Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
The grandsons of Asher bear the names Heber and Malchiel, because they
were the "associates" of kings, and their inheritance yielded "royal
dainties."
Partly the history of the tribe of Benjamin can be read in the names of
its chiefs. It consisted originally of ten divisions, descended from
Benjamin's ten sons, but five of them perished in Egypt on account of
their ungodly ways, from which no admonition availed to turn them
aside. Of the five families remaining, two, the descendants of Bela and
those of Ashbel, had always been God-fearing; the others, the
Ahiramites, the Shephuphamites, and the Huphamites, repented of their
sins, and in accordance with the change in their conduct had been the
change in their names. Ehi had become Ahiram, because the breach with
the "Exalted" One was healed; Muppira was called Shephupham, because
they "afflicted" themselves in their penance; and Huppim was turned
into Hupham, to indicate that they had "cleansed" themselves from sin.
As a reward for their piety, the family springing from Bela was
permitted to have two subdivisions, the Ardites and the Naamites. Their
names point them out as men that know well how the fear of God is to be
manifested, whose deeds are exceedingly lovely.
Naphtali was another tribe of steadfast piety, and the names of his
sons testify thereto: Jahzeel, because the tribesmen raised a
"partition wall" between God and the idols, inasmuch as they trusted in
God and contemned the idols; Guni, because God was their "protection";
and Jezer and Shillem designate the Naphtalites as men devoted to God
with all their hearts.[6]
REUBEN'S TESTAMENT
Two years after the death of Joseph, Reuben fell sick. Feeling that his
end was nigh, he called together his sons, his grandsons, and his
brethren, to give them his last admonitions from out of the fulness of
his experience. He spake: "Hear, my brethren, and do ye, my children,
give ear unto Reuben your father in the commands that I enjoin upon
you. And, behold, I adjure you this day by the God of heaven that ye
walk not in the follies of youth and the fornications to which I was
addicted, and wherewith I defiled the bed of my father Jacob. For I
tell you now that for seven months the Lord afflicted my loins with a
terrible plague, and if my father Jacob had not interceded for me, the
Lord had swept me away. I was twenty years of age when I did what was
evil before the Lord, and for seven months I was sick unto death. Then
I did penance for seven years in the innermost depths of my soul. Wine
and strong drink I drank not, the flesh of animals passed not my lips,
dainties I tasted not, because I mourned over my sins, for they were
great."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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