t12papocrypha
Testament of Judah 13
Judah warns his children against the lusts of youth and the pride of strength, confessing that his own boasting — particularly his reproach of Reuben over Bilhah — opened him to spirits of jealousy and fornication. He traces how wine blinded his eyes and gold deceived his judgment when the Canaanite king displayed his daughter, and how he married her in violation of both divine command and patriarchal counsel. The consequence was proportional: God rewarded Judah according to the imagination of his heart, and he found no joy in the children she bore him.
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And now, my children, in what things so ever I command you hearken to your father, and keep all my sayings to perform the ordinances of the Lord, and to obey the command of the Lord God. And walk not after your lusts, nor in the thoughts of your imaginations in the haughtiness of your heart; and glory not in the works of the strength of youth, for this also is evil in the eyes of the Lord. For since I also gloried that in wars the face of no woman of goodly form ever deceived me, and upbraided Reuben my brother concerning Bilhah, the wife of my father, the spirits of jealousy and of fornication arrayed themselves within me, until I fell before Bathshua the Canaanite, and Tamar who was espoused to my sons. And I said to my father-in-law, I will counsel with my father, and so will I take thy daughter. And he showed me a boundless store of gold in his daughter’s behalf, for he was a king. And he decked her with gold and pearls, and caused her to pour out wine for us at the feast in womanly beauty. And the wine led my eyes astray, and pleasure blinded my heart; and I loved her, and I fell, and transgressed the commandment of the Lord and the commandment of my fathers, and I took her to wife. And the Lord rewarded me according to the thought of my heart, insomuch that I had no joy in her children.
