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The Testament of Gad says that a person is punished by the very things they use to sin, a principle also expressed in the Wisdom of Solomon. Both apply a form of measure for measure justice based on traditions in the Torah.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Testament of Gad 5:10
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
Pseudepigrapha, Testaments
9 And the things it has not learned from anyone, it comes to know through repentance. 10 For God brought a disease of the liver upon me, and if the prayers of my father Jacob had not helped me, my spirit would almost certainly have departed. For by whatever things a person sins, by those same things he is also punished. 11 Since my liver had been set mercilessly against Joseph, in my liver too I suffered mercilessly, and I was judged for eleven months, the same length of time that I had been angry at Joseph.
Date: 100 BCE – 100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Wisdom of Solomon 11:16
Deuterocanon
14 For him who long before was thrown out and exposed they stopped mocking. In the end of what happened, they marveled, having thirsted in another manner than the righteous. 15 But in return for the senseless imaginings of their unrighteousness, by which they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and wretched vermin, you sent upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, 16 that they might learn that by what things a man sins, by these he is punished. 17 For your all-powerful hand that created the world out of formless matter didn’t lack means to send upon them a multitude of bears, fierce lions,
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The aspect I wish to draw attention to, however, is that Salome is punished in that part of her body that she used to commit the sinful act, her hand. This idea is also well attested elsewhere. For example, in the Testament of Gad 5:9-11 we read the following statement by Gad ... Wisdom of Solomon 11:16 says: 'Those things through which a man sins, through them he is punished'. And in Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum 44:10, God says: 'To every man there will be such a punishment that in whatever sin he shall have sinned, in this he will be judged'. One could quote many more examples from Jewish pseudepigrapha (e.g. Jubilees 48:14) and also from rabbinic literature (e.g. Mishnah, Sotah 1:7-9; Tosefta, Sotah 3-4; Mekhilta, Be-Shalach 6) to illustrate that the principle of retaliation from the Torah (Exodus 21:23; Leviticus 24:18; Deuteronomy 19:21) was still very much adhered to. But this was the case not only in Jewish but also in Christian literature from the early centuries, witness not only our passage on Salome, but also several Christian apocalyptic writings from late antiquity ..."
Pieter W. van Der Horst, “Sex, Birth, Purity, and Ascetism in the Protevangelium Jacobi,” Neot 28.3 (1994): 205–218.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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