Nisibene Hymn 37: Death Weeps over Sheol’s Emptied Treasury

Death was weeping over Sheol when he saw that her treasury had been emptied. And he said: Who, then, has plundered your riches? Gehazi stole, and he was found out. I steal every day, but no theft has ever been charged against me. I am sent to kings in their sicknesses. Their guards are posted around them, and there are guards at their gate as well. Yet I snatch the souls of kings and go out again. [a]

All women who are barren grieve, but Sheol rejoices in her barrenness, and she is left desolate if ever she gives birth. The all-compelling Power forced her, that barren and cold womb, and she gave back what she held, though she was used to denying her debts. When the two babies troubled Rebekah, she asked for death. How great, then, was the pain of Sheol when strange labor pains struck her, and the dead were roused, broke out, and came forth from her body! [c]

Is this, perhaps, the saying I heard from Isaiah, though I despised it, when he rose up and said, “Who has heard such a thing as this, that the earth should be in labor in one day and bring forth a nation in one hour?” Is it this that has come to pass? Or is it still kept for us in the future? And if it is this, then it was an empty shadow when I thought I was a king. I did not know that what I was keeping was only something left in my care. [d]

I have heard two different sayings from this same Isaiah. He said that a virgin would conceive and give birth, and he said again that the earth would give birth. And see! The Virgin has given birth to him, and barren Sheol has given birth to him. Two wombs have been changed by him, against nature: the Virgin and Sheol, both of them. The Virgin he made glad in her giving birth, but Sheol he grieved and made sad in his resurrection. [e]

I saw Ezekiel in the valley, who gave life to the dead when he was asked, and I saw the bones lying in heaps, and they moved. There was a tumult of bones in Sheol, bone seeking its fellow and joint its mate. No one there asked, and no one was asked, whether those bones lived. Without anyone being asked, the voice of Jesus, the Master of all creatures, gave them life. [f]

Sheol grieved when she saw the grieving dead made to rejoice. She wept for Lazarus when he went out: “Go in peace, you dead man who lives, mourned by two houses of mourning.” There was lamenting for him inside and outside. His sisters wept for him when he came down into the grave to me, and I wept for him as he went out. At his death there was weeping among the living; so too in Sheol there is great mourning at his resurrection. [g]

Now I have tasted the taste of his sorrow, the sorrow of the man who weeps over the one he loves. If the dead are so dear to Sheol, how dear they must have been to their fathers! The limbs I cut off and carried away, see, are now torn away and carried off from me. If I suffer like this at the departure of one, the young man who was brought back to life, then blessed is he who had compassion on the widow! Through her only son he brought peace to her home, which had been left desolate. [h]

See, this suffering that I make people suffer over those they love gathers itself all together upon me in the end. For when the dead have left Sheol, there will be a resurrection for everyone, and for me alone, torment. Who, then, will bear all these things for me, when I see Sheol left alone? For this voice that has torn open the graves makes her desolate and sends out the dead who were inside her.

If anyone reads the Prophets, he hears there of righteous wars. But if anyone meditates on the story of Jesus, he learns of grace and tender mercy. And if anyone thinks of Jesus as a strange God, that is an insult to me. No other key, no strange one, could ever be fitted to the gate of Sheol. There is one key, the Creator’s: it is the one that has opened it, and it will open it at his coming. [i]

Who can join the bones together, except the Power that created them? What will put the shreds of the body back together, except the Maker’s hand? What will restore their forms, except the Creator’s finger? He who created, and turned, and destroyed is the one who can also renew and raise up. Another God cannot come in and restore creatures that are not his own.

But if he were another Power, I would be very glad that he is coming to me. He would come down into the bosom of Sheol and learn that One alone is God. Mortals who went astray and preached that there are many gods, see, are bound here for me in Sheol, and their gods have never grieved over them. I know one God, and I acknowledge his prophets and his apostles.