Odes of Solomon

tr. Harris, 1911

Chapter 5

¹I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, because I love thee; ²O most High, thou wilt not forsake me¹, for thou art my hope: ³freely I have received thy grace, I shall live thereby: ⁴my persecutors will come² and not see me: ⁵a cloud of darkness shall fall ⌜on⌝ their eyes; and an air of thick gloom shall darken them: ⁶and they shall have no light to see: that they may not take hold upon me. ⁷Let their counsel become thick darkness³, and what they have cunningly devised, let it return upon their own heads: ⁸for they have devised a counsel, and it did not succeed⁴: they have prepared themselves for evil⁵, and were found to be empty. ⁹For my hope is upon the Lord, and I will not fear, and because the Lord is my salvation⁶, I will not fear: ¹⁰and He is as a garland on my head and I shall not be moved; even if everything should be shaken, I stand firm; ¹¹and if all things visible should perish, I shall not die: because the Lord is with me and I am with Him. Hallelujah.

Notes

Or, as in the Coptic, do not thou forsake me.
Or, as in the Coptic, let my persecutors come.
Copt. weakness.
lit. and it became not to them.
lit. evilly, as in the Coptic, which expands as follows: Et vicerunt eos potentes et quae paraverant malitiose, descenderunt in eos. Cf. the German of Schmidt: ‘Und sie sind besiegt, obwohl sie mächtig sind, und was sie böswillig (κακῶς) bereitet haben, ist auf sie herabgefallen.’
Copt. quia tu es deus meus, salvator meus.