Two years after the death of Joseph, Reuben fell sick. Feeling that his
end was nigh, he called together his sons, his grandsons, and his
brethren, to give them his last admonitions from out of the fulness of
his experience. He spake: "Hear, my brethren, and do ye, my children,
give ear unto Reuben your father in the commands that I enjoin upon
you. And, behold, I adjure you this day by the God of heaven that ye
walk not in the follies of youth and the fornications to which I was
addicted, and wherewith I defiled the bed of my father Jacob. For I
tell you now that for seven months the Lord afflicted my loins with a
terrible plague, and if my father Jacob had not interceded for me, the
Lord had swept me away. I was twenty years of age when I did what was
evil before the Lord, and for seven months I was sick unto death. Then
I did penance for seven years in the innermost depths of my soul. Wine
and strong drink I drank not, the flesh of animals passed not my lips,
dainties I tasted not, because I mourned over my sins, for they were
great."
He admonished those gathered around him to beware of the seven tempter
spirits, which are the spirit of fornication, gluttony, strife, love of
admiration, arrogance, falsehood, and injustice. He cautioned them
especially against unchastity, saying: "Pay no heed to the glances of a
woman, and remain not alone with a married woman, and do not occupy
yourselves with the affairs of women. Had I not seen Bilhah bathe in a
secluded spot, I had not fallen into the great sin I committed, for
after my thoughts had once grasped the nakedness of woman, I could not
sleep until I had accomplished the abominable deed. For when our father
Jacob went to his father Isaac, while we sojourned in Eder, not far
from Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem, Bilhah was drunken with wine, and
she lay asleep, uncovered, in her bedchamber, and I entered in and saw
her nakedness and committed the sin, and I went out again, leaving her
asleep. But an angel of God revealed my impious act to my father Jacob
at once. He came back and mourned over me, and never again did he
approach Bilhah. Unto the very last day of his life, I had not the
assurance to look my father in the face or to speak to my brethren
regarding my disgrace, and even now my conscience tortures me on
account of my sin. Nevertheless my father spake words of comfort to me,
and prayed to God in my behalf, that the wrath of the Lord might depart
from me, as He showed me."
Reuben admonished his children impressively to join themselves to Levi,
"because he will know the law of the Lord," he said, "and he will give
ordinances for judgment, and bring sacrifices for all Israel, until the
consummation of the times, as the anointed high priest of whom the Lord
spake."
After announcing his last will to his sons, Reuben departed this life
at the age of one hundred and twenty-five years. His body was laid in a
coffin until his sons bore it away from Egypt, and carried it up to
Hebron, where they buried it in the Double Cave.[7]