Hymns of St. Ephrem: Nisibene Hymn-Christ's Victory over Death (Part 2)

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! Continuing on our theme of the death and resurrection of Christ we will continue to look at poetry that explains to us what it is that Christ did through his death and resurrection. The following is a poem entitled, "Christ's Victory over Death" (part 2), which explains how Christ destroyed death!

This will be the last poem in this series on explaining the death and resurrection of Christ. If you would like more material please do not hesitate to contact me!
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Blessed is Christ! He gave to us the dead, hope for life, and consoled our race. Although now we are subject to decay, we will be renewed. 

Listen, you mortals, to the mystery of the resurrection which is hidden now, but in the Last Days will be revealed in the Holy Church. 

Jesus a traveler [in the realm] of Death for three days, liberated his captives, robbed his camp, and renewed our race. 

Previously Death had prided himself and boasted, saying: “Priests and Kings are enchained in my dwellings.” 

But the glorious Warrior suddenly broke into the realm of Death; as a thief his voice stole therein and put an end to his glory. 

The dead in Sheol perceived the fragrance of life and began preaching to each other that their hopes come to fulfillment. 

Death reigned over mortals from the beginning, until the one Sovereign shone over and destroyed his pride. 

His voice, like peals of mighty thunder, readied the dead and heralded to them that they were liberated from bondage.

The following hymn is found in Metropolitan Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective, 131.

Hymns of St. Ephrem: Nisibene Hymn-Christ's Victory over Death (Part 1)

Christ is Risen. Indeed He is Risen! Continuing on our theme of the death and resurrection of Christ we will continue to look at poetry that explains to us what it is that Christ did through his death and resurrection. The following is a poem entitled, "Christ's Victory over Death", which explains how Christ destroyed Death!

Another poem, "Christ's Victory over Death," presents the story of Christ's descent into Hades, victory over Satan, and the devastation of Shoel:
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This whole region is the region of the dead; terrifying darkness is the keeper of its treasures; its lord, Death, roars as a lion every day...

Who can imagine the terrors of this region? Who will describe by what horrors it is surrounded? Everyone who enters it, shudders...

Death rejoices and makes merry, Sheol jubilates but keeps silent.

With gladness she opens its gates and gulps down ages and

generations.

And as this fierce tyrant is accustomed to swallowing up the beautiful ones, so he has swallowed up and stolen the most Beautiful and the Most Holy One.

He ushered him in into his halls and concealed the Giant. But the Strong One arose in glory, bound Death in his own dwelling, enchained and deposed the Tormentor, who boasted o f his power over humanity.

Finally he plundered the insatiable Sheol who gulped down and tormented even the bodies of the righteous; he cried out and the demons trembled, and darkness shrank from his voice.

He put to terror the hordes and retinue of Death; that moans in his fetters; loudly howls Sheol in her

domains...

Death has been put to shame, the head of this rebel, who willed to become God, has drooped. The voice of Christ resounds in the realm of perdition, and the rebel, besieged, has surrendered.

Christ has cried out to Adam in the darkness, into which he had been plunged, and said: “Where are you beautiful Adam, once seduced by the counsel of a wife?

Rise up now, O splendid one, rise up, you majestic and corrupt image! The head of the dragon has been crushed, Death and Satan are put to death.”...

Adam rose up, bowed down to the Lord who had come in search of him, and said: “Together with my own children I bow down to you, my Lord, who has come to restore us, the fallen ones.”

The following hymn is found in Metropolitan Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective, 130-131.

Hymns of St. Ephrem: Nisibene Hymn-A Dialogue between Death and Satan

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen. Continuing on our theme of the death and resurrection of Christ we will continue to look at poetry that explains to us what it is that Christ did through his death and Resurrection. The following is hymn 52 which serves as a dialogue between death and Satan!

Hymns 52-68 present a collection of dramatic dialogues in verse between Satan and Death, interspersed with the poet’s remarks. Satan and Death, who have “never prevailed and will never prevail,” argue with each other about which side the victory is on. In the course of this argument Satan and Death do no more than prove their helplessness in the face of God; they talk about Christ’s death on the cross as the source of their own torment and defeat. Each stanza is accompanied by a refrain that bears the central message: “Praise to you, O Son of the Shepherd of all, who has saved his flock from the hidden wolves, the Evil One and Death, whom he has swallowed up," “Praise to you, who has prevailed over the Evil One and through your resurrection has triumphed over Death.” In a condensed form the refrains contain the principal theological idea, which the reader would otherwise have to derive from the dialogues between Satan and Death. This particular way of presenting the material serves a didactic purpose and enables the reader to grasp the core idea of the poem in greater depth. The dialogue between Death and Satan in Hymn 52 demonstrates this.

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I heard Death and Satan loudly disputing which was the stronger of the two amongst men.

Death has shown his power in that he conquers all men, Satan has shown his guile in that he makes all men sin.

Death: “Only those who want to, O Evil One, listen to you, but to me they come, whether they will or not.”

Satan: “You just employ brute force, O Death, whereas I use traps and cunning snares.”

Death: “Listen, Evil One, a cunning man can break your yoke, but there is none who can escape from mine.”

Satan: “You, O Death, exercise your strength on the sick, but I am the stronger with those who are well...”

Satan: “Sheol is hated for there is no chance of remorse there: it is a pit which swallows up and suppresses every impulse.”

Death: “Sheol is a whirlpool, and everyone who falls in it is resurrected, but sin is hated because it cuts off a man’s hope.”

Satan: “Although it grieves me, I allow for repentance; you cut off a sinner’s hopes if he dies in his sins.”

Death: “With you his hope was cut off long ago; if you had never made him sin, he would have made a good end.”

Chorus: “Blessed is he who set the accursed slaves against each other so that w e can laugh at them just as they laughed at us.” 

Our laughing at them now, my brethren, is a pledge that we shall again be enabled to laugh, at the resurrection.

The following hymn is found in Metropolitan Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective, 126-128.  

Hymns of St. Ephrem: Nisibene Hymn-A Dialogue with Satan

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! Continuing on our theme of the death and resurrection of Christ we will continue to look at poetry that explains to us what it is that Christ did through his death and resurrection. The following is hymn 41 which is a dialogue with Satan.

In this hymn, humor, a distinctive feature, also serves as a literary device. Characters appear to ridicule themselves by acknowledging their own weaknesses and falsehoods while at the same time they present arguments that attempt to prove the contrary. Matters may be depicted distortedly because the despicable characters dwell on them. Therefore it is up to the reader to unravel this unassuming riddle and to define the original, intended message of the text. For instance, in Hymn 41 Satan delivers a long speech on how, despite his old age, he still does not neglect small children but takes care of them. This care consists of his attempt to accustom youngsters to evil from a tender age. The following example is the entire text of Hymn 41:

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Said the Evil One: “I am afraid of that Jesus. He will destroy my ways. I am a thousand years old and have never been idle: Nothing in creation which I saw did I neglect or miss, and now comes he, who teaches profligate chastity. I weep now, for he has destroyed everything I had built. For it took me much effort and labor to entangle the whole of creation in wiles.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“I used to set off with the fastest [runners] and would outrun them. I would do battle, and confusion of crowds would be my weapon. I would rejoice in people’s agitation for it gave me a fast opportunity to harden the onslaught of the crowd. By means of a crowd I built a great mountain— a tower reaching up to heaven. Had they declared war on the heights [of heaven] how much simpler would it have been for them to overcome that one on earth!”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“Along with time and its benefits I struggled prudently. The people heard that God is one, but made for themselves a multitude of gods. Because, having seen the Son of God, they rushed toward the One God, so that under the pretext of confessing God to deny him. On the pretext of being zealous they ran away from him. Thus, every time they would be found perverse, for they are godless.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“I am a great many years old, but I never despised a child. I have taken particular care of infants, so that from the very beginning they would acquire bad habits, so that their defects would grow with them. But there are foolish fathers who do not harm the seed I have sown in their sons. And there are such who like good farmers, uproot vices out of the minds of their children.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“Instead of chains I bound people by sloth, and they sat down in idleness. I deprived their senses of everything good: their eyes— from reading, their lips— from psalm singing their minds— from learning. How excellent they are at barren stories, how expert at empty talk and stories, but if the word of salvation falls on their ears, they will push it aside, or stand up and leave.”

Blessed is he ‘who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“How many satans are inside a man, but it is me everyone curses! For the anger of man is like a demon, who every day harasses him; other demons are like wayfarers, they leave when they are compelled to, However, when anger is concerned, all righteous put it under oath, and cannot eradicate it. Instead of hating a destructive envy, everyone hates a weak and miserable demon!”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles oft he Evil One.

“The magician and a snake charmer was put to shame, he who binds snakes every day; a viper inside of him rebels, for he cannot subdue the lust within him. Concealed sin is like an asp; when someone blows on it, he gets burned. Even if he catches the viper through his craft, falsehood has invisibly struck him: he puts the snake to sleep by his incantations, but also arouses great wrath against himself by his very incantations.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

"I have prepared my sting and sat waiting. Who is able to subject anyone to his own opinion?...(line is missing in the original text)...Who else is so patient with everyone? And little by little I led him astray, so that he fell into listlessness.” “The one [who] shrinks from wrongdoing, habits subject him: little by little I trained him, until he fell under my yoke; and grew accustomed to it, so that he did not wish to abandon it.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“I have noticed and seen that patience is able to overcome everything. In the time when I triumphed over Adam, he was alone. So I left him, till he begat descendants and meanwhile looked for another job to do, so that idleness did not overtake. I began to count sea sand, so that through this my spirit became more patient and to train my memory, so that it did not let me down, when sons of men will become a multitude. Before they became numerous I tested them in many ways.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

Servants of the Evil One argued with him and refuted his words by objections:

“Here Elisha revived a dead one and won over death in the high chamber, and brought to life the son of the widow; now he is bound in Sheol.” However, the intellect of the Evil One is far greater: he beat them with their own words: “How can Elisha be overpowered if in Sheol his remains still bring dead to life?”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

If Elisha who is so weak has such a great power in Sheol that he could revive the dead, then how many dead ones would be resurrected by the death of strong Jesus? Thus, following that you may learn, how considerably Jesus surpasses us, my friends! For, behold, his cunning has deceived you, and you have not been able to discern his greatness, for you simply compared him with prophets.

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

“Therefore your consolation is in vain”— said the Evil One to his comrades. “For how could Death take hold of the one who resurrected Lazarus? And even if Death would be victorious over him, this is because he would subject himself to it. And if he subjects himself to Death voluntarily, you should be still more terrified, for he would not die for nothing. Great tumult he has caused us, for having died, he would enter'in to revive Adam.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles oft he Evil One. 

Death looked out of its cavern and was astounded for he saw Our Lord crucified and said: “Waker of the dead, where are you? Will you become my nourishment instead of sweet Lazarus, whose taste is still on my lips? Jairus’ daughter will come to look at your cross; the son of the widow will look up at you. The tree has ensnared Adam for me; blessed is this cross which has ensnared the son of David for me.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

Death opened its gullet and said: “Have you never heard, O Son of Mary, about Moses who was great and surpassed everybody? About how he became a god and performed divine actions, put firstborns to death and saved firstborns, warded off death from the living ones? However, I ascended to the mountain with this Moses; [God] handed him over to me let his might be praised! No matter how great was the son of Adam lo, dust returns to dust, for he came from earth.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

Satan came with his servants to look at Our Lord in Sheol and to rejoice with Death, his ally.’ But he saw Death sad and mourning for the dead, who at the voice of the Firstborn, returned to life and went forth from Sheol. The Evil One began to console Death, his relative: “You have not lost as much as you have acquired. Unless Jesus is within you, in your hands you will hold all who have lived and are living.”

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the  guiles of the Evil One.

“Open to us [the door], so that we can see and laugh at him. We will respond and ask: “Where is your might?” It is three days already, so let us tell him: “O, three days old, you have resurrected four days old Lazarus. So bring yourself back to life.” Death has opened the doors of Sheol, and the light of the face of the Lord gushed out from there, and like the Sodomites they were destroyed groping and looking for the door of Sheol, but it has disappeared.

Blessed is he who came and destroyed the guiles of the Evil One.

The following hymn is found in Metropolitan Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective, 119-126.