Odes de Salomão — Ode 28

1As the wings of doves over their nestlings; and the mouth of their nestlings towards their mouths,

2so also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart:

3my heart is delighted and exults: like the babe who exults in the womb of his mother:

4I believed; therefore I was at rest; for faithful is He in whom I have believed:

5He has richly blessed me and my head is with Him: and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar;

6for I am ready before destruction comes: and I have been set on His immortal pinions:

7and immortal life has come forth and given me to drink, and from that life is the spirit within me, and it cannot die, for it lives.

8They who saw me marvelled at me, because I was persecuted, and they supposed that I was swallowed up: for I seemed to them as one of the lost;

9and my oppression became my salvation; and I was their reprobation because there was no zeal in me;

10because I did good to every man I was hated,

11and they came round me like mad dogs, who ignorantly attack their masters,

12for their thought is corrupt and their understanding perverted.

13But I was carrying water in my right hand, and their bitterness I endured by my sweetness;

14and I did not perish, for I was not their brother nor was my birth like theirs,

15and they sought for my death and did not find it: for I was older than the memorial of them;

16and vainly did they make attack upon me and those who, without reward, came after me:

17they sought to destroy the memorial of him who was before them:

18for the thought of the Most High cannot be anticipated; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.