CHAPTER 4
1 This book of God’s behests [or commandments], and the law which is without end. All that hold it, shall come to life. But they that have forsaken it, shall come into death.
2 Jacob, be thou converted, and take thou [or catch] it; go thou by the way at the brightness thereof [or walk by the way to the shining of it], against the light thereof [or the light of it].
3 Give thou not thy glory to another, and thy dignity to an alien folk.
4 Israel, we be blessed; for those things that please God, be open [or known] to us.
5 The people of God, Israel worthy to be had in mind, be thou patienter, either of better comfort, [or more stable].
6 Ye be sold to heathen men, not into perdition; but for that that ye in ire stirred God to wrathfulness, ye be betaken to adversaries.
7 For ye wrathed that God ever-lasting, that made you; and ye offered to fiends, and not to God. [Forsooth ye stirred to bitterness the everlasting God, that made you; offering to devils, and not to God.]
8 For ye forgot him that nourished or nursed you, and ye made sorry [or sorrowful] your nurse, Jerusalem.
9 For it saw wrathfulness of God coming to you, and it said, Ye nigh coasts of Zion, hear; forsooth God hath brought great mourning to me.
10 For I saw the captivity of my people, of my sons and daughters, which he that is without beginning and end [or the Everlasting] brought on them.
11 For I nourished them with mirth; but I let them go with weeping and mourning.
12 No man have joy on me, a widow and desolate. I am forsaken of many, for the sins of my sons; for they bowed away from the law of God.
13 Forsooth they knew not rightful-nesses of him; neither they went [or walked] by the ways of God’s behests, neither by the paths of his truth they entered with rightfulness [or with rightwiseness].
14 The nigh coasts of Zion come, and have they mind [or bethink they] on the captivity of my sons and daughters, which he that is without beginning and end [or the Everlasting] brought on them.
15 For he brought on them a folk from afar, an evil folk, and of another language; that reverenced not an eld [or old] man, neither had mercy on children;
16 and they led away the dearworthy sons of a widow, and made a woman alone desolate of sons.
17 But what may I help you?
18 For he that brought on you evils [or brought evil things upon you], shall deliver you from the hands of your enemies.
19 Go ye, sons, go ye; for I am forsaken or left alone.
20 I have unclothed me of the stole, either long robe, of peace; but I have clothed me with a sackcloth of beseeching, and I shall cry to the Highest in my days.
21 Sons, be ye of better comfort [or of better heart, or stabler]; cry ye to the Lord, and he shall deliver you from the hand of princes, that be your enemies.
22 For I hoped your health without end, and joy came to me from the Holy on mercy, that shall come to you from your Saviour without beginning and end [or that shall come to you of your Saviour Everlasting].
23 For I sent you out with mourning and weeping; but God shall bring [or shall lead] you again to me, with joy and mirth without end.
24 For as the neighbouresses [or the neighbours] of Zion saw your captivity made of God, so they shall see and in swiftness [or in haste] your health of God, which health shall come to you from above, with great honour and everlasting shining.
25 Sons, suffer ye patiently ire [or the wrath] that came on you; for thine enemy pursued thee, but thou shalt see soon [or but soon thou shalt see] the perdition of him, and thou shalt go upon the necks of him.
26 My delicate men went sharp ways; for they as a flock that is ravished were led of enemies. [My delicates, or nourished in delights, walked sharp ways; soothly they were led as a flock ravished with enemies.]
27 Sons, be ye patienter [or of evener heart, or stabler], and cry ye [a] far to the Lord; for why your mind shall be of him that leadeth you.
28 For as your wit was, that ye erred from God [or for to err from God], ye shall convert again, and shall seek him ten times so much.
29 For he that brought in evils [or evil things] to you, shall bring again ever-lasting mirth to you with your health.
30 Jerusalem, be thou of better comfort; for he that named thee, exciteth thee. [Jerusalem, be thou more stable, or of better heart; soothly he that named thee, admonisheth thee.]
31 They that travailed thee, shall perish guilty; and they that thanked, [or joyed], in thy falling, shall be punished.
32 [The] Cities to which thy sons served, shall be punished, and that city that took thy sons, shall be punished.
33 For as Babylon made joy in thy hurling down [or in thy falling], and was glad in thy fall, so it shall be made sorry [or shall be sorrowful] in his desolation.
34 And the full out joy of the multitude thereof shall be cut away, and the joy thereof shall be into mourning.
35 For why fire shall come on it from him that is without beginning and end [or the Everlasting], in full long days; and it shall be inhabited of fiends [or devils], into the multitude [or muchliness] of time.
36 Jerusalem, behold about to the east, and see thou mirth coming of God to thee [or see the mirth coming to thee of God].
37 For lo! thy sons come, which [or whom] thou lettest go scattered; they come gathered from the east unto the west, in the word of the Holy, and make joy [or joying] to the honour of God.