Testament of Judah

Chapter 12

  1. 1 And after these things, while Tamar was a widow, she heard after two years that I was going up
  2. 2 to shear my sheep, and adorned herself in bridal array, and sat in the city Enaim by the gate. For it was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days
  3. 3 by the gate. Therefore being drunk with wine, I did not recognize her; and her beauty deceived
  4. 4 me, through the fashion of her adorning. And I turned aside to her, and said: Let me go in unto thee. And she said: What wilt thou give me? And I gave her my staff, and my girdle, and the
  5. 5 diadem of my kingdom in pledge. And I went in unto her, and she conceived. And not knowing
  6. 6 what I had done, I wished to slay her; but she privily sent my pledges, and put me to shame. And when I called her, I heard also the secret words which I spoke when lying with her in my drunkenness;
  7. 7 and I could not slay her, because it was from the Lord. For I said, Lest haply she did it in
  8. 8 subtlety, having received the pledge from another woman. But I came not again near her while
  9. 9 I lived, because I had done this abomination in all Israel. Moreover, they who were in the city said there was no harlot in the gate, because she came from another place, and sat for a while in the
  10. 10 gate. And I thought that no one knew that I had gone in to her. And after this we came into
  11. 12 Egypt to Joseph, because of the famine. And I was forty and six years old, and seventy and three years lived I in Egypt.