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Repentance of Nineveh
St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Burgess, 1853
4. Part the Fourth
“My Brethren! let us not despise
The voice of Jonah the Hebrew.
It does not become us, foolishly,
To look down upon his preaching;
Let us rather consider it discreetly,
And view it on all sides.
I have fallen into great perplexity,
From the words of his proclamation.
It may be thought to be audacity—
It may be considered as madness—
But if one should call him mad,
He is yet a treasure of great wisdom.
In him there is perception and intellect,
Intelligence springs up in him as a fountain.
His appearance is contemptible and unadorned,
But his speech is powerful and weighty.
I have questioned him in your presence,
Making such enquiries as we thought fit;
As though tried in the furnace,
Were the words spoken by him.
But he neither trembled nor feared,
He neither hesitated nor displayed agitation.
He varied not the word of his mouth,
Which was restricted by the truth.
He departed not from his narration,
For very tenacious is his memory.
“I flattered him but he was not enticed,
I sought to terrify him, but he trembled not;
I shewed him riches, but he laughed at them,
A sword also, but he altogether despised it;
He was a stranger to the sword,
He was superior to a gift.
There are some who will be allured by a treasure,
While others will tremble at a sword;
But to him punishment had no terror,
Nor a gift any attractions.
Between flattery and fear
We placed this Hebrew;
But he escaped from both of them,
For both of them he despised.
I shewed him wealth, he laughed it to scorn,
And on the sword he looked contemptuously.
The love of money was conquered by him,
The fear of death was despised.
Every word which he uttered,
Cleft the stone by its sword.
He neither feared my power,
Nor respected my majesty.
All our honour was considered by him,
As filth thrown upon the ground;
So greatly did he scorn our wealth,
So much did he despise our sword.
He prepared a brow of brass,
And thus came to our coasts;
So that nothing could make him willing
To respect our royalty.
“His word thus becomes to us a mirror,
In which we may contemplate our blemishes.
In it we may look upon God,
Who is angry at our abominations;
In it we may see impartial justice,
Who is wrathful on account of our trespasses;
In it also we may see our city,
On which a stern sentence has come;
We may see in it the proclamation
Which hath proceeded from the mouth of the Just One.
For this is no cunning device,
Nor an ensnaring contrivance.
Had he preached to us prosperity,
We might have thought him a cunning man,
Who by the good tidings which he brings
Would earn a fair reward.
For whosoever desires profit
Makes a favourable augury;
And a soothsayer, because he is avaricious,
Gives a flattering promise.
A Chaldæan also, because he lacks bread,
Proclaims a good horoscope,
That he may receive the more from the foolish.
He tells him of a wealthy lot,
Not because he is solicitous to give it to him,
(For indeed he bestows nothing,)
But by the promise of wealth he leads him captive,
And takes from him even what he hath.
“But this is a very faithful physician;
He speaks the truth to his patient;
He enters and proclaims a stern decree,
In the midst of the house, to the sick man;
He prescribes to him a sharp fiery caustic,
Openly, in the midst of his chamber;
He does not fear whether one can bear it,
When he announces the extraction of a tooth.
Yea, he feareth not the King
To tell him the thought of his heart;
He fears not the son of the King
To make him drink sharp medicine;
He fears not a man who is terrible,
But binds him and employs the knife.
He trembles not at a giant,
To humble his strength by his caustics.
Who will brand as a deceiver
A prophet who proclaims wrath?
For he is not a liar
Whose voice causes perturbation;
But if his speech is searching,
His spirit is sincere.
“But though a good physician is not fearful,
He exercises his art for profit;
But this Hebrew is superior
To the grade of those who practise healing;
For not even his daily bread
Will he eat from our city:
From the day that he came among us
He hath fasted and suffered much.
Now what urges him, without advantage,
To preach great wrath against us?
How is it that he is not afraid
To proclaim this against our city?
It hath been reported to us by the Hebrews
Respecting Moses and Elias,
That they fasted from food
Each of them forty days.
But will this Hebrew prophet
Thus fast as long as they did?
But if he fasts, being a righteous man,
Come! let us fast because we are sinners;
And if he, being a righteous man, makes supplication,
Let us strew for ourselves sackcloth and ashes.
And perhaps he is fasting and praying,
That he may not prove false respecting us;
Or strives to overturn the city,
That his preaching may obtain credit.
Since then by fasting he fights against us,
By fasting let us contend with him.
Yet not against the prophet
Shall we strive by our repentance;
For it is not he who does us harm,
But our sins have injured us.
The Hebrew does not overthrow our city,
But its iniquity is destroying it.
“There is among you, my friends,
Another and invisible enemy,
Against whom it behoves us
To contend most courageously.
Among us there is the history
Of righteous Job—that ancient man,
Even the dumb brute creatures
Must have heard, as I may say, concerning his triumphs;
For his temptation, like a trumpet,
Hath proclaimed his victory through the world.
It was Satan who accused him,
According to the relation of our fathers.
Now if the Wicked One accused
That righteous ancient man,
How much must he open his mouth
To bring a charge against sinners?
Different, and yet alike, is his wickedness
Towards the righteous and the evil;
For he persecuteth the righteous,
If peradventure he may make him a sinner;
And he slayeth the sinner lest he should repent.
It was he who went forth and overthrew
The house of the sons of Job;
He mingled their blood with their wine,
And their goblets with their bodies.
He overthrew the banquet,
And the house upon its habitants.
“Perhaps he has received a mission,
And will overturn our city and state.
In battles ye have conquered kings,
Now conquer Satan by prayer.
Bring forth therefore your battle array
To contend in war with him;
Put off and throw aside your mantles,
And arm yourselves with sackcloth against him.
Break and throw away your bows
And take refuge in prayers;
Lay down the sword—that feeble weapon,
And choose the triumphal sword,
Whose edge, even fasting, will inflict a wound
Upon the hidden wicked one in our city.
For that victory is as nothing
Which ye have borne away in the battle;
But now, if we should conquer,
It will be greater than all our triumphs;
And since I have entered into the ranks
In wars and dangers,
I will now take the precedence
In this mighty battle.
Arm yourselves, then, like me,
And advance, my beloved soldiers!”