Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs recounted in the canonical Bible. The "Testament" adds that Reuben spies Bilhah as she bathes in secret; and that when she later becomes drunk, Reuben rapes her. That trope derives from a reading of Genesis 49:4, "wanton as water", as "wanton "in" water", taken from the Book of Jubilees. This theme is also in 2 Samuel 11:2's account of David and Bathsheba. The "Testament" portrays women as the cause of the downfall of the Watcher, and of man in general (excepting Bilhah, in accordance with "Jubilees"). Joseph is on the other hand portrayed as the ideal, for his resistance against
The Wife of His Youth The Wife of His Youth "The Wife of His Youth" is a short story by American author Charles W. Chesnutt, first published in July 1898. It later served as the title story of the collection "The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line". That book was first published in 1899, the same year Chesnutt published his short story collection "The Conjure Woman". "The Wife of His Youth" features an upwardly mobile, light-skinned mulatto man, a respected member of the Blue Veins Society in a Midwestern city. He is preparing to marry another light-skinned mulatto woman when a