soul never received through human instruction. The fear of Jehovah — named here as the Most High — displaces hatred by making wrong action intolerable even in thought. Joseph's master-type surfaces plainly: the brother sold in hatred becomes the measure by which the hater is weighed.
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Hatred is evil, because it continually abideth with lying, speaking against the truth; and it maketh small things to be great, and giveth heed to darkness as to light, and calleth the sweet bitter, and teacheth slander, and war, and violence, and every excess of evil; and it filleth the heart with devilish poison. And these things I say to you from experience, my children, that ye may flee hatred, and cleave to the love of the Lord. Righteousness casteth out hatred, humility destroyeth hatred. For he that is just and humble is ashamed to do wrong, being reproved not of another, but of his own heart, because the Lord vieweth his intent: he speaketh not against any man, because the fear of the Most High overcometh hatred. For, fearing lest he should offend the Lord, he will not do any wrong to any man, no, not even in thought. These things I learnt at last, after that I had repented concerning Joseph. For true repentance after a godly sort destroyeth unbelief, and driveth away the darkness, and enlighteneth the eyes, and giveth knowledge to the soul, and guideth the mind to salvation; and those things which it hath not learnt from man, it knoweth through repentance. For God brought upon me a disease of the heart; and had not the prayers of Jacob my father intervened, it had hardly failed that my spirit had departed. For by what things a man transgresseth, by the same also is he punished. For in that my heart was set mercilessly against Joseph, in my heart too I suffered mercilessly, and was judged for eleven months, for so long a time as I had been envious against Joseph until he was sold.
