Testament - Assumption of Moses

Testament of Moses

Chapter One

The testament of Moses, the words he commanded in the one hundred and twentieth year of his life, when the people had gone out through the exodus and were near the Jordan, opposite the land that was to be given to their fathers.

Moses called Joshua son of Nun, a man approved before the Lord, so that he might serve the people and the Tent of the Witness, with all its sacred things, and lead the people into the land promised by oath and covenant.

He said to Joshua: Be strong and courageous. Do with all your strength what has been commanded, so that you may be found blameless before God. Thus says the Lord of the world.

He created the world for the sake of His people, yet He did not fully reveal this purpose from the foundation of the world, so that the nations might be exposed and judged by their own arguments.

He designed and prepared me before the foundation of the world, that I should be mediator of His covenant. Now the years of my life are fulfilled, and I am going to sleep with my fathers before all the people.

Receive this writing, so that you may know how to preserve the books I will give you. Arrange them, anoint them with cedar oil, and place them in earthen vessels in the place prepared from the beginning of creation, where His name is to be called upon until the day of repentance, when the Lord visits them at the completion of the end of days.

Chapter Two

Now through you they will enter the land which He determined and promised to give to their fathers. You shall bless them, assign to each his inheritance, confirm them in their portion, establish the kingdom among them, and appoint judges according to the good pleasure of their Lord, in judgment and righteousness.

After they enter the land, they will be ruled first by leaders and then by kings. In time the tribes will divide. The Tent of the Witness will be transferred, and the God of heaven will establish the court of His Tent and the tower of His sanctuary.

Two holy tribes will remain established there, while the ten tribes will make kingdoms for themselves according to their own ordinances.

They will offer sacrifices, build walls, and be protected for a time, yet some will transgress the covenant of the Lord and profane the oath He made with them. They will sacrifice their sons to strange gods, set up idols in the sanctuary, and worship them.

In the house of the Lord they will work impiety. They will engrave the forms of beasts and fill the place with many abominations.

Chapter Three

In those days a king from the east will come against them. His cavalry will cover their land. He will burn their city and the holy temple of the Lord with fire, carry away the holy vessels, and cast the people out.

He will take them into the land of his birth. The two tribes will be carried away, and they will call to the ten tribes. They will move like a lioness on dusty plains, hungry and thirsty.

They will cry aloud: Righteous and holy is the Lord. Because you sinned, we also have been carried away with you, together with our children.

When the ten tribes hear the reproach of the two tribes, they will mourn and say: What have we done to you, brothers? Has not this trouble come on the whole house of Israel?

All the tribes will mourn and cry toward heaven: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, remember Your covenant which You made with them, and the oath You swore by Yourself, that their seed should not fail from the land You gave them.

Then they will remember me, each tribe speaking to another and each man to his neighbor: Is this not what Moses declared to us in prophecy? He suffered many things in Egypt, at the Sea, and in the wilderness forty years. He called heaven and earth to witness against us, that we should not transgress the commandments in which he served as mediator for us.

Behold, these things have come upon us after his death, just as he declared. We have been carried captive into the land of the east. They will remain in bondage there for about seventy and seven years.

Chapter Four

Then one who is over them will enter and spread out his hands. He will kneel on his knees and pray on their behalf, saying: Lord of all, King upon the high throne, ruler of the world, You willed that this people should be Your chosen people, and that You should be called their God according to the covenant You made with their fathers.

Yet they have gone into captivity in another land, with their wives and their children, around the gates of foreign peoples, where there is great emptiness. Look on them and have compassion, O Lord of heaven.

Then God will remember them because of the covenant He made with their fathers, and He will reveal His compassion in those times. He will put it into the mind of a king to show them mercy, and the king will send them back to their land and country.

Some parts of the tribes will go up and come to their appointed place. They will again surround the place with walls. The two tribes will continue in their prescribed faith, grieving and lamenting because they cannot offer sacrifices to the Lord of their fathers.

The ten tribes will increase and multiply among the nations during the time of their captivity.

Chapter Five

When the times of correction draw near, and vengeance rises through kings who share in their guilt and punish them, the people themselves will also be divided concerning the truth.

For it has been said: They will turn aside from righteousness and approach iniquity. They will defile with pollutions the house of their worship, and they will go after strange gods.

They will not follow the truth of God. Some will pollute the altar with gifts offered to the Lord by men who are not priests, but slaves and sons of slaves.

Many in those times will show favor to desirable persons, receive gifts, and pervert judgment. Because of this, the city and the borders of their dwelling will be filled with lawless deeds and injustices.

Those who wickedly depart from the Lord will sit as judges, ready to judge for money according to each person’s wish.

Chapter Six

Then kings will arise among them, ruling over them and calling themselves priests of the Most High God. They will work iniquity in the holy place.

An insolent king will succeed them. He will not be from the priestly race. He will be bold and shameless, and he will judge them as they deserve.

He will cut off their leaders with the sword and destroy them in hidden places, so that no one knows where their bodies are. He will slay old and young, and he will not spare.

The fear of him will be bitter in their land. He will execute judgments against them as the Egyptians did, for thirty and four years, and he will punish them.

He will beget children, and those who succeed him will rule for shorter times. Then companies and a powerful king from the west will come into their parts. He will conquer them, take them captive, burn part of their temple with fire, and crucify some around their city.

Chapter Seven

When this has been done, the times will be brought near their end. [Text damaged]

In those days destructive and impious men will rule, saying that they are righteous. They will stir up the poison of their minds. They will be treacherous, self-pleasing, disguising themselves in all their affairs, lovers of banquets at every hour of the day.

They will be gluttons and devourers of the goods of the poor, claiming to act for justice while destroying them. They will be complainers, deceitful, hidden so that they may not be recognized, impious, filled with lawlessness and iniquity from sunrise to sunset.

They will say: We will feast and live in luxury. We will eat and drink, and we will consider ourselves princes.

Though their hands and minds touch unclean things, their mouths will speak great things. They will say: Do not touch me, lest you pollute me in the place where I stand. [Text damaged]

Chapter Eight

Then a second visitation and wrath will come upon them, such as has not come upon them from the beginning until that time. He will stir up against them the king of the kings of the earth, one who rules with great power.

He will crucify those who confess their circumcision, and those who conceal it he will torture and hand over to be bound and led into prison.

Their wives will be given over among the nations, and their young sons will be treated by physicians so that the sign of circumcision may be undone.

Others among them will be punished by tortures, fire, and sword. They will be forced to carry idols publicly, polluted as those idols are.

Those who torture them will force them to enter their inner sanctuary. With goads they will compel them to speak blasphemies with insolence against the word, against the laws, and against what they had above the altar.

Chapter Nine

Then in that day a man from the tribe of Levi will arise, whose name is Taxo. He will have seven sons, and he will exhort them, saying:

Observe, my sons. A second ruthless and unclean visitation has come upon the people, a punishment without mercy and greater than the first.

What nation, region, or people among those who act impiously toward the Lord, though they have done many abominations, has suffered calamities as great as those that have come upon us?

Now therefore, my sons, hear me. Observe and know that our fathers and their fathers did not test God by transgressing His commands. You know that this is our strength, and so we will do this:

Let us fast for three days. On the fourth day let us go into a cave in the field, and let us die rather than transgress the commands of the Lord of Lords, the God of our fathers.

For if we do this and die, our blood will be avenged before the Lord.

Chapter Ten

Then His kingdom will appear throughout all His creation.

Then the Adversary will be no more, and sorrow will depart with him.

Then the hands of the appointed messenger, the chief one, will be filled, and he will at once avenge them against their enemies.

For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne. He will go out from His holy dwelling with indignation and wrath on account of His sons.

The earth will tremble. It will be shaken to its borders. The high mountains will be brought low, and the hills will shake and fall.

The horns of the sun will be broken, and it will turn into darkness. The moon will not give its light, and it will be turned wholly into blood. The circle of the stars will be disturbed.

The sea will withdraw into the abyss. The fountains of waters will fail, and the rivers will dry up.

For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone. He will appear to punish the nations, and He will destroy all their idols.

Then you, Israel, will be blessed. You will rise upon the necks and wings of the eagle, and they will come to an end.

God will exalt you. He will cause you to approach the heaven of the stars, to the place of their dwelling.

From on high you will look and see your enemies in Gehenna. You will recognize them and rejoice, and you will give thanks and confess your Creator.

And you, Joshua son of Nun, keep these words and this book. From my death [word uncertain: possibly assumption] until His appearing, the course of the times will run to its completion. I shall go to sleep with my fathers.

Therefore, Joshua son of Nun, be strong and courageous, for God has chosen you to serve in the same covenant.

Chapter Eleven

When Joshua heard the words of Moses, all that had been written in his writing and all that he had spoken before, he tore his garments and fell at the feet of Moses. Moses comforted him and wept with him.

Joshua answered him and said: Why do you comfort me, my lord Moses? How can I be comforted concerning the bitter word that has come from your mouth, full of tears and lamentation, that you are departing from this people?

What place will receive you? What sign will mark your grave? Who will dare move your body from place to place as the body of an ordinary man?

All people, when they die, have graves on earth according to their age. But your grave is from the rising of the sun to its setting, from the south to the borders of the north. The whole world is your grave.

My lord, you are departing. Who will feed this people? Who will have compassion on them? Who will guide them on the way? Who will pray for them without failing even one day, so that I may lead them into the land of their fathers?

How shall I care for this people like a father for his only son, or like a mistress for her daughter, a virgin being prepared to be given to the husband she will honor, while she guards her body from the sun and keeps her feet from being unshod on the ground?

How shall I provide them food and drink according to the desire of their will? They are six hundred thousand men, multiplied to this number through your prayers, my lord Moses.

What wisdom or understanding do I have, that I should judge or answer in the house of the Lord?

When the kings of the Amorites hear that we are coming against them, and believe that the holy spirit worthy of the Lord is no longer among us, the manifold and incomprehensible one, lord of the word, faithful in all things, God’s chief prophet in all the earth, the most perfect teacher in the world, they will say: Let us go against them.

If this people has ever acted impiously against their Lord, they now have no advocate to offer prayers for them to the Lord like Moses, the great messenger, who every hour, day and night, fixed his knees to the earth, praying and looking for help from Him who rules the whole world with compassion and righteousness, reminding Him of the covenant of the fathers and appeasing the Lord by the oath.

They will say: He is not with them. Let us go and destroy them from the face of the earth.

What then will become of this people, my lord Moses?

Chapter Twelve

When Joshua had finished these words, he again cast himself at the feet of Moses. Moses took his hand, raised him, seated him before him, and answered:

Joshua, do not despise yourself. Set your mind at rest and hear my words.

God created all the nations that are on the earth, and He also created us. From the beginning of the creation of the earth to the end of the age, He has foreseen them and us. Nothing has been neglected by Him, even to the least thing. He has foreseen all things and caused all things to come forth.

All things that will be on this earth the Lord has foreseen. Behold, they are brought forward into the light. [Line damaged]

The Lord appointed me on their behalf to pray for their sins and to make intercession for them. This did not come to me because of any virtue or strength of mine, but because of His good pleasure. His compassion and long-suffering have fallen to my lot.

I say to you, Joshua: it is not because of the righteousness of this people that you will root out the nations.

The lights of heaven and the foundations of the earth have been made and approved by God, and they are under the seal of His right hand.

Those who do and fulfill the commandments of God will increase and prosper. Those who sin and set aside the commandments will be without the blessings spoken of before, and they will be punished with many torments by the nations.

But to root them out completely and destroy them is not permitted. For God will go forth, He who has foreseen all things forever. His covenant has been established, and by the oath which [text breaks off].

[Fragment breaks here]

[The preserved text ends before the expected account of the death or assumption of Moses. The conclusion is missing.]