Then Potipherah came with his wife, and did him homage. Joseph entered the hall, and the doors were shut, and Asenath beheld him, and she was troubled at what she had said of him, and thought, “This is the sun come from heaven; I knew not before that Joseph was divine. What father hath begotten so much beauty, or what mother borne so much light?”
Then Joseph said, “Who was that woman that was here, but hath gone?” for Asenath had hastened to her chamber.
And Potipherah said, “My lord, my daughter is a maiden, and very modest; she hath, till this day, seen no man save myself. If it please thee, she shall come and salute thee.”
Then Joseph said, “If thy daughter be a maiden, I will treat her as a sister.”
They brought her into his presence, and Potipherah said to her, “Salute thy brother, who hateth women as thou hatest men.”
And Asenath said, “Hail, blessed of God, who giveth life to all!”
Then Potipherah bade his daughter kiss Joseph, but when she approached him, he thrust forth his hand and said, “It becomes not the man worshipping the living God to kiss an outlandish woman whose lips kiss dumb idols.”
Asenath hearing these words, fell into great grief and wept. Joseph had compassion on her, and laid his hand on her head and blessed her, and Asenath was glad because of his benediction. But she went to her couch in the tower, and was ill with fear and pain, and she turned with penitence from her idols, and renounced them, and cast them out of her window.
Joseph ate and drank, and went his way, promising to return in eight days. Then Asenath put on a black robe, and closed her door and prayed, and cast her food to the dogs, and laid her head on the pavement, and wept seven days.
Then an angel visited her, and gave her honey gathered from the roses of paradise; and the honey was so sweet, that when she had tasted it she could not doubt whence it had come, and she felt herself enlightened by the true God; and the angel signed the honey with the cross, and the trace of his finger was blood. Along with faith and hope, charity enlightened her heart, and she besought of the angel to give of this honey to the seven maidens who attended on her; and when they obtained this favor, they all became like their mistress, servants of the Most High. Then the angel bade her lay aside her tears and black garment, and rejoice, for her prayer was heard.
At that moment one of the servants of Potipherah entered, saying, “Behold, Joseph, the Strength of God, approaches; go ye out to meet him?”
Now when Joseph had alighted down from his chariot, he came into the hall; and when he knew that Asenath had cast away her idols, he rejoiced greatly, and he sought her in marriage of Potipherah, and the Priest of On made a great supper, and gave his daughter to Joseph, and he called Joseph the lord of lords, and Asenath he called the daughter of the Most High.432
XXIX
THE TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS
The “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs” is one of the seventy-two apocryphal books of the Old Testament which were at one time in circulation, and, according to Epiphanius, it formed one of the twenty-two canonical books sent by the Jews to Ptolemy, king of Egypt.433
It was a work of Jewish origin, which has been tampered with and interpolated by Christian copyists. S. Augustine numbers it with the Apocrypha; he says, “There are the apocryphal books of the Old Testament: the works falsely attributed to Enoch, the Patriarchs, the Discourse of Joseph, the Assumption of Moses, the pseudographia of Abraham, Eldad and Medad, Elias the prophet, the prophet Zephaniah, Zechariah, Baruch, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Daniel.”
Curiously enough, the Testament of the Patriarchs contains a large number of alleged quotations from the book of Enoch, which are not, however, to be found in that book as we now have it.
This Testament was read by the Jews at the time of Christ’s coming, and S. Paul seems to have been acquainted with it, for he quotes it, “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;”434 and again he quotes the Testament of Levi, “The wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.”435 S. Jerome remarks on this, “The Apostle Paul quoted from the hidden prophets and from those books which are called Apocrypha,” and he adds, “That he did so in several other places is very evident.”436 And Origen says, “It is evident that many examples were quoted and inserted in the New Testament by the Apostles and the Evangelists from those Scriptures which we do not read as canonical, but these passages are found in the apocryphal books, and it is evident that these passages were extracted from them;” and he gives the reason why that was lawful to the Apostles which is not lawful to us.
He says, “It may have been, that the Apostles and Evangelists, filled with the Holy Ghost, may have known what was to be taken from these writings and what was to be rejected; but for us to presume to do such a thing would be full of danger, not having the Spirit in the same measure to guide us.”437
Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, translated the Testament of the twelve Patriarchs into Latin, in 1242, according to Matthew Paris. “Also in this time, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, a man most skilled in Latin and Greek, translated accurately the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs from the Greek into Latin; which for many years had been unknown and concealed, through the jealousy of the Jews, because of the prophecies concerning our Saviour therein contained. But the Greeks, the most indefatigable investigators of all writings, being the first who learnt about this, translated it from Hebrew into Greek, and kept it to themselves until our own time. For in the time of S. Jerome, or of any other holy interpreter, it could not in any way whatever come to the knowledge of the Christians, on account of the scheming malice of the Jews. Therefore the above-named Bishop, assisted by Master Nicholas, a Greek, and clerk to the Abbey of S. Albans, translated clearly, evidently, and word for word, into Latin, that glorious treatise, to the strengthening of the Christian faith, and to the greater confusion of the Jews.”438
The Testaments were published by Grabe, at Oxford, in 1698, and were republished by Fabricius in his “Codex Pseudepigraphus Vet. Testamenti,” at Hamburg, in 1722.439
XXX
JOB
Job was the great grandson of Esau. He was the son of Amos the son of Zara, the son of Esau, and he had to wife Rahma, daughter of Ephraim, son of Joseph. Ephraim left two sons, who were prophets after him; but amongst the children of Esau there was no prophet, saving Job.
Job was more patient than any other prophet; therefore it is said of him in the Koran, “Certainly we have found this excellent servant patient.”440
The Rabbis say that Job, Jethro, and Balaam were King Pharaoh’s three councillors, and they were also his chief magicians. They, by their enchantments, drew a line round the land of Egypt, so that no slave could escape out of it; for when he came to the line, he was held back and could not overleap it. But when the Israelites broke away and disregarded the enchanted line, Job, Jethro, and Balaam gave up their witchcrafts, and turned to the service of the living God.441
Job lived in Bashan, which lies between Damascus and Ramla, and there he reigned as a prince. Job had five hundred yoke of oxen, and to every yoke there was a she-ass to carry the instruments of husbandry. He had also a thousand flocks of sheep, and a thousand sheep in each flock. He had ten children, seven sons and three daughters; all were grown up.442
In the “Testament of Job,”443 we read that this great man, illumined by the Divine light, comprehended that the idols which his people adored were no gods, and that there was but one only true God, the Creator and Preserver of all things. There was near his house an idol which attracted great worship. He prayed the Lord to show him whether this idol were a demon or not; and he promised, in that case, to destroy it and purify the place; and this he was able to do, being a sovereign.
God sent him an angel, who illumined him, and strengthened him in his resolution. So he destroyed the idol, and abolished its worship. But this act drew upon him the wrath of Satan. The angel had foreseen the disasters which would befall Job if he resolved to strive against the Evil One, and he had warned Job what to expect; but Job answered that, being convinced of the truth, he was ready to suffer for it.
Satan presented himself at the door of Job’s house. He had taken upon him the form of a pilgrim, and he said to the portress, “I desire to see the faithful servant of the Most High.”
Now Job, who had received the gift of prophecy, knew that this was the Evil One, and he refused to see him, saying to the gate-keeper when she brought the message, “Tell him that I am occupied, and that I cannot receive him.”
Satan retired, but he returned soon after, disguised as a beggar, and he said to the portress, “Go and ask Job to give me a morsel of bread.”
“Tell him,” replied Job, “that I will not give him of the bread I eat, because I will not have any thing in common with him. But offer him this burnt crust, that he may not say I sent him empty away.”
The servant, not venturing to give the burnt crust, because she was not aware who the beggar was, offered him some good bread. But Satan, who knew what Job had commanded, thrust it away, saying, “Begone, bad servant, and bring me the bread you were told to give me.”
The portress replied: “You say well, I am a bad servant, for I have not done that which I was commanded to do. Here is the crust my master ordered me to give you. He will not have any thing in common with you; no! not even the bread he eats; but he sends you this, that it may not be said of him that he dismissed thee empty from his door without an alms.”
Satan took the charred crust, and bade the servant tell Job that he would soon render to him such measure as he had dealt to him.444
Then Satan ascended to God, and desired permission to afflict and prove Job. And when leave was given him, he descended to earth, and breathed such a hot blast, that all the cattle, and sheep, and servants of Job were burnt up. Then Satan took the form of a slave, and ran and told the prophet. Job answered, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Then Satan went and shook the earth under the house where the sons and daughters of Job were assembled, and the house fell and destroyed them all.
Satan immediately hastened in the disguise of a servant to Job, and told him what had taken place. He said, “O Job! God has shaken down the house about your children, and they are dead. Had you seen their bleeding faces and broken limbs, and their brains bespattering the stones, and had heard their piercing cries, you would have been heart-broken.”
Job wept, and lifted his eyes to God; and he knew who addressed him, and he said, “Satan! it is thou who comest to tempt me and to cast doubt into my heart, and mistrust in the wisdom and goodness of God; get thee hence.”
Satan then blew a hot breath up the nose of Job, and poisoned all his blood. His body became scarlet next day, and the day after was covered with ulcers from head to foot; there was no whole place in him, except the head, the tongue, the eyes, and the heart; for over these portions God had not given Satan power.
All Job’s friends deserted him and fled; Rahma,445 his wife, alone remained, and she spent on him the rest of his possessions, but he was not cured of his disease. And this was why all his possessions went – Satan stole them away; and thus in a short time he was reduced to penury, and Rahma went from house to house begging alms for his support.
Satan saw that he could not triumph so long as the wife remained with her husband; she was a comfort and joy to him, and he cared not for possessions, or children, or health, so long as his wife was at his side; therefore, he sought occasion to separate them. One day, as Rahma was carrying food to Job, Satan presented himself before her in the form of an old man, and asked her, “O Rahma! art thou not the daughter of Ephraim, the son of Joseph?” She replied, “I am.”
Then said the Evil Angel, “In what condition do I see thee?” She answered, “My husband Job has fallen into poverty, and I serve him.”
He said, “Do not serve him, for when thou touchest him, the poison of his disease passes into thy veins.”
She replied, “He is my husband, and I must attend on him as long as I live, in health or sickness.”
Then Satan retired, despairing of seducing her from her duty. Rahma told Job all that had been said to her.
The prophet said, “O woman! he whom you have seen is Satan, and he desired to separate us. Do not speak to him again when he addresses you.”
Some time after, the Evil One presented himself before the faithful wife under the form of a beautiful youth; and said to her, “What woman art thou, who art so radiant in beauty?” She answered, “I am the wife of a poor man, named Job.”
He said, “O woman! what hast thou, with thy wondrous beauty, to do with a poor sick husband? Go, be divorced from thy husband, and marry me. I have great possessions, and I will treat thee as a queen.”
She answered, “I am the wife of a prophet; I desire nothing higher.”
Then Satan withdrew, despairing of seducing her from her duty. Rahma told Job all that had been said to her.
Job said, “O woman! did I not tell thee to speak with him no more; why hast thou disobeyed my voice? That was Satan, and he sought to separate us. Do not speak to him again when he addresses thee.”
Some time after, the Evil One presented himself before the faithful wife, under the form of an angel; and said to her, “O woman, daughter of a prophet! I am an angel sent from God with a message to thee.”
She said, “What message?”
He said, “Behold the Most High is wroth with Job, for he renders no thanks for all the good things He gave to him; therefore hath the Lord rejected him from being a prophet, and he shall fall from worse to worse, till he is cast into the flames of hell; we, the angels of God, curse him, and do thou, daughter of a prophet, avoid him, lest thou come into the same condemnation.”
When Rahma heard these words, she wept, and said, “After so many afflictions, shall the name of Job be taken from the number of the prophets? And after so many sufferings shall he perish everlastingly?”
Then she went to Job and told him all that had been said to her.
Job was greatly angered when she told him the tenor of the words, and he cried out, “Have I not warned thee these two times not to speak with him, who is the author of my affliction? Wait till I am well, and I will give thee a hundred strokes with a rod.”446
But the story is told differently by others. It is said that the third time Satan appeared as a baker, and Rahma wanted bread, but had nought to pay. Then said the pretended baker, “Thou hast locks of very beautiful hair; cut off thy hair and give it me, and thou shalt take the largest of my loaves.”
Then she cut off three locks and gave them to him.
And when Job saw that she had done this, he was filled with fury, and he swore that when he was well he would beat her for having cut off her hair.447
Thus Satan triumphed in making Job to sin by swearing, and threatening to ill-treat a true and good woman.
Next the Evil One went as an angel, and announced to all the people of the land that he came from God to declare to them that Job was no more reckoned among the prophets; and that they were not to trust his words and believe his doctrine, but were to return to the worship of those gods he had blasphemed and cast out.
Soon after, Job heard his three friends, Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar, converse together, and repeat what had been told them by Satan; and the thought that he was supposed to be rejected by God from among His prophets, was so distressing to him, that he cried out, “Truly, O God! evil has befallen me; but Thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy.”448 That is, the words of men are cruel, but Thou, O God, wilt deliver me out of all my evils.
Job was sick for seven years, and all that while his wife ministered to him.
But the mediæval commentators draw a very different picture of this wife, relying on the words of Scripture which make her tempt Job to “curse God and die.” They say that her tongue was one of the plagues of Job. That he bore patiently the loss of his cattle, of his children, and of his health, was indeed wonderful; but that he also endured the nagging of his wife with equanimity, – that was the most wonderful of all.
Then God looked on Job and had compassion upon him, and he said to him, “Strike the earth with thy foot.”449 Job stamped, and from the dung-heap on which he had been seated a clear stream of water issued, the sweetest that there is, and the water continued to flow. Then God said to Job, “Wash in this water.”
Rahma, the wife of Job, poured the water upon his head and over his body, and he washed himself. All the sores that were on his flesh disappeared, and he was healed; there was not a scar left, and he appeared more beautiful than before he was afflicted.
Then God said to Job, “Drink of the water.”
Then all the worms that were in the inside of Job died, and he was quite whole. Now this took place in Bashan, and the fountain remains to this day, and is called Qarya-Aïyub, and the city near which it is, Aïrs-Aïyub. “I have seen the city of the fountain,” says the Persian translator of Tabari: “every person who goes there, affected by internal or external maladies, and washes and drinks of that water, is healed of his disease.”450
Then God said to Job, “Fulfil thy vow, and take in thine hand a bundle of rods.”451 But the rods God told him to take were light sticks; and he took a hundred of these, and bound them together and smote Rahma with them, and he did not hurt her. By this action of Job, the Mussulman doctors support their advice to those who have taken rash oaths to clear themselves by a subterfuge. Thus, if a man has sworn he will not enter his house again, he is recommended to allow himself to be bound hand and foot and be carried into his home. Or, if he has sworn to recite the whole Koran, it will be sufficient for him to say the word “Koran,” and listen to the imaum reading before the assembly.
Then God restored to Job double all that he had lost; and Job lived, after he was recovered of his disease, twenty years, and he died at the age of ninety-three.
The worms which had devoured the body of the prophet, God turned into silk-worms; and the flies which had bitten him and tormented his sores, converted He into honey-bees; and before this there were neither silk-worms nor honey-bees on the earth. Also the rain and the snow which fell within his possessions, were grains of gold and pearl.
Isidore of Seville places the fountain which cured Job in Idumæa. He says, it is clear during three months of the year, troubled during the next three, then for three months it is green, and for the last three, it is red.
In the “Testament of Job,” we read some details concerning his death, written by his brother Nahor.
After three days of sickness, Job, lying on his bed, saw the angels come to receive his soul. After having divided his substance between his seven sons (for, after his troubles, he became the father of seven sons and three daughters), he gave his daughters three mantles of inestimable price, which he had received from heaven. To the eldest, Hemera (Jemima), he gave his harp; to the second, Cassia (Keziah), he handed his censer; to the third, Keren-happuch, he remitted his tamborine: and as he sang his last hymn to the Most High on his death-bed, Hemera and Keren-happuch accompanied him with harp and timbrel, and Cassia cast up fumes of sweet incense. Thus they greeted the messengers of heaven who came for the soul of Job.
XXXI
JETHRO
As has already been related, Jethro formed one of the council of Pharaoh till he found that his incantations had no effect on the Israelites. He escaped from Egypt before Job; for he had found in the palace of the king the staff of Joseph which had been cut from the Tree of Life, and therewith he hied him into the land of Midian, along with his daughter Zipporah.
According to Mussulman tradition, Jethro, whom the Arabs call Schohair or Schohaib, was a great prophet; and he was sent by God to the Midianites to call them to repentance and the rejection of polytheism. Jethro was old and nearly blind. He preached to the people and exhorted them with many words and for a long season, but all his words were in vain; the Midianites would not be converted, and at length they openly accused him of being a false prophet, and denied that God had sent him.
Therefore God gave over this nation to destruction. He sent a fiery breath upon the land, and the people could not bear the great heat, and retired into the fields, where there was shadow; for God sent a cloud to hide the face of the sun, and it cast a blot of shade upon the fields. But there were old men and women and little children, and the sick who could not leave the city and take refuge in the shade.
Slowly the cloud came down from heaven, like the lid of a saucepan, and covered all the Midianites that were in the field, and the cloud was of fire, and they fried “as fish fry in an oven.” Then the angel Gabriel gave a great shout, and all that were in the city, saving Jethro and his family, died of fright when they heard his cry.
Then Jethro lived in the land of Midian till Moses came to him out of Egypt.452