Ephraim: The Nisibene Hymns
Nisibene Hymn 64: Satan Laughs at Our Mourning
You feeble ones, why do you weep over your dead,
who in death are at rest from sorrows and sins?
Refrain: Glory to him who endured all things for the sake of all men,
and tasted death for the sake of all, to bring all to life!
I reveal to you that even Satan, though he is well pleased
at your weeping, laughs a great deal at your mourning.
In mockery he winks at me and nods to me, like a jester:
Come, let us laugh at sinners, for look, they are mad.
Truly they have given up remembering that fire which I have hidden for them,
and look, the fools are drunk with weeping for their departed.
Instead of weeping, as though I had plundered their dead
and sent them off without provisions, look, they are mad.
The souls of the wicked are to be afflicted until the day of judgment,
and these weep over the graves like madmen.
They do not care about their own sins, that perhaps tomorrow
they must go, their faces full of shame, to join their dead.
And so all will be put to shame alike, family by family;
in Sheol the wretches will repent to no purpose.
Leave the drunkard and the madman until that day
on which each will shake off the wine that maddened him.
I will go and gather them like children,
so that they may play the wanton and the madman until they perish.
See, I have revealed to you the mystery, the secret of my comrade.
So go out, depart, amend your lives in repentance.
Let me be; I too will go and see to my affairs,
so that with an open face I may give my account to my Lord.
I know that the wind, as it blew, has carried off my words,
for you are the same people I have often put to the test.
I remember how Jeremiah compared boldness
to the Indian who does not change his skin, though it is a matter of freedom.
For this too belongs to freedom:
that it binds itself by the will, as though by nature.
For so powerful is the will in those who are free
that it may be likened to nature, through the way it works.