Ephraim: The Nisibene Hymns
Nisibene Hymn 5: Chastened by My Helpers
In your grace let the news of your salvation be heard:
for our hearing has been made a thoroughfare,
and our minds have been trodden down by messages of terror.
Refrain: Praises to your victory! Glory to your dominion!
Comfort with some gain, though it is small and scanty,
those who have reaped a harvest of harm from their labor:
at a time of profit they have gained only loss.
It is plain that he has stood
portioning out wrath upon the earth:
loss and profit he divided in anger.
There are some he has suddenly cast down,
and some he has suddenly puffed up.
To teach us that he can chasten in every way,
when he saw that the persecutors
were terrible in my eyes,
he laid me out before my children,
and they, my beloved ones, chastened me.
See, he taught me to fear
himself, and not man:
for when there was no one to strike us,
his wrath suddenly gave the command,
and every man stretched himself out and chastened himself.
In the same way that Babylonian,
who struck down all kings,
when he was confident and hoped that there was no one to strike him,
God made him strike himself down
by his own hands.
His majesty and his mind
suddenly went mad together:
he tore and threw off his clothes;
he went out and wandered in the desert;
he drove himself out first, and then his servants drove him out.
He showed all the kings
whom he had led captive and brought low
that he could not have overcome them by his own power:
the power that struck him down
was the power that punished them.
I have stood and borne, my Lord,
the blows of my deliverers.
You are able in your grace
to make me profit by those who strike me;
you are able in your justice to punish me by my helpers.
On the day the army dared
to come up against Samaria,
they threw away their plenty and their pleasure,
their treasures and their possessions;
they abandoned them and fled.
He crowned her by her persecutors.
My beloved ones crowned me,
and my deliverers healed me.
Through the guilt of my people
my helpers chastened me.
Give me drink from your vines, from the cup of comfort!
Preserve the grain and the vine, my Lord, by your grace!
Let the farmer be cheered by the vine of the grape picker;
let the vinedresser be glad in the grain of the farmer!
They are joined each to each,
the grain and the grape.
In the field wine can cheer the reapers;
in the vineyard bread strengthens the vinedressers in turn.
These two things have power
to comfort my troubles;
the Trinity has power
to comfort far more.
I will praise the Trinity, because all at once
I was delivered through grace.
But the man whose life
has been preserved through grace,
if he goes off to grumble
over the loss of his goods,
is ungrateful for the grace
of the One who took pity on him.
Of his own will he destroys
one thing in place of another.
He destroys the possession and spares the possessor;
he destroys our plants instead of our lives.
Let us be afraid to grumble,
in case his own wrath is roused,
and he spares the possessions
and strikes the possessor;
so that we may learn in the end
his mercy in the beginning.
Let us learn against whom
it is right for us to grumble.
Learn to grumble, not against the One who chastens,
but against your own will,
which made you sin, so that you were punished.
Let us put away grumbling
and turn to prayer.
For if the possessor dies,
his possessions also cease for him;
but while he lives, he tries to recover his losses.
Let comforts be multiplied,
in mercy to my people.
Let what is left and remains
comfort us in the middle of wrath;
and in what remains make us forget
the mourning of our devastation!
Heal and increase, my Lord,
the fruits your wrath has left!
They seem to me like sick people
who have survived a plague.
In these weak ones make me forget
the suffering of the many!
While I speak, my Lord, I remember
that this too is the month
when the blossom withered
and dropped off in blight.
May it return to health, to be a comfort!
For these escaped the plague
that carried off their brothers.
The vines, though they have no voice, wept
when before their eyes a multitude was cut down and felled
of trees that they loved.
See, the earth misses
the company of plants!
The roots weep for the farmers
and make them weep.
Their beauty had spread and given shade,
and it was torn away in one hour.
The axe came near and struck,
and it struck the farmer.
The blow was on the trees,
and it made the farmer suffer:
for every axe that struck,
he bore the pain of it.