2.
I confess now my sin, my children, that oftentimes I wished to kill him, because I hated him to the death, and there were in no wise in me bowels of mercy towards him. Moreover, I hated him yet more because of his dreams; and I would have devoured him out of the land of the living, even as a calf devoureth the grass from the earth. Therefore I and Judah sold him to the Ishmaelites for thirty 1 pieces of gold, and ten of them we hid, and showed the twenty to our brethren: and so through my covetousness I was fully bent on his destruction. And the God of my fathers delivered him from my hands, that I should not work iniquity in Israel.
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The narrative of Genesis (xxxvii. 28) gives twenty pieces of silver; the LXX. twenty pieces of gold, with which latter agrees Josephus' mnon eikosin (Antiq., ii. 3. 3). [It is worthy of note that Judas took a meaner price for the "Son of Joseph."] ↩