Nisibis 30

And his voice resounded. And as though I were a sinner, he sent forth his arrows to wound the one who ought not to have been mixed with her. Thus the afflicted sent forth something that did not avail. Wickedness: praise to your lordship. Moses and Daniel, swift and wise, youths who were instructed in the houses of serpents. One was cast down in Egypt, another within Babylon. One left the feeble, another the Chaldeans. The wisdom of the pure one they joined to youthfulness. In the likeness of the shining one, the living one of the fathers. They were pure, they were chosen, they were cunning, they were simple. They were smooth and distinct, swift and complete. They saw good, they put it on; they saw evil, they cast it off. And like a blind man who does not know the way, they did not know the way of darkness. In one they were walking the way of light. Toward evil, youths; toward desire, the weak; youths toward height, the perfect toward lowness; the reckless toward purity, and the hungry toward cleanliness. Slowly he saw from the beginning that the wolves of the teachers were lambs, the hungry were youths, serpents, and in the morning, trees that had learned their habits. Evil is what he mixed, my brothers, his poison with sweetness, and his darkness with light, and his foam within truth, and his evil with goodness, and his injustice with affliction. He chose vessels for himself, pure and holy, and placed in them his poison, his help, his fullness filled their eyes. The teaching of the magicians and the word of the Chaldeans, and he hired and delayed, his poison in purity.

He made the bow great with the darkness, and he erred and trampled truth within falsehood. And he thought that all of it would be profit, when it was loss that was measured to be cast. The teaching of his instruction in the mouths of the sons of the bow, and he thought that he who had cast down the pure and thrown the arrow, that a ban would block them, which cannot be completed. No taste remained in them, nor the understanding of his instruction. Thus the vessels of the service were consumed, for from then on, having been cast, they cannot be cleansed. He thought to cut off the people without looking to the end, and he was shamed in both vessels of weeping. The cast of their Lord could not be accomplished to seek their eyes, for this portion of the hand came to cleanse their eyes. Its writing was abundance, and its interpretation also was, a furnace within the crucible, and in the hand of Daniel. They were refined and cleansed, and they became fair and were hallowed, and they struck with folly and did with splendor, they struck with blasphemy and were borne with praise. The sons of error were turned and praised the Lord of all. The vessels of weeping he covered unnaturally, the vessels of freedom he covered by will. The vessels filled the bow and proclaimed their truth, the vessels that were full again by their will of falsehood. They bowed and were struck, and were poured out and were scattered. Evil to him who fixed, and again to him who filled their eyes. Moses struck their eyes ten times within Egypt, and Daniel also added to strike their eyes within Babylon.

He broke the bow, and made the eye a blind and crooked eye. He filled the eye with the arrows of falsehood, tightly bound. And he thought they were sufficient for him, and instead of the truth he poured out. Sweet sin and falsehood he thought he had stored up again. He sinned, for the truth of the one who saves he stored up and filled. A hundred times he denied himself and poured himself out by his own will. And he turned his crookedness into a deposit and a loan. Blessed are you, O maker, who became my potter. The eyes of my thought you have made from dust. Dust will not be filled instead of the treasure of truth.