YOSĔPH 7 (Joseph 7)

1 But her heart was still inclined to evil and she turned over in her mind how she might entrap me. Shortly she was sighing deeply and depressed, even though she was not sick.

2 When her husband saw her, he said to her, Why are you so downcast? She responded to him, I am suffering from a pain in my heart, and groans of my spirit have taken hold of me.

3 He tried to cure her with words. Then she seized the occasion and came running in to me, while her husband was still outside, and said to me, I shall hang myself, or hurl myself over the cliff if you will not lie with me.

4 Since I perceived that the spirit of Beliar was troubling her, I prayed to 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄, but I said to her:

5 Why, wretched woman, are you troubled and disturbed, blinded by sin? Remember that if you kill yourself, Astetha, your husband’s concubine, who is filled with envy of you, will beat your children; thus you will destroy your memory from the earth.

6 And she said, See, then, you do love me. That is enough. Only keep contending for my life and that of my children, and I shall cling to my expectation of gaining my desire.

7 She did not understand that I spoke in this way for my master’s sake and not for hers.

8 For if anyone is subjected to the passion of desire and is enslaved by it, as she was, even when he hears something good, he receives it with a view to aid his wicked desire.