Ephraim: The Nisibene Hymns
Nisibene Hymn 62: Death Complains of Our Wailing
See, Death, the king of silence, complains, my brothers and sisters,
that we have filled his home with the wailing of hope cut off.
Refrain: Great praise to him who comes down to us here below,
who suffered and rose again, and in his body raises our bodies!
While we weep like madmen at the gates of Sheol,
listen to what Death says in reproach to us.
It shames me, says Death, that you have overcome me;
half of Sheol is not enough to hold your slain.
For alien corpses lie heaped together in Sheol;
there are two divisions there, the dead and the slain.
Where I should complain that you have wronged me, look, you are weeping.
You have burst the gate of Sheol and done me harm.
For you are like an infant who, while it is still crying,
laughs again; so you too do over your dead.
For there is no discretion in your mourning, and no understanding
in your laughter; to me you seem like a weaned baby.
One hour there is weeping and wailing, and a little later
joking and wantonness, as with children.
For you are not able to become mature men,
who, like the discerning, neither weep nor laugh.
We grieve over your books, that those who should read them to you
have toiled over them, even over the divine Scriptures.
The readers cry aloud, for you are deaf;
this crying of theirs proves that you are like blocks of wood.
For since the reader and the interpreter are crying aloud,
your ears must be heavy, or else your hearts.
For if you had an ear open to persuasion,
it would be fitting to hear little and to do much.
But because its hearing is shut, whoever knocks at it,
the voice comes back to the one who sent it out.
No one of mine has to cry out to me; I am not deaf.
No one has to read or interpret for me; I am not dull.
The breath that comes from him, the God of truth, commands me,
and with the command there follows the fulfillment as well.
With me there is no holding back and no turning aside;
I know that not even an arrow could outrun me.
But I scorn your voices when you are weeping
over the graves of your departed, in the cutting off of hope.
If it were possible or permitted, when you are weeping,
I would go out and tell you to your faces:
“I am trying to give an account of the dead,
and your voices disturb me, so that I lose my count.”
You nations, do not let your understanding become childish,
like that nation whose intelligence was never great,
in which prudence does not dwell, as in a fool,
for its thoughts are darkness, without discernment.
For your infants and your sons, in the resurrection,
will be the first to come out, as the firstfruits.
Then after them the just will come, as victors;
last of all the sinner will come out, put to shame.
For although they are brought to life in the blink of an eye,
still it is in order that their ranks come out of Sheol.
Prophets come out, and apostles, and holy fathers,
following them in due array, according to the command.
See, what is now sown all mixed together
is yielded back in great order, like garden herbs.
For though someone should mix all the seeds in the sowing,
what is earlier than its fellow comes up ahead of its fellow;
and their coming up from the earth will not be as disordered
as their going down was confused, for its order is fixed.
See, I have spoken against myself in what I have said,
for you have learned from me secret things that you did not understand.
Instead of the tears at the tomb, which do no good,
pour them out in your prayer in the midst of the church.
For there is profit in these for the dead, and for the living as well.
Do not weep with a weeping that afflicts both the dead and the living!