1A record of what Judah told his sons before he died. 2 So they gathered together and came to him, and he said to them: Listen, my children, to Judah your father. 3 I was the fourth son born to my father Jacob, and my mother Leah named me Judah, saying: I give thanks to the Lord, because he has given me a fourth son as well. 4 In my youth I was quick, and obedient to my father in everything. 5 I honored my mother and my mother's sister. 6 When I became a man, my father blessed me, saying: You will be a king, and you will prosper in everything.
2The Lord showed me favor in all my work, both in the field and in the house. 2 I once chased down a deer, caught it, and prepared the meat for my father, and he ate it. 3 I used to outrun the gazelles in the hunt and catch everything on the plains. 4 I overtook a wild mare, caught it, and tamed it. 5 I killed a lion and pulled a young goat out of its mouth. 6 I took a bear by its paw and threw it down a cliff, and it was crushed. 7 I outran a wild boar, and seizing it as I ran, I tore it apart. 8 In Hebron a leopard leaped on my dog, and I caught it by the tail, hurled it onto the rocks, and it broke in two. 9 I found a wild ox feeding in the fields, and grabbing it by the horns, I whirled it around until it was stunned, then threw it down and killed it.
3When the two kings of the Canaanites came against our flocks in armor, with many people, I rushed alone at the king of Hazor, struck him on the leg armor, dragged him down, and killed him. 2 The other, the king of Tappuah, was sitting on his horse. I killed him and scattered all his people. 3 I found King Achor, a man of giant size, throwing javelins in front and behind as he sat on horseback. I picked up a stone weighing sixty pounds, hurled it, struck his horse, and killed it. 4 I fought this other man for two hours. I split his shield in two, cut off his feet, and killed him. 5 As I was stripping off his breastplate, nine of his companions began to fight with me. 6 I wrapped my garment around my hand, slung stones at them, killed four of them, and the rest fled. 7 My father Jacob killed Beelesath, king over all the kings, a giant in strength, twelve cubits tall. 8 Fear fell on them, and they stopped making war against us. 9 So my father had no anxiety in the wars when I was with my brothers. 10 For he had seen in a vision about me that a mighty angel followed me everywhere, so that I could not be defeated.
4In the south a greater war came against us than the one at Shechem. I lined up for battle with my brothers, pursued a thousand men, and killed two hundred of them along with four kings. 2 I climbed up on the wall and killed four mighty men. 3 So we captured Hazor and took all the plunder.
5The next day we set out for Aretan, a strong walled city that could not be approached, which threatened us with death. 2 Gad and I approached on the east side of the city, and Reuben and Levi on the west. 3 The men on the wall, thinking we were alone, were drawn down to attack us. 4 So my brothers secretly climbed the wall on both sides using stakes and entered the city without the men knowing. 5 We captured it with the sword. 6 As for those who had taken refuge in the tower, we set the tower on fire and captured both it and them. 7 As we were leaving, the men of Tappuah attacked our plunder. We handed it over to our sons and fought the men all the way to Tappuah. 8 We killed them, burned their city, and took everything in it as plunder.
6When I was at the waters of Kozeba, the men of Jobel came to fight us. 2 We fought them and routed them. We killed their allies from Shiloh and left them no strength to come against us. 3 On the fifth day the men of Makir came at us to seize our plunder. We attacked and overcame them in fierce battle, for there were many mighty men among them, and we killed them before they had climbed the slope. 4 When we reached their city, their women rolled stones down on us from the top of the hill where the city stood. Simeon and I hid behind the town, seized the heights, and destroyed this city too.
7The next day we were told that the king of the city of Gaash was coming against us with a mighty army. 2 So Dan and I pretended to be Amorites and went into their city as allies. 3 In the dead of night our brothers came, and we opened the gates for them. We destroyed all the men and their property, took everything they had as plunder, and tore down their three walls. 4 We came near to Thamna, where all the property of the enemy kings was kept. 5 When they insulted me, I grew angry and rushed at them up to the summit, while they kept slinging stones and darts at me. 6 Had my brother Dan not helped me, they would have killed me. 7 So we came at them in anger, and they all fled. Going by another route, they begged my father, and he made peace with them. 8 We did them no harm, they became our subjects paying tribute, and we returned their plunder to them. 9 I built Thamna, and my father built Pabael. 10 I was twenty years old when this war happened. 11 The Canaanites feared me and my brothers.
8I had a great deal of livestock, and my chief herdsman was Iram the Adullamite. 2 When I went to him I met Parsaba, king of Adullam. He spoke with us and gave us a feast, and when I was warmed with wine he gave me his daughter Bathshua as my wife. 3 She bore me Er, Onan, and Shelah. The Lord struck down two of them, but Shelah lived, and you are his children.
9For eighteen years my father lived in peace with his brother Esau, and Esau's sons with us, after we came from Mesopotamia, from Laban. 2 When those eighteen years were over, in the fortieth year of my life, Esau, my father's brother, came against us with a mighty, strong people. 3 Jacob struck Esau with an arrow, and Esau was carried off wounded on Mount Seir, and he died at Anoniram as he went. 4 We pursued the sons of Esau. 5 They had a city with iron walls and bronze gates, and we could not get in, so we camped around it and laid siege. 6 When they had not opened to us in twenty days, I set up a ladder in full view of everyone and went up with my shield over my head, enduring a barrage of stones weighing more than three talents, and I killed four of their mighty men. 7 Reuben and Gad killed six others. 8 Then they asked us for terms of peace, and after consulting our father, we accepted them as subjects paying tribute. 9 They gave us five hundred cors of wheat, five hundred baths of oil, and five hundred measures of wine, until the famine, when we went down into Egypt.
10After this my son Er married Tamar, from Mesopotamia, a daughter of Aram. 2 Er was wicked, and he was unwilling toward Tamar because she was not from the land of Canaan. 3 On the third night an angel of the Lord struck him down. 4 He had not slept with her, following the evil cunning of his mother, because he did not want to have children by her. 5 During the days of the wedding feast I gave Onan to her in marriage, but he too, in his wickedness, did not sleep with her, though he lived with her a year. 6 When I threatened him, he went in to her, but he spilled his seed on the ground, as his mother had told him, and he too died because of his wickedness. 7 I wanted to give Shelah to her as well, but his mother would not allow it, for she worked evil against Tamar, because Tamar was not one of the daughters of Canaan, as she herself was.
11I knew the Canaanite people were wicked, but the impulse of youth blinded my mind. 2 When I saw her pouring out wine, I was deceived through drunkenness and took her, even though my father had not advised it. 3 While I was away, she went and got Shelah a wife from Canaan. 4 When I learned what she had done, I cursed her in the anguish of my soul. 5 She too died because of her wickedness, along with her sons.
12After this, while Tamar was a widow, she heard two years later that I was going up to shear my sheep. She dressed herself in bridal clothing and sat at the gate of the city of Enaim. 2 For it was a law of the Amorites that a woman about to marry should sit by the gate as a prostitute for seven days. 3 Because I was drunk with wine, I did not recognize her, and her beauty, with the way she was dressed, deceived me. 4 I turned aside to her and said: Let me sleep with you. 5 She said: What will you give me? So I gave her my staff, my belt, and the crown of my kingdom as a pledge. 6 I slept with her, and she conceived. 7 Not realizing what I had done, I later wanted to kill her, but she secretly sent back my pledges and put me to shame. 8 When I summoned her, I also heard the private words I had spoken while lying with her in my drunkenness, and I could not kill her, because this was from the Lord. 9 For I thought: Perhaps she did this by a trick, having received the pledge from another woman. 10 But I never went near her again as long as I lived, because I had committed this disgrace in all Israel. 11 The people in the city said there had been no prostitute at the gate, because she had come from somewhere else and only sat at the gate for a time. 12 I thought no one knew that I had slept with her. 13 After this we came to Joseph in Egypt because of the famine. 14 I was forty-six years old, and I lived seventy-three years in Egypt.
13Now I command you, my children, listen to Judah your father. Keep my words, carry out all the statutes of the Lord, and obey the commands of God. 2 Do not follow your lusts or the proud imaginations of your thoughts. Do not boast in the deeds and strength of your youth, for this too is evil in the eyes of the Lord. 3 I too boasted that in all my wars no beautiful woman's face had ever enticed me, and I rebuked my brother Reuben about Bilhah, my father's wife. So the spirits of jealousy and sexual immorality set themselves against me, until I slept with Bathshua the Canaanite and with Tamar, who was promised to my sons. 4 For I said to my father-in-law: I will consult my father, and then I will marry your daughter. 5 He was unwilling, but he showed me an endless supply of gold on his daughter's behalf, for he was a king. 6 He decked her out with gold and pearls and had her pour wine for us at the feast with all a woman's beauty. 7 The wine led my eyes astray, and pleasure blinded my heart. 8 I became infatuated with her and slept with her, breaking the commandment of the Lord and the commandment of my fathers, and I took her as my wife. 9 The Lord repaid me according to the intent of my heart, for I had no joy in her children.
14Now, my children, I tell you: do not get drunk with wine. Wine turns the mind away from the truth, stirs up the passion of lust, and leads the eyes into error. 2 The spirit of sexual immorality uses wine as its servant to give pleasure to the mind, for these two together take away a person's reason. 3 If a man drinks wine to drunkenness, it stirs up the mind with filthy thoughts that lead to sexual immorality and inflames the body toward sex, and if the opportunity for lust is there, he commits the sin without shame. 4 Such is the drunken man, my children, for one who is drunk respects no one. 5 It made even me go astray, so that I felt no shame before the crowd in the city, when in front of everyone I turned aside to Tamar. I committed a great sin and laid bare the shame of my sons. 6 After I had drunk wine, I disregarded the commandment of God and took a Canaanite woman as my wife. 7 The man who drinks wine needs great self-control, my children. The discretion in drinking wine is this: a man may drink as long as he keeps his modesty. 8 But if he goes beyond this limit, the spirit of dishonesty attacks his mind. It makes the drunkard talk filthily, break the law without shame, and even boast in his disgrace, thinking himself honorable.
15The one who commits sexual immorality does not notice when he suffers loss and feels no shame when he is dishonored. 2 Even if a man is a king and commits sexual immorality, he is stripped of his kingship by becoming a slave to it, as I myself experienced. 3 For I gave away my staff, which was the support of my tribe; my belt, which was my power; and my crown, which was the glory of my kingdom. 4 I truly repented of these things. I drank no wine and ate no meat until my old age, and I knew no joy. 5 The angel of God showed me that women always hold power over king and beggar alike. 6 From the king they take his glory, from the brave man his strength, and from the beggar even the little that supports him in his poverty.
16So watch the proper limit in wine, my children, for there are four evil spirits in it: lust, burning desire, indulgence, and greed for money. 2 If you drink wine for joy, stay modest in the fear of God. 3 For if the fear of God leaves while you are celebrating, then drunkenness sets in and shamelessness creeps in. 4 But if you want to live soberly, do not touch wine at all, or you may sin with outrageous words, in fights and slanders and violations of God's commandments, and perish before your time. 5 Wine also reveals the secrets of God and of people, just as I revealed the commandments of God and the secrets of my father Jacob to the Canaanite woman Bathshua, which God had told me not to reveal. 6 Wine is a cause of both war and confusion.
17Now I command you, my children, not to love money or to gaze at the beauty of women, because for the sake of money and beauty I was led astray to Bathshua the Canaanite. 2 For I know that because of these two things my descendants will fall into wickedness. 3 They will corrupt even the wise men among my sons and will cause the kingdom of Judah to be diminished, which the Lord gave me because of my obedience to my father. 4 For I never caused my father Jacob any grief; whatever he commanded, I did. 5 Isaac, my father's father, blessed me to be king in Israel, and Jacob blessed me in the same way. 6 I know that the kingdom will be established from me.
18I know the evils you will do in the last days. So beware, my children, of sexual immorality and the love of money, and listen to Judah your father.[1] 2 These things pull you away from the law of God, blind the soul's inclination, and teach arrogance. They keep a man from showing compassion to his neighbor, rob his soul of all goodness, weigh him down with toil and trouble, drive sleep away from him, and consume his body. 3 Such a man hinders the sacrifices of God, forgets the blessing of God, refuses to listen to a prophet when he speaks, and resents words of godliness. 4 For he is a slave to two opposing passions and cannot obey God, because they have blinded his soul, and he walks in the daytime as if it were night.
19My children, the love of money leads to idolatry, because when people are led astray by money, they call gods those who are not gods, and it drives the one who has it into madness. For the sake of money I lost my children, and if my repentance, my humbling of myself, and my father's prayers had not been accepted, I would have died childless.[2] 2 But the God of my fathers had mercy on me, because I had done it in ignorance. 3 The prince of lies blinded me, and I sinned as a mortal man, corrupted by sins, and I learned my own weakness while I had thought myself invincible.
20So understand this, my children: two spirits are always present with a person, the spirit of truth and the spirit of dishonesty.[3] 2 Between them is the spirit of understanding, which belongs to the mind and has the freedom to choose whatever it wants. 3 The actions inspired by truth and those inspired by dishonesty are written on every person's heart, and the Lord knows them all. 4 There is never a moment when our deeds can be hidden, because they are recorded on the heart itself before the Lord. 5 The spirit of truth reveals everything and brings all to account; and the sinner is condemned by his own heart, unable to lift his face before the Judge.
21Now, my children, I command you: love Levi, so that you may endure, and do not exalt yourselves against him, or you will be utterly destroyed. 2 For the Lord gave the kingship to me and the priesthood to him, and he set the kingship beneath the priesthood. 3 To me he gave the things on the earth, and to him the things in the heavens. 4 As heaven is higher than the earth, so the priesthood of God is higher than the earthly kingdom, unless it falls away from the Lord through sin and is dominated by the earthly kingdom. 5 For the angel of the Lord said to me: The Lord chose him rather than you, to draw near to him, to eat at his table, and to offer him the firstfruits of the choicest gifts of the sons of Israel. But you will be king of Jacob. 6 You will be among them like the sea. 7 For just as on the sea the righteous and the unrighteous are tossed about, some taken captive and some enriched, so every kind of person will be in you: some will be made poor and taken captive, and others will grow rich by plundering the possessions of others. 8 For the kings will be like sea monsters. 9 They will swallow people like fish. They will enslave the sons and daughters of free men. They will plunder houses, lands, flocks, and money. They will wrongfully feed the ravens and the cranes with the flesh of many. They will grow worse in evil, lifted up by greed, and there will be false prophets like storms, and they will persecute all the righteous.
22The Lord will bring divisions upon them, one against another. 2 There will be continual wars in Israel, and my kingdom will be brought to an end by people of another race, until the salvation of Israel comes, until the appearing of the God of righteousness, so that Jacob and all the Gentiles may rest in peace. 3 He will guard the strength of my kingdom forever, for the Lord swore to me with an oath that he would never destroy the kingdom from my descendants.
23I have great grief, my children, because of the lewdness, witchcraft, and idolatry you will practice against the kingdom, following those who consult ghosts, diviners, and demons of error. 2 You will make your daughters singing girls and prostitutes, and you will mingle in the detestable practices of the Gentiles. 3 Because of these things the Lord will bring on you famine and plague, death and the sword, sieges by enemies, abuse from friends, the slaughter of children, the rape of wives, the plundering of possessions, the burning of the temple of God, the devastation of the land, and your own enslavement among the Gentiles. 4 They will make some of you into eunuchs to serve their wives. 5 This will last until the Lord visits you, when you repent with a whole heart and walk in all his commandments, and he brings you up from captivity among the Gentiles.
24After this a star will rise to you from Jacob in peace, and a man will arise from my descendants like the sun of righteousness, walking with the children of men in gentleness and righteousness, and no sin will be found in him. 2 The heavens will be opened to him to pour out the spirit, the blessing of the Holy Father, and he will pour out the spirit of grace on you. You will be true sons to him, and you will walk in his commandments from first to last.[4] 3 This is the Branch of God Most High, the Fountain that gives life to all. Then the scepter of my kingdom will shine out, and from your root a stem will arise, and from it a rod of righteousness will grow for the Gentiles, to judge and to save all who call on the Lord.
25After this Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will rise to life, and my brothers and I will be heads of the tribes of Israel: Levi first, I second, Joseph third, Benjamin fourth, Simeon fifth, Issachar sixth, and so on all in order.[5] 2 The Lord blessed Levi; the Angel of the Presence blessed me; the powers of glory blessed Simeon; heaven blessed Reuben; the earth blessed Issachar; the sea blessed Zebulun; the mountains blessed Joseph; the tabernacle blessed Benjamin; the lights of heaven blessed Dan; Eden blessed Naphtali; the sun blessed Gad; and the moon blessed Asher. 3 You will be the people of the Lord and speak one language, and the spirit of dishonesty of Beliar will no longer be there, for he will be thrown into the fire forever. 4 Those who died in grief will rise in joy, those who were poor for the Lord's sake will be made rich, and those who were put to death for the Lord's sake will awake to life.[6] 5 The deer of Jacob will run with joy, the eagles of Israel will fly with gladness, and all the people will glorify the Lord forever.
26So keep all the law of the Lord, my children, for there is hope for all who hold fast to his ways. 2 He said to them: Today I die before your eyes, a hundred and nineteen years old. 3 Do not bury me in expensive clothing or cut my body open, for that is what they do for kings. Carry me up to Hebron with you. 4 When Judah had said these things, he died, and his sons did everything he had commanded them, and they buried him in Hebron with his fathers.