ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
The bird, flying, cleaves the air with long clapping, and shakes the breezes with empty movements of its wings; and when for a long time it grazed the waves with wearied wings, and no place granted the longed-for rest, it seeks again its accustomed enclosure from the surveyed sea. The elder then gathers it, received in his hands, within, perceiving that no lands had appeared through the waters. Meanwhile the sea, moving itself with vast mass, forsaking worldly things, was returning into the ancient chaos. The lofty peaks at last begin first to put forth their summits, after which the slender mountains grow thick.
But truly when the shores girded the ancient sea, and sacred Ocean, gathered into its known bounds, content, swallowed the gliding rivers in its wonted channel, and set bounds to all the streams, and their own trenches shut in the torrents on every side, the dry lands shone free, the waters withdrawn. Then, an interval of time interposed, bringing forth the raven, the elder desires to know, and questions the empty world. When the bird, with outstretched wings, seeks the bright air, seeing corpses heaped upon the crowded lands, it settles upon the flesh, and, soon forgetting to return, it left its gentle ruler in the common seat. So, O Jew, you know not to keep faith with your master; so, sent away, you love the flesh; so no grace is ever repaid to the Guardian of life and to the Lord.
With wandering mind, so loosed, you go away; so you have broken the covenants of the law and violated the first pact, O faithless one. When, by the lapse of time, the elder concluded that the sluggish raven could by now have well enough returned to the enclosure, ignorant of the cause of its slow return and delay, fearing lest perchance the returning water had consumed it, faltering with entangled wings, and joined it to all the perishing, straightway he sends forth the white dove from its seat. She, mindful of the command, seeks the fields in swift flight, and, seeing the branch of the peace-bearing green olive, plucks it, and bears it back to the ark in her beak. By such a token the simple envoy confirmed the covenant, and the pious man thus learned that the world was clean.
The full circle was turning the completed year, in which the happy enclosure held all breathing things, when the father, the bars removed with saws, opens the drawn bolts, and begins to restore the long-unaccustomed sun to those shut in, that seeds might return to the worn-out world. Yet before the just man bids them wander scattered, of the single ones out of seven which he had long taken care to shut in clean, with sons and daughters-in-law alike summoned, arranging them upon an altar built of turf, he offers sacrifice, kindling holy fires first upon these altars. While very many bodies are burned in great flames and the numerous victim raises rich smoke, a sweet odor touched the glad heaven beyond the ether, and the first sacrifice of the cleansed world was received. Then, mingled with the sacred fire, this voice thunders forth.
'Thus far let the infected world have drawn its contagions; let it suffice that wickedness has reigned; cleansed by washing, let the earth shine perpetually, and let the elements keep their restored countenances; let not the worldly mass, troubled by any further evils, fall asunder. You also, whom life saved in the time of death, and, keeping you untouched, defended from every mishap, lead a secure age with the laws kept; and you, the head of the race, with fruitful seed scatter offspring, that it may fill the widely spread world, restore the destroyed number, and rule over the world. Nay, the animals too shall yield fertile increase, which yet, subdued, shall serve in the ancient order; moreover, from this time on, there shall no longer be a reigning flood upon the lands to crush all flesh. The one thing that shall be shall be shown by one sign.'
'Nor shall sins behold the like slaughter repeated; and if there be crime, another terror shall not be lacking.' So, swearing, the Father hallowed one baptism, so that, as the world was once washed by purging waters, the guilty could not hope for a second laving. Scarcely with three parts of the sky completed was the ray descending, bent toward its setting, when by chance, commanded to touch a remote cloud beneath the eastern pole, it put forth a sign struck out from the moistened air, and the bow flashed—which now the Greeks call the daughter of Thaumas, and which poets in Roman speech name Iris. When the hanging moisture has felt the slanting sun, it sends forth doubtful colors with varied splendor:
nor could you number them, so do the doubtful circles, mixed with light, mock the sight with their diverse faces—green sapphire, spotted, dark blue, white; it draws purple from the cloud, gleaming light from the sun, brightness from the sky, and takes black from the earth; and yet these things, which consist of separated elements, you would think so diverse that you may perceive concord. This form God grants the bow to be as a sign to trembling mortals, promising clear weather from the cloud, and that heaven owes no more perils to the lands. Now, whoever you are who desire to keep true salvation, you shall look up to that sign which these signs prefigure. For Christ, the giver of life, sent such things before, and by a doubled substance gave the Savior. In the flesh taken on earth from the radiant Virgin there is inherent a natural splendor from the paternal source:
and a certain mediator in the midst, in the lofty ether, varied by manifold gift yet radiant in all, shows the life-giving bow of the sacred pledge. Behold this one in your heart, whoever, washed in baptism, go forth free to heaven with your faults perishing. For 'this form of the law,' says the Apostle, 'the washing, shall save you,' when in the time of ancient Noah he described the eight souls shut in by the timbers. He compares the gift given; you, keeping it, love the gift, bearing it with vows and prayers, longing for it with weepings, lest sins return to you, lest the drowned rise again, lest the dead arise, lest the vanquished rebel, lest perils prevail after the crime is washed away—and fear the flame, since now the water is no longer at hand.