Damascus Document

Damascus Document, CD-A column 1, Schechter 1910 English

Now, therefore, hearken unto me, ye all who know righteousness and meditate upon the work of | God. For He has a controversy with all flesh and He will execute judgment upon all who despise Him. | For because of their treason that they forsook Him, He hid His face from Israel and from His sanctuary | and delivered them unto the sword. But when He remembered the covenant of the forefathers He left a remnant | to Israel and gave them not over unto extermination. And at the end of the wrath, three hundred | and ninety years after He had delivered them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, | He remembered them, and made bud from Israel and Aaron a root of a plant to inherit | His land, and to rejoice in the good of His earth. And they meditated over their sin and they knew that | they were guilty men, and they were like the blind *groping in the way | twenty years. And God considered their deeds, for they sought Him with a perfect heart | and He raised for them a teacher of righteousness to make them walk in the way of His heart. And He made known | to later generations what He has wrought in a *former generation in an assembly of treacherous men. | They are those who turned out of the way. This is the time concerning which it has been written: “As a backsliding heifer | so did Israel slide back”, when there arose the man of scoffing who dropped to Israel | waters of deceitfulness and caused them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way, to bow down the loftiness of eternity, to turn away | from the paths of righteousness and to remove the bound which the forefathers have set in their inheritance. So as | to make cleave unto them the curses of the covenant, to deliver them to the sword that shall execute the vengeance | of the covenant. Because that they searched in smooth things and chose deceits, and looked forward | to the breaches. And they chose the goods of the throat and justified the wicked and condemned the just | and *transgressed the covenant and broke the statute and gathered themselves together against the soul of the righteous man. And all that walked | uprightly their soul abhorred and they pursued them with the sword and *rejoiced at the* war of the people. Therefore, was kindled the wrath