2 Baruch

Historical printed page 519

6: Il BARUCH 75. 1—76. 4 LXXV. Baruch’s Hymn on the Unsearchableness of God's Ways and on His Mercies through which the Faithful shall attain to a blessed Consummation. 975.1 And I answered and said : ‘Who can understand, O Lord, Thy goodness ? For it is incomprehensible. 2 Or who can search into thy compassions, Which are infinite ? 3 Or who can comprehend Thy intelligence ? 4 Or who is able to recount the thoughts of Thy mind? 5 Or who of those who are born can hope to come to those things, Unless he is one to whom Thou art merciful and gracious? 6 Because, if assuredly Thou didst not have compassion on man, Those who are under Thy right hand, They could not come to those things, But those who are in the numbers named can be called. 7 But if, indeed, we who exist know wherefore we have come, And submit ourselves to Him who brought us out of Egypt, We shall come again and remember those things which have passed, And shall rejoice regarding that which has been. g But if now we know not wherefore we have come, And recognize not the principate of Him who brought us up out of Egypt, We shall come again and seek after those things which have been now, And be grieved with pain because of those things which have befallen.’ LXXVI. Baruch bidden to instruct the People for forty days and then to hold himself ready for his Assumption on the Advent of the Messiah. And He answered and said unto me: [‘Inasmuch as the revelation of this vision has been in- , terpreted to thee as thou besoughtest], hear the word of the Most High that thou mayst know what is to befall thee after these things. For thou shalt surely depart from this earth, nevertheless not unto death, but thou shalt be preserved unto the consummation of the times. Go up therefore to the top of that mountain, and there shall pass before thee all the regions of that land, and the figure of the inhabited world, and the top(s) of the mountains, and the depth(s) of the valleys, and the depths of the seas, and the number of the rivers, that thou mayst see what thou art leaving, and 4 whither thou art going. Now this shall befall after forty days. Go now therefore during these days and instruct the people so far as thou art able, that they may learn so as not to die at the last time, but may learn in order that they may live at the last times.’ LXXV-LXXVI. Here B? returns. Baruch addresses God and not Ramiel, who in ly. 4-Ixxiv. has been explaining the vision in liii. LXXV. 1. understand. Syriac reads lsooks =‘ be likened to *, which I have emended into sp \s =‘ understand ’, omitting the following >. 2. The mercies of God are not much dwelt on in this book. The righteous are fully conscious of their own merit (cf. xiv. 7). But cf. Ixxxi. 4; Ixxv. 5, 6. 6. who are under Thy right hand. Cf. Ps. Ixxx, 17. 7, 8. We shall come again, i.e. we shall rise and meet with our fate according as we are obedient and righteous or not. LXXVI. 1. The words bracketed are inserted by the final editor. hear the word of the Most High. Cf. xiii. 2; xxv. 1. 2. thou shalt be preserved until the consummation of the times. The Syriac here has ‘ unto the preservation of the times’. From xxv. 1 we see we must read ‘thou shalt be preserved unto the times’, or rather the fuller form we find in xiii. 3 ‘ thou shalt be preserved unto the consummation of the times’. Ryssel has adopted this suggestion. 3. Cf. Deut. xxxiv. 1-3; Matt. iv. 8. ‘ 4. forty days. Cf. Exod. xxiv. 18, and 4 Ezra xiv. 23, 42-5. 519