Nisibis 74

On the sound of "O Lord, in your coming

Oh how great is Adam, and glorious in his creation; oh how great is his lowliness at the time of his death. Your coming magnifies him, a new creation; your coming renews him, by its mystery a picture of the wisdom of his Creator. In his destruction he is signed with the evil of his entirety; he is ashamed in his unity, chooses and grows in his work, and is contemptible in his servitude. In his life like something, in his death like nothing. Again, my Lord, you magnify him, judging and condemning, detaining and acquitting. The silence of God and the death of living beings: your image is mixed in you. Behold, his word is great, and over all it is spread. In the world he is a speaker, and in Sheol he is silenced. He renews his nets and sinks in the sea, and brings up his treasures; and what sinks in Sheol, death stands over it. In you, my Lord, he is suspended, the swift one of the sea, subduing also the dry land; in the grave he is laid low, and becomes a fugitive. Turn, my Lord, your mercies: living beings are subdued, his yoke is pious, and his yoke is of death, lowering his freedom. In you, my Lord, he is freed: he arranges by commands, the bridle of the chariot; death halts him, and in Sheol binds him. Release him, the loosed one of all: he sits on a throne, with crown and garland, and death casts him down, his form and breaks him. In you, my Lord, he is honored: he writes and reads, and disputes and interprets, and cannot persuade death with his wisdoms. In you, my Lord, he is adorned: when he binds a lion, and imprisons a wild beast, and not in the pit of Sheol does death imprison him. His voice issues from the womb, cuts off trees, and changes and increases, and for him death sets a limit.

From all his beloved ones in your glory he sees the sign to the healers he is physician with the medicines he found and for the healing of death no remedy avails but life heals him with its oil and its chrism and the abundance of his spices cannot turn away his odor when it passes in your salt he is purified and the free ones divide the hours and the times and the hour of his burial where it is he does not know glory knows all he wanders on the earth and seeks the heavens and when death reaches him it leads him astray and he is troubled in you, my Lord, he is adorned the great threshold and adds to the frost follows the winter after it and drives away the summer your grace enriches him it makes dwellings for summer and for winter and one grave for summer and for winter suffices him for the feast he rejoices divides and takes asks for more death anoints and gives him three hundred measures in weight for your path, my Lord, he flies he shakes the wine cups and increases the pleasures death hires him for his mouth from his mind his chosen ones your table he pressed and increased the cry the treasures do not suffice him death brings them out and in weight he pressed him and your command brought him out he guides in the paths and turns in the ways one way he went that he might return in it he did not turn he enters your paradise the bearers bring and call the erring ones and instead of his bridal chambers the bridal chamber of the departed your command made them fly he is troubled in the halls the spirits that surrounded him and his body filled the grave and his dust filled the skull again anew