Isaac gives directions to his sons as to his burial: exhorts them to love one another and makes them
imprecate destruction on him who injures his brother, 1-11. Divides his possessions, giving the
larger portion to Jacob, and dies, 12-18. Leah dies: Jacob's sons come to comfort him, 21-4.
[Chapter 36]
- And in the sixth year of this week [2162 A.M.] Isaac called his two sons Esau and
Jacob, and they came to him, and he said unto them: 'My sons, I am going the way of my fathers,
to the eternal house
where my fathers are.
- Wherefore bury me near Abraham my father, in the double cave
in the field of Ephron the Hittite, where Abraham purchased a sepulchre to bury in; in the
sepulchre which
I digged for myself, there bury me.
- And this I command you, my sons, that ye practise
righteousness and uprightness on the earth, so that the Lord may bring upon you all that the Lord
said that
he would do to Abraham and to his seed.
- And love one another, my sons, your brothers
as a man who loves his own soul, and let each seek in what he may benefit his brother, and act
together on the earth; and let them love each other as their own souls.
- And concerning the
question of idols, I command and admonish you to reject them and hate them, and love them not,
for they are full
of deception for those that worship them and for those that bow down to them.
- Remember ye, my sons, the Lord God of Abraham your father, and how I too worshipped Him
and served Him in righteousness and in joy, that He might multiply you and increase your seed as
the stars of heaven in multitude, and establish you on the earth as the plant of righteousness which
will not be rooted
out unto all the generations for ever.
- And now I shall make you swear a great oath -for
there is no oath which is greater than it by the name glorious and honoured and great and splendid
and wonderful and mighty, which created the heavens and the earth and all things together- that
ye will
fear Him and worship Him.
- And that each will love his brother with affection and
righteousness, and that neither will desire evil against his brother from henceforth for ever all the
days of your life
so that ye may prosper in all your deeds and not be destroyed.
- And if either of you
devises evil against his brother, know that from henceforth everyone that devises evil against his
brother shall fall into his hand, and shall be rooted out of the land of the living, and his seed shall
be destroyed from
under heaven.
- But on the day of turbulence and execration and indignation and anger,
with flaming devouring fire as He burnt Sodom, so likewise will He burn his land and his city and
all that is his, and he shall be blotted out of the book of the discipline of the children of men, and
not be recorded in the book of life, but in that which is appointed to destruction, and he shall
depart into eternal execration; so that their condemnation may be always renewed in hate and in
execration and in wrath and in torment and in indignation and in plagues and in disease for ever.
- I
say and testify to you, my sons, according to the judgment which shall come upon the man who
wishes to
injure his brother.
- And he divided all his possessions between the two on that day and
he gave the larger portion to him that was the first-born, and the tower and all that was about it,
and all that
Abraham possessed at the Well of the Oath.
- And he said: 'This larger portion I will
give to the
firstborn.'
- And Esau said, 'I have sold to Jacob and given my birthright to Jacob; to him
let it be
given, and I have not a single word to say regarding it, for it is his.'
- And Isaac said,
May a blessing rest upon you, my sons, and upon your seed this day, for ye have given me rest,
and my heart is not
pained concerning the birthright, lest thou shouldest work wickedness on account of it.
- May the
Most High God bless the man that worketh righteousness, him and his seed for ever.'
- And he ended commanding them and blessing them, and they eat and drank together before him,
and he rejoiced because there was one mind between them, and they went forth from him and
rested that day and
slept.
- And Isaac slept on his bed that day rejoicing; and he slept the eternal sleep, and
died one hundred and eighty years old. He completed twenty-five weeks and five years; and his
two sons
Esau and Jacob buried him.
- And Esau went to the land of Edom, to the mountains of
Seir, and
dwelt there.
- And Jacob dwelt in the mountains of Hebron, in the tower of the land of
the sojournings of his father Abraham, and he worshipped the Lord with all his heart and
according to the visible
commands according as He had divided the days of his generations.
- And Leah his wife
died in the fourth year of the second week of the forty-fifth jubilee, [2167 A.M.] and he buried her
in the double cave
near Rebecca his mother to the left of the grave of Sarah, his father's mother
- and all her
sons and his sons came to mourn over Leah his wife with him and to comfort him regarding her,
for he
was lamenting her for he loved her exceedingly after Rachel her sister died;
- for she was
perfect and upright in all her ways and honoured Jacob,and all the days that she lived with him he
did not hear from her mouth a harsh word, for she was gentle and peaceable and upright and
honourable.
- And he remembered all her deeds which she had done during her life and he lamented
her exceedingly; for he loved her with all his heart and with all his soul.
Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 |
4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 |
38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 |
44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 |
50
From The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
by R.H. Charles, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913
Scanned and Edited by Joshua Williams, Northwest Nazarene College