Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
"Now, my children, have pity and compassion on all men, that the Lord
may have pity and compassion on you, for in the measure in which man
has mercy with his fellow-men, God has mercy with him. When we came
down into Egypt, Joseph did not visit upon us the wrong he had
suffered. Take him as your model, and remember not a wrong done unto
you, else unity is rent asunder, and the bonds of kinship are torn, and
the soul is disquieted. Observe the water! If it runs on undivided, it
carries down stone, wood, and sand along with it. But if it is divided
and flows through many channels, the earth sucks it up, and it loses
its force. If you separate, one from the other, you will be like
divided waters. Be not cleft into two heads, for all that the Lord hath
made has but one head. He has given two shoulders unto his creatures,
two hands, and two feet, but all these organs obey one head."
Zebulon ended his exhortation unto unity with an account of the
divisions in Israel, whereof he had read in the writings of the
fathers, that they would come about in future days, and bring sore
suffering upon Israel. However, he spoke encouraging words to his
children, saying: "Be not grieved over my death, and do not lose heart
at my departure from you, for I shall arise again in the midst of you,
and I shall live joyously among the people of my tribe, those who
observe the law of the Lord. As for the godless, the Lord will bring
everlasting fire down upon them, and exterminate them unto all
generations. Now I hasten hence unto my eternal rest with my fathers.
But ye, fear ye the Lord your God with all your might all the days of
your life."
Having made an end of saying these words, he sank into the sleep of
death, and his sons put him into a coffin, wherein they carried him up
to Hebron later, to bury him there next to his fathers.[12]
DAN'S CONFESSION
When Dan assembled his family at the last of his life, he spake: "I
confess before you this day, my children, that I had resolved to kill
Joseph, that good and upright man, and I rejoiced over his sale, for
his father loved him more than he loved the rest of us. The spirit of
envy and boastfulness goaded me on, saying, 'Thou, too, art the son of
Jacob,' and one of the spirits of Behar stirred me up, saying, 'Take
this sword, and slay Joseph, for once he is dead thy father will love
thee.' It was the spirit of anger that was seeking to persuade me to
crush Joseph, as a leopard crunches a kid between its teeth. But the
God of our father Jacob did not deliver him into my hand, to let me
find him alone, and He did not permit me to execute this impious deed,
that two tribes in Israel might not be destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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