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ymarkovPHINEHAS OF POLOTSK’S DEATH POEM
The following is a translation of Kether Torah, 36a—38a.
And now, my brother, I will transcribe for your benefit a precious jewel that I originally wrote in my youth, while contemplating the day of death in an attempt to subdue the evil instinct, as our Sages have recommended: “Let man meditate upon the day of his death:" How dare any mortal man, one who ought to rejoice upon unearthing his own burial plot, proclaim that he is the master of his own life? For, in point of fact, in this life man migrates incessantly from misfortune to even greater anguish.
Now, does this man, who is of such a lowly stature and who will never enjoy a single moment of peace—does such a person imagine that he possesses any form of control or authority? Dare a person for whom nobody could care, who left the womb entirely bare, and who will suffer all his days from hunger—does such a person dare to say that he is wise or that discernment is his birthright?
Birth
Woe unto us for the humiliation that is man — a creature borne of woman, the lowly product of a repugnant drop who twice must pass through the urinary shaft submerged in blood. How dare such a creature establish for himself a name among the wise! Why should he bother to plant fields and to sow vineyards? Does he have any idea how long the days and the years of his life will endure? Rather, man who was, after all, born without the ability to walk or speak or comprehend should simply use this life as a mere preparation. He should forever wonder whether he will live a year or two, or perhaps only another day or two more, and whether his destiny will be that of eternal life or death. For the person who does not cleanse himself of his filth and who rejoices to the sounds of tamborines and drums—such a man deserves nothing more than shame and abuse. Man is born with no knowledge, and he spends all of his pubescent years just screeching and crying; his entire life is exhausted in servile toil, until the day of his death arrives, after which he will not even remember his original departure to this lower realm of existence. What a shame is the great confusion whereby an ugly and painful blemish, namely, this godless earth, is considered by man to be as Mount Moriah. Man is dominated by others all of his life, and he only blasphemes bitterly both in his youth and in his old age, until he dies. How can he thus not be aware, while the breath of life is still within him, of his final destiny?
Marriage
Man is filled with indignity and shame until the day when they will match him with a wife arrives; she too is a repugnant dribble, and even if he happened to have found an unusually good woman, she is never really more than a container filled with manure. Inevitably, bad days will arrive for them both, for there does not exist even one man who enjoys so much as a single hour’s respite from his wife. Rather, all of their days together are spent in feuding, in anguish and worry, pain and sadness; for she shall only add to your mourning, and throughout the days of your meaningless life she will drive you to hoard money and to plant vineyards and to attain celebrity among the intellectuals; and thus shall you do all of your days. She will cause you to forsake your father and your mother and ultimately to desert even your Lord as well, only in order to fill your storage house with silver and gold, and ultimately only in order to bequeath it to those who will survive you. She will dissipate your soul and disperse your wealth, such that day and night neither frost nor heat, neither stormy seas nor deep rivers, neither fields nor deserts, will deter you from heeding her will. And if you do hearken unto her voice, she will certainly lead you in anguish down into Sheol.
The Family
Now, if she honors you by bearing your children, she will then only proceed to shorten your days and years; she will not let you sleep nor even allow your eyelids to rest for a second; for she will increase the burden of your work both at home and in the field; she will bellow at you from all sides with her screeching voice, and your anguish and bickering will be compounded both by her and by the troubles emanating from your household. In the end, you will be oppressed and broken all of your days. Finally, you will be forced to give away, on behalf of your own engaged son, a vast dowry and great amounts of gold from your own pocket. All this only to establish yet further misery for the members of your own household.
So consider with your own good sense what is your real moment of glory? How can you possibly say, “I praise life and the living,” when in fact all of the days of your life are miserable, depressed, diseased, agonizing, and hurtful? And if such is the case in the days of your youth, what will you do about your older years? Those are the days in which “the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain” (Ecclesiastes 12:2). How much worse will it be if you encounter evil days in which bitches, together with their young hounds, will bark at you.
Evil will beset you when you confront the very children whom you nurtured and raised. Then, when evil will come forth from your own household, your own children, the fruit of the womb, will damn and ban you. Then you will surely wonder, “Woe, what have I done?” For you will realize that you have wasted all of your days. Still, you will simply surrender to your children just as one capitulates before mighty heroes, until they ultimately will bring your hoary white head down to hell in misery. This, then, will be the recompense for all of your hard labor.
Disease
And yet, all of this [n1isery] must still be considered by you as the gift of God. For it could still have been much worse, as in the case of a man who does not attain old age and who dries up and loses his strength in his vital years. The day of his death comes suddenly and snatches him away without any warning. You see him one moment, and then suddenly he disappears from the presence of his wife and children and is separated from all of his wealth and property. It is then as if he had never existed at all in this gloomy world; rather, he arrived in darkness and departed in a fog. Such grief is horrible, for there is no remedy for one who dies so suddenly.
It is, however, an even greater affliction when the enlightened man devotes himself so energetically to entirely futile goals. He gives no rest to his eyes, and yet he spends all of his days groping in the dark, much as the blind man fumbles in midday, all in order to attain a negligible end. Nothing will deter a man so driven, neither destruction by day nor frost by night, until he falls into his sickbed afflicted with terrible diseases and miserable suffering all day. From head to foot no relief comes his way. He cries and groans by day, and by night he wails bitterly. The lights of his soul are dimmed, and his sun and moon are darkened. His soul completely detests the very taste or odor of any food, and he deteriorates until his head and arms feel heavy and he cannot even turn from side to side in bed.
His only child is then brought in to see him; he grasps him by the hand and calls out, “My father, my father,” but he is not recognized. He gestures with his fingers and winces with his eyes, but still there is no response. Touching any of this man’s limbs is akin to trying to touch the pupil of his eye.
The Final Moments
Then he comes very close to his demise, and as we know, most failing people soon die. In struts the men of the burial society [hevra kadisha], and they immediately surround his bed, just standing there, waiting for him to die. They stand and wait, and. helplessly they behold his anguish and distress as the flute plays inside of his throat. One of the men holds on to his hand, taking his pulse while at the same time inquiring whether there is sufficient good wood with which to construct the coffin. Another places his hand over the heart of the dying man and declares that he no longer has any vital energy left within him. Yet another one checks his hands, and another his eyelids and pupils, and still another discerns whether his living soul still breathes within his nostrils. Finally, they proclaim: “Behold, his death has arrived! Light the candles and place them at his head!"
The Moment of Death
At this point the Angel of Death appears in the room with his sword drawn in his hand and stands next to the deceased, grabs him by his cloak, and says: “Arise, you bloody creature, and recall the days of your life, filled as they are with dirty blotches and filth; see how you now lie here like an unblemished sacrifice.” Now, when he beholds the Angel of Death looming large before him from earth to heaven with his sword drawn in his hand and staring intensely at him, a great fear grasps him deep in his loins, and his legs give way, and he tightly shuts his eyes and bares his neck like a bull before the slaughterer. The Angel of Death stands over his offering, his heart burning hot like a live coal; he grabs his dagger, closes the window, and contaminates the house.
Once his soul has departed from the place where it was and his corpse remains filled only with humiliation and shame, with his face turning green and his limbs deteriorating, his mouth wide open and his stomach bloated, then do the members of the society take him and place his body upon the ground, where he will lie silently like a stone. They place a pillow or some straw under him. His wife and darling children now come and cover him with black clothes and cry very bitterly, all the while surrounding him like a drove of bees from head to toe. They call out to one another: “Look at your poor father, the apple of our eye, who has gone to his final rest; none shall arouse him now. Just yesterday we recognized him, and suddenly he is no longest His eyes are closed tight, and his mouth is shut; behold how radically different is your father’s face from what it was so recently. He has now gone far away such that you will never again see him.”
His wife approaches him, clothed in her widow’s vestments, and she proclaims: “My husband, oh my husband, why have you so deserted and forsaken me? To whom have you left your own children? Where is your compassion? See how your own progeny who stand before you will become scattered to the earth’s four corners! And children will predecease their parents. Oh, awake you slumberer, when will you arise?” But she will hold her peace when she hears that the Lord has dispatched him to a place from which there is no return. Finally, like a woman in pain wearing the sackcloth for the darling of her youth, she will hold her peace.
Now his lovely daughter will come forth, alone and mournful, her clothing torn, her hair wild, with tears running down her cheeks, crying out loud for her dead father. Thus will she cry and shriek: “My father, my father! How has death come so suddenly upon you? I wish that I had died instead of you and that I had suffered your curse. Who will now tend for your children, and who will comfort them when they cry out like doves? Your children are now left to be orphans. As for me, the Lord has fed me the bitter wormwood; for I know for certain that all of these obligations, will now be thrust upon me. Woe unto the lost days of my youth, for my song has now turned to sadness. Cursed be the day on which I was born, and let the sun no longer shine for me!"
The Burial
While she is still talking, the sexton, that paragon of truth and justice, arrives on the scene. He orders, “Hurry and do the deed:’ He measures the body and goes off to dig the grave while the others prepare the white shrouds. They proceed to dress him like a three-year-old baby, in a blouse and trousers, and even place a belt on his waist and a hat upon his head—this, then, is the sum total of his reward for all of the energy and toil he expended all of his days upon the earth. How pathetic is his shame and disgrace! How is it that he did not consider that this would be his final end; that he would not take it all with him when he died; that nothing would remain except his carcass; that nothing he would accomplish in life would be of any lasting value; and that he would depart barren of all his acquisitions? Even his wife speaks up only to mourn the days of her youth.
His only son now appears and rends his garments and tearfully blurts out: “My father, my father! How can you go securely along your way and thus desert your children? Oh, dear father, now no one will benefit from your labor, and there are none who will take pity upon your children. I am bitter like the wormwood. To whom have you assigned the responsibility for your flock; how scattered they will now become, one here and the other there, one in the north and the other in the south. Alas, my father, where is your compassion? How can you ask me to support them iii my bosom? If you do this to me, why not better take my soul? For death is better for me now than life. I can neither tolerate seeing my own suffering nor stand by to witness the downfall of my home and my family. My brothers and sisters! Let tears pour from your eyes as you behold the great calamity before you, for I cannot possibly bear the onerous burden of your support; who, then, will take pity upon you? Who will support you? My dear father, how can you go from a new house to a primeval one, from a high mountain to a low valley, from an exalted dwelling to a most humble one, froni a good habitation to a rotten one, from a fine abode to a somber warren, from a house of light to a dark domicile, from a mighty tower to the tents of nomads—but how!”
Then the entire family will raise its voice and cry out loud until their throats become scratchy: “Woe unto us on account of our great loss, and for this day of fury when the holy ark has departed from us:’ Then the entire community approaches and takes the body from its house as it lies there like a dried-out piece of wood. They carry the corpse to the cemetery as the family hovers around it like a gaggle of young birds until they reach the meadow of moaning. His wife is still screeching intensely: “It is so bitter for me on your account, my husband. For wherever they take you, there is certainly a great danger."
As they approach the cemetery, there appear before the deceased his relatives and friends whom he knew all of his life. They weep and declare: “Tell us, whom do you seek, and what do you hope to accomplish by letting yourself be buried in the ground? Remember who you are and whence you have come. Consider this: how can you descend from a house of kings and officers into these lowly graves; from an exalted position to the vicinity of vermin. Woe unto you, for once you sat in tranquility, but from this time forth you will dwell in fear and need, deep in the pit of destruction. Cursed be the earth that has opened its mouth and swallowed you in!"
Moral
So consider, you son of man, by what right did you ever swagger upon the earth? Therefore, may you be cursed upon this earth, may thorns and thistles grow underneath you, and may they become as barbs in your eyes and prickles in your side. You thought that you were a wise man, and now look how you lie despondently, rusting and rotting away from your wounds and your pain, and from the pests and lice that tightly surround you all about. Oh, how you have become desolate, cloaked in dishonor and covered with shame. Ultimately, your flesh will succumb to vermin and insects, snakes and scorpions, which will beset you in triumphant throngs to the sounds of musical instruments and voices of song. These pests will penetrate into your guts and cultivate thorns inside your entrails.
Oh, how you — such a precious cache — have fallen into abject desolation! You, lowly man, have deluded yourself into falsely believing that you could soar above the tops of clouds, whereas in fact it was Sheol below that was awaiting you in order to bring your empty arrogance down to hell. Down below you will be enveloped by the insects, which will mass underneath you, and the vermin, which will cover you. How filled was your home with specially selected gold and silver; and now, how you have fallen from heaven, bright morning star; how you have been felled down to earth. You thought in your heart that you would rise to the heavens and establish your seat among the great Sages. But in fact you will be brought down into the inner pits of Sheol. How, then, could you ever have gloated in the material world and bragged of your wealth, wisdom, and bravery. You should have known all along that you were destined to rejoice, together with us, only after your burial.
The following is a translation of Kether Torah, 36a—38a.
And now, my brother, I will transcribe for your benefit a precious jewel that I originally wrote in my youth, while contemplating the day of death in an attempt to subdue the evil instinct, as our Sages have recommended: “Let man meditate upon the day of his death:" How dare any mortal man, one who ought to rejoice upon unearthing his own burial plot, proclaim that he is the master of his own life? For, in point of fact, in this life man migrates incessantly from misfortune to even greater anguish.
Now, does this man, who is of such a lowly stature and who will never enjoy a single moment of peace—does such a person imagine that he possesses any form of control or authority? Dare a person for whom nobody could care, who left the womb entirely bare, and who will suffer all his days from hunger—does such a person dare to say that he is wise or that discernment is his birthright?
Birth
Woe unto us for the humiliation that is man — a creature borne of woman, the lowly product of a repugnant drop who twice must pass through the urinary shaft submerged in blood. How dare such a creature establish for himself a name among the wise! Why should he bother to plant fields and to sow vineyards? Does he have any idea how long the days and the years of his life will endure? Rather, man who was, after all, born without the ability to walk or speak or comprehend should simply use this life as a mere preparation. He should forever wonder whether he will live a year or two, or perhaps only another day or two more, and whether his destiny will be that of eternal life or death. For the person who does not cleanse himself of his filth and who rejoices to the sounds of tamborines and drums—such a man deserves nothing more than shame and abuse. Man is born with no knowledge, and he spends all of his pubescent years just screeching and crying; his entire life is exhausted in servile toil, until the day of his death arrives, after which he will not even remember his original departure to this lower realm of existence. What a shame is the great confusion whereby an ugly and painful blemish, namely, this godless earth, is considered by man to be as Mount Moriah. Man is dominated by others all of his life, and he only blasphemes bitterly both in his youth and in his old age, until he dies. How can he thus not be aware, while the breath of life is still within him, of his final destiny?
Marriage
Man is filled with indignity and shame until the day when they will match him with a wife arrives; she too is a repugnant dribble, and even if he happened to have found an unusually good woman, she is never really more than a container filled with manure. Inevitably, bad days will arrive for them both, for there does not exist even one man who enjoys so much as a single hour’s respite from his wife. Rather, all of their days together are spent in feuding, in anguish and worry, pain and sadness; for she shall only add to your mourning, and throughout the days of your meaningless life she will drive you to hoard money and to plant vineyards and to attain celebrity among the intellectuals; and thus shall you do all of your days. She will cause you to forsake your father and your mother and ultimately to desert even your Lord as well, only in order to fill your storage house with silver and gold, and ultimately only in order to bequeath it to those who will survive you. She will dissipate your soul and disperse your wealth, such that day and night neither frost nor heat, neither stormy seas nor deep rivers, neither fields nor deserts, will deter you from heeding her will. And if you do hearken unto her voice, she will certainly lead you in anguish down into Sheol.
The Family
Now, if she honors you by bearing your children, she will then only proceed to shorten your days and years; she will not let you sleep nor even allow your eyelids to rest for a second; for she will increase the burden of your work both at home and in the field; she will bellow at you from all sides with her screeching voice, and your anguish and bickering will be compounded both by her and by the troubles emanating from your household. In the end, you will be oppressed and broken all of your days. Finally, you will be forced to give away, on behalf of your own engaged son, a vast dowry and great amounts of gold from your own pocket. All this only to establish yet further misery for the members of your own household.
So consider with your own good sense what is your real moment of glory? How can you possibly say, “I praise life and the living,” when in fact all of the days of your life are miserable, depressed, diseased, agonizing, and hurtful? And if such is the case in the days of your youth, what will you do about your older years? Those are the days in which “the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain” (Ecclesiastes 12:2). How much worse will it be if you encounter evil days in which bitches, together with their young hounds, will bark at you.
Evil will beset you when you confront the very children whom you nurtured and raised. Then, when evil will come forth from your own household, your own children, the fruit of the womb, will damn and ban you. Then you will surely wonder, “Woe, what have I done?” For you will realize that you have wasted all of your days. Still, you will simply surrender to your children just as one capitulates before mighty heroes, until they ultimately will bring your hoary white head down to hell in misery. This, then, will be the recompense for all of your hard labor.
Disease
And yet, all of this [n1isery] must still be considered by you as the gift of God. For it could still have been much worse, as in the case of a man who does not attain old age and who dries up and loses his strength in his vital years. The day of his death comes suddenly and snatches him away without any warning. You see him one moment, and then suddenly he disappears from the presence of his wife and children and is separated from all of his wealth and property. It is then as if he had never existed at all in this gloomy world; rather, he arrived in darkness and departed in a fog. Such grief is horrible, for there is no remedy for one who dies so suddenly.
It is, however, an even greater affliction when the enlightened man devotes himself so energetically to entirely futile goals. He gives no rest to his eyes, and yet he spends all of his days groping in the dark, much as the blind man fumbles in midday, all in order to attain a negligible end. Nothing will deter a man so driven, neither destruction by day nor frost by night, until he falls into his sickbed afflicted with terrible diseases and miserable suffering all day. From head to foot no relief comes his way. He cries and groans by day, and by night he wails bitterly. The lights of his soul are dimmed, and his sun and moon are darkened. His soul completely detests the very taste or odor of any food, and he deteriorates until his head and arms feel heavy and he cannot even turn from side to side in bed.
His only child is then brought in to see him; he grasps him by the hand and calls out, “My father, my father,” but he is not recognized. He gestures with his fingers and winces with his eyes, but still there is no response. Touching any of this man’s limbs is akin to trying to touch the pupil of his eye.
The Final Moments
Then he comes very close to his demise, and as we know, most failing people soon die. In struts the men of the burial society [hevra kadisha], and they immediately surround his bed, just standing there, waiting for him to die. They stand and wait, and. helplessly they behold his anguish and distress as the flute plays inside of his throat. One of the men holds on to his hand, taking his pulse while at the same time inquiring whether there is sufficient good wood with which to construct the coffin. Another places his hand over the heart of the dying man and declares that he no longer has any vital energy left within him. Yet another one checks his hands, and another his eyelids and pupils, and still another discerns whether his living soul still breathes within his nostrils. Finally, they proclaim: “Behold, his death has arrived! Light the candles and place them at his head!"
The Moment of Death
At this point the Angel of Death appears in the room with his sword drawn in his hand and stands next to the deceased, grabs him by his cloak, and says: “Arise, you bloody creature, and recall the days of your life, filled as they are with dirty blotches and filth; see how you now lie here like an unblemished sacrifice.” Now, when he beholds the Angel of Death looming large before him from earth to heaven with his sword drawn in his hand and staring intensely at him, a great fear grasps him deep in his loins, and his legs give way, and he tightly shuts his eyes and bares his neck like a bull before the slaughterer. The Angel of Death stands over his offering, his heart burning hot like a live coal; he grabs his dagger, closes the window, and contaminates the house.
Once his soul has departed from the place where it was and his corpse remains filled only with humiliation and shame, with his face turning green and his limbs deteriorating, his mouth wide open and his stomach bloated, then do the members of the society take him and place his body upon the ground, where he will lie silently like a stone. They place a pillow or some straw under him. His wife and darling children now come and cover him with black clothes and cry very bitterly, all the while surrounding him like a drove of bees from head to toe. They call out to one another: “Look at your poor father, the apple of our eye, who has gone to his final rest; none shall arouse him now. Just yesterday we recognized him, and suddenly he is no longest His eyes are closed tight, and his mouth is shut; behold how radically different is your father’s face from what it was so recently. He has now gone far away such that you will never again see him.”
His wife approaches him, clothed in her widow’s vestments, and she proclaims: “My husband, oh my husband, why have you so deserted and forsaken me? To whom have you left your own children? Where is your compassion? See how your own progeny who stand before you will become scattered to the earth’s four corners! And children will predecease their parents. Oh, awake you slumberer, when will you arise?” But she will hold her peace when she hears that the Lord has dispatched him to a place from which there is no return. Finally, like a woman in pain wearing the sackcloth for the darling of her youth, she will hold her peace.
Now his lovely daughter will come forth, alone and mournful, her clothing torn, her hair wild, with tears running down her cheeks, crying out loud for her dead father. Thus will she cry and shriek: “My father, my father! How has death come so suddenly upon you? I wish that I had died instead of you and that I had suffered your curse. Who will now tend for your children, and who will comfort them when they cry out like doves? Your children are now left to be orphans. As for me, the Lord has fed me the bitter wormwood; for I know for certain that all of these obligations, will now be thrust upon me. Woe unto the lost days of my youth, for my song has now turned to sadness. Cursed be the day on which I was born, and let the sun no longer shine for me!"
The Burial
While she is still talking, the sexton, that paragon of truth and justice, arrives on the scene. He orders, “Hurry and do the deed:’ He measures the body and goes off to dig the grave while the others prepare the white shrouds. They proceed to dress him like a three-year-old baby, in a blouse and trousers, and even place a belt on his waist and a hat upon his head—this, then, is the sum total of his reward for all of the energy and toil he expended all of his days upon the earth. How pathetic is his shame and disgrace! How is it that he did not consider that this would be his final end; that he would not take it all with him when he died; that nothing would remain except his carcass; that nothing he would accomplish in life would be of any lasting value; and that he would depart barren of all his acquisitions? Even his wife speaks up only to mourn the days of her youth.
His only son now appears and rends his garments and tearfully blurts out: “My father, my father! How can you go securely along your way and thus desert your children? Oh, dear father, now no one will benefit from your labor, and there are none who will take pity upon your children. I am bitter like the wormwood. To whom have you assigned the responsibility for your flock; how scattered they will now become, one here and the other there, one in the north and the other in the south. Alas, my father, where is your compassion? How can you ask me to support them iii my bosom? If you do this to me, why not better take my soul? For death is better for me now than life. I can neither tolerate seeing my own suffering nor stand by to witness the downfall of my home and my family. My brothers and sisters! Let tears pour from your eyes as you behold the great calamity before you, for I cannot possibly bear the onerous burden of your support; who, then, will take pity upon you? Who will support you? My dear father, how can you go from a new house to a primeval one, from a high mountain to a low valley, from an exalted dwelling to a most humble one, froni a good habitation to a rotten one, from a fine abode to a somber warren, from a house of light to a dark domicile, from a mighty tower to the tents of nomads—but how!”
Then the entire family will raise its voice and cry out loud until their throats become scratchy: “Woe unto us on account of our great loss, and for this day of fury when the holy ark has departed from us:’ Then the entire community approaches and takes the body from its house as it lies there like a dried-out piece of wood. They carry the corpse to the cemetery as the family hovers around it like a gaggle of young birds until they reach the meadow of moaning. His wife is still screeching intensely: “It is so bitter for me on your account, my husband. For wherever they take you, there is certainly a great danger."
As they approach the cemetery, there appear before the deceased his relatives and friends whom he knew all of his life. They weep and declare: “Tell us, whom do you seek, and what do you hope to accomplish by letting yourself be buried in the ground? Remember who you are and whence you have come. Consider this: how can you descend from a house of kings and officers into these lowly graves; from an exalted position to the vicinity of vermin. Woe unto you, for once you sat in tranquility, but from this time forth you will dwell in fear and need, deep in the pit of destruction. Cursed be the earth that has opened its mouth and swallowed you in!"
Moral
So consider, you son of man, by what right did you ever swagger upon the earth? Therefore, may you be cursed upon this earth, may thorns and thistles grow underneath you, and may they become as barbs in your eyes and prickles in your side. You thought that you were a wise man, and now look how you lie despondently, rusting and rotting away from your wounds and your pain, and from the pests and lice that tightly surround you all about. Oh, how you have become desolate, cloaked in dishonor and covered with shame. Ultimately, your flesh will succumb to vermin and insects, snakes and scorpions, which will beset you in triumphant throngs to the sounds of musical instruments and voices of song. These pests will penetrate into your guts and cultivate thorns inside your entrails.
Oh, how you — such a precious cache — have fallen into abject desolation! You, lowly man, have deluded yourself into falsely believing that you could soar above the tops of clouds, whereas in fact it was Sheol below that was awaiting you in order to bring your empty arrogance down to hell. Down below you will be enveloped by the insects, which will mass underneath you, and the vermin, which will cover you. How filled was your home with specially selected gold and silver; and now, how you have fallen from heaven, bright morning star; how you have been felled down to earth. You thought in your heart that you would rise to the heavens and establish your seat among the great Sages. But in fact you will be brought down into the inner pits of Sheol. How, then, could you ever have gloated in the material world and bragged of your wealth, wisdom, and bravery. You should have known all along that you were destined to rejoice, together with us, only after your burial.
