| 1 Κύριε παντοκράτωρ ὁ θεὸς Ἰσραήλ, ψυχὴ ἐν στενοῖς καὶ πνεῦμα ἀκηδιῶν κέκραγεν πρὸς σέ. 2 ἄκουσον, κύριε, καὶ ἐλέησον, ὅτι ἡμάρτομεν ἐναντίον σου· 3 ὅτι σὺ καθήμενος τὸν αἰῶνα, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀπολλύμενοι τὸν αἰῶνα. 4 κύριε παντοκράτωρ ὁ θεὸς Ἰσραήλ, ἄκουσον δὴ τῆς προσευχῆς τῶν τεθνηκότων Ἰσραὴλ καὶ υἱῶν τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων ἐναντίον σου, οἳ οὐκ ἤκουσαν τῆς φωνῆς κυρίου θεοῦ αὐτῶν καὶ ἐκολλήθη ἡμῖν τὰ κακά. 5 μὴ μνησθῇς ἀδικιῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν ἀλλὰ μνήσθητι χειρός σου καὶ ὀνόματός σου ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τούτῳ· 6 ὅτι σὺ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν, καὶ αἰνέσομέν σὲ, κύριε. 7 ὅτι διὰ τοῦτο ἔδωκας τὸν φόβον σου ἐπὶ καρδίαν ἡμῶν τοῦ ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸ ὄνομά σου, καὶ αἰνέσομέν σὲ ἐν τῇ ἀποικίᾳ ἡμῶν, ὅτι ἀπεστρέψαμεν ἀπὸ καρδίας ἡμῶν πᾶσαν ἀδικίαν πατέρων ἡμῶν τῶν ἡμαρτηκότων ἐναντίον σου. 8 ἰδοὺ ἡμεῖς σήμερον ἐν τῇ ἀποικίᾳ ἡμῶν, οὗ διέσπειρας ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖ εἰς ὀνειδισμὸν καὶ εἰς ἀρὰν καὶ εἰς ὄφλησιν κατὰ πάσας τὰς ἀδικίας πατέρων ἡμῶν, οἳ ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ κυρίου θεοῦ ἡμῶν. | 1 O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, a soul in narrow straits (psyche en stenois) and an exhausted spirit (pneuma akēdiōn) cries out to You! 2 Hear, O Lord, and have mercy, because we have sinned against You; 3 for You sit enthroned forever, while we are perishing forever. 4 O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel (tōn tethnēkotōn Israēl) and of the children of those who sinned against You, who did not listen to the voice of the Lord their God, so that these evils cleaved to us. 5 Do not remember the iniquities of our fathers, but remember Your hand and Your name at this time. 6 For You are the Lord our God, and You, O Lord, we will praise. 7 For because of this You put Your fear into our hearts, so that we would invoke Your name. And we will praise You in our deportation, for we have turned away from our heart all the iniquity of our fathers who sinned against You. 8 Behold, we are today in our deportation, where You have scattered us for a reproach, a curse, and a penalty, according to all the iniquities of our fathers who revolted from the Lord our God. |
| 9 ἄκουε, Ἰσραήλ, ἐντολὰς ζωῆς, ἐνωτίσασθε γνῶναι φρόνησιν. 10 τί ἐστιν Ἰσραήλ, τί ὅτι ἐν γῇ τῶν ἐχθρῶν εἶ, ἐπαλαιώθης ἐν γῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ, 11 συνεμιάνθης τοῖς νεκροῖς, προσελογίσθης μετὰ τῶν εἰς ᾅδου; 12 ἐγκατέλιπες τὴν πηγὴν τῆς σοφίας. 13 τῇ ὁδῷ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰ ἐπορεύθης, κατῴκεις ἄν ἐν εἰρήνῃ τὸν αἰῶνα. 14 μάθε ποῦ ἐστιν φρόνησις, ποῦ ἐστιν ἰσχύς, ποῦ ἐστιν σύνεσις τοῦ γνῶναι ἅμα, ποῦ ἐστιν μακροβίωσις καὶ ζωή, ποῦ ἐστιν φῶς ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ εἰρήνη. — | 9 Hear, O Israel, commandments of life! Give ear to know wisdom (phronēsin). 10 Why is it, O Israel, why is it that you are in the land of your enemies? You have grown old in a foreign land; you are defiled with the dead (synemianthes tois nekrois). 11 You are counted among those in Sheol. 12 You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom! 13 If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in peace forever. 14 Learn where there is wisdom, where there is strength, where there is understanding (synesis), so that you may know at the same time where there is longevity and life, where there is light for the eyes and peace. |
| 15 τίς εὗρεν τὸν τόπον αὐτῆς, καὶ τίς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τοὺς θησαυροὺς αὐτῆς; 16 ποῦ εἰσιν οἱ ἄρχοντες τῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ οἱ κυριεύοντες τῶν θηρίων τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, 17 οἱ ἐν τοῖς ὀρνέοις τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐμπαίζοντες καὶ τὸ ἀργύριον θησαυρίζοντες καὶ τὸ χρυσίον, ᾧ ἐπεποίθεισαν ἄνθρωποι, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν τέλος τῆς κτήσεως αὐτῶν 18 οἱ τὸ ἀργύριον τεκταίνοντες καὶ μεριμνῶντες, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξεύρεσις τῶν ἔργων αὐτῶν 19 ἠφανίσθησαν καὶ εἰς ᾅδου κατέβησαν, καὶ ἄλλοι ἀντανέστησαν ἀντ' αὐτῶν. 20 νεώτεροι εἶδον φῶς καὶ κατῴκησαν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ὁδὸν δὲ ἐπιστήμης οὐκ ἔγνωσαν 21 οὐδὲ συνῆκαν τρίβους αὐτῆς οὐδὲ ἀντελάβοντο αὐτῆς· οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ αὐτῶν πόρρω ἐγενήθησαν. 22 οὐδὲ ἠκούσθη ἐν Χαναὰν οὐδὲ ὤφθη ἐν Θαιμὰν, 23 οὔτε υἱοὶ Ἄγαρ οἱ ἐκζητοῦντες τὴν σύνεσιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, οἱ ἔμποροι τῆς Μερρὰν καὶ Θαιμὰν οἱ μυθολόγοι καὶ οἱ ἐκζητηταὶ τῆς συνέσεως ὁδὸν τῆς σοφίας οὐκ ἔγνωσαν οὐδὲ ἐμνήσθησαν τὰς τρίβους αὐτῆς. | 15 Who has found her place, and who has entered her treasuries? 16 Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lorded it over the beasts upon the earth; 17 those who made sport of the birds of heaven, and who hoarded silver and gold in which humans trust, and whose possessions have no end; 18 those who craft silver and worry over it, whose works are past finding out? 19 They have vanished and gone down to Sheol, and others have risen up in their place. 20 A younger generation has seen the light and inhabited the earth, but they have not known the way of knowledge, 21 nor understood her paths, nor laid hold of her. Their children have strayed far from their path. 22 She has not been heard of in Canaan, nor has she been seen in Teman. 23 Neither the sons of Hagar, who search for understanding on the earth, nor the merchants of Merran and Teman, nor the myth-tellers (mythologoi) and seekers of understanding, have known the way of wisdom or remembered her paths. |
| 24 ὦ Ἰσραήλ, ὡς μέγας ὁ οἶκος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐπιμήκης ὁ τόπος τῆς κτήσεως αὐτοῦ· 25 μέγας καὶ οὐκ ἔχει τελευτήν, ὑψηλὸς καὶ ἀμέτρητος. 26 ἐκεῖ ἐγεννήθησαν οἱ γίγαντες οἱ ὀνομαστοὶ οἱ ἀπ' ἀρχῆς, γενόμενοι εὐμεγέθεις, ἐπιστάμενοι πόλεμον. 27 οὐ τούτους ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεὸς οὐδὲ ὁδὸν ἐπιστήμης ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς· 28 καὶ ἀπώλοντο παρὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν φρόνησιν, ἀπώλοντο διὰ τὴν ἀβουλίαν αὐτῶν. — | 24 O Israel, how great is the house of God, and how vast is the place of His possession! 25 It is great and has no end; high and immeasurable. 26 There the giants (gigantes) were born, famous from the beginning, massive in size, experts in war. 27 God did not choose these, nor did He give them the way of knowledge. 28 And they perished because they did not have wisdom; they perished through their own lack of counsel (aboulian). |
| 29 τίς ἀνέβη εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἔλαβεν αὐτὴν καὶ κατεβίβασεν αὐτὴν ἐκ τῶν νεφελῶν; 30 τίς διέβη πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ εὗρεν αὐτὴν καὶ οἴσει αὐτὴν χρυσίου ἐκλεκτοῦ, 31 οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ γινώσκων τὴν ὁδὸν αὐτῆς οὐδὲ ὁ ἐνθυμούμενος τὴν τρίβον αὐτῆς 32 ἀλλὰ ὁ εἰδὼς τὰ πάντα γινώσκει αὐτήν, ἐξεῦρεν αὐτὴν τῇ συνέσει αὐτοῦ· ὁ κατασκευάσας τὴν γῆν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα χρόνον, ἐνέπλησεν αὐτὴν κτηνῶν τετραπόδων· 33 ὁ ἀποστέλλων τὸ φῶς καὶ πορεύεται, ἐκάλεσεν αὐτό, καὶ ὑπήκουσεν αὐτῷ τρόμῳ· 34 οἱ δὲ ἀστέρες ἔλαμψαν ἐν ταῖς φυλακαῖς αὐτῶν καὶ εὐφράνθησαν, 35 ἐκάλεσεν αὐτοὺς καὶ εἶπον πάρεσμεν, ἔλαμψαν μετ' εὐφροσύνης τῷ ποιήσαντι αὐτούς. 36 οὗτος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν, οὐ λογισθήσεται ἕτερος πρὸς αὐτόν. 37 ἐξεῦρεν πᾶσαν ὁδὸν ἐπιστήμης καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτὴν Ἰακὼβ τῷ παιδὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ Ἰσραὴλ τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ ὑπ' αὐτοῦ· 38 μετὰ τοῦτο ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ὤφθη καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις συνανεστράφη. | 29 Who has gone up into heaven and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds? 30 Who has crossed over the sea and found her, and will bring her for choice gold? 31 There is no one who knows her way or considers her path. 32 But He who knows all things knows her; He found her by His understanding—He who prepared the earth for eternal time and filled it with four-footed beasts; 33 He who sends forth the light, and it goes, and who called it, and it obeyed Him with trembling. 34 The stars shone in their watches and rejoiced. 35 He called them, and they said, “We are present!” They shone with joy for the One who made them. 36 This is our God; no other shall be compared to Him. 37 He discovered every way of knowledge and gave her to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved. 38 Afterward, she appeared upon earth and lived among humans (en tois anthrōpois synanestraphē). |
1. The Anatomy of Despair: Akēdia and Physical Compression (v. 1)
The chapter initiates its petition with a highly evocative clinical vocabulary of suffering:
The prayer stems from a psyche en stenois ("a soul in narrow straits") and a pneuma akēdiōn ("an exhausted, listless spirit").
Akēdia is a heavy word; it implies a crushing numbness, spiritual exhaustion, and existential boredom. By pairing the spatial compression of stenois (tightness, claustrophobic pressure) with the psychological collapse of akēdia, the text captures the physiological sensation of prolonged captivity. The exile is experienced as a physical tightening around a dying interior life.
2. Liturgical Shock Value: The Prayer of the Dead (v. 4–11)
The text blurs the line between historical life and physical death to underscore the severity of the exile:
In verse 4, the author asks God to hear the prayer tōn tethnēkotōn Israēl ("of the dead of Israel"). While this can rhetorically refer to deceased ancestors, verse 10 applies this directly to the living exiles: “You are defiled with the dead; you are counted among those in Sheol.”
To be displaced from the Promised Land is handled as a literal descent into the underworld. The exiles are walking ghosts; their existence in Babylon is functionally identical to being a corpse rotting in the dirt. The author uses this dramatic category-collapse to shock God into acting before this metaphorical death becomes permanent.
3. The Myth-Tellers and Materialist Deficit (v. 16–23)
The text includes a brilliant critique of foreign empires, mocking both their political elites and their vaunted intellectuals:
It groups brutal rulers who hunt beasts and hoard infinite gold alongside the Eastern wise men—the mythologoi ("myth-tellers" or folklorists) of Teman and Canaan (v. 23).
The author points out that despite their economic supremacy and philosophical systems, these cultures are completely blind to phronēsis (true wisdom). They construct vast tracking networks for commerce and legend, yet they cannot locate the basic coordinates of cosmic reality. Their systems are ephemeral; they simply vanish and drop into Sheol (v. 19), leaving nothing but structural instability behind.
4. Primordial Deconstruction: The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Giants (v. 26–28)
Baruch pivots to a fascinating piece of mythological history regarding oi gigantes ("the giants", v. 26), directly evoking the primeval world of Genesis 6:1–4:
These ancient figures are described as exceptionally large and masterfully trained in warfare (epistamenoi polemon). Yet, the author notes that God completely bypassed them.
This is a polemic against the cult of raw physical force and military machinery (implicitly targeting empires like Babylon or Hellenistic dynasties). The giants possessed immense physical scale and geopolitical leverage, but they suffered from aboulia ("lack of counsel/folly", v. 28) and simply evaporated from history. Survival is thus revealed to be an intellectual and spiritual property, not a military one.
5. Cosmic Subservience vs. Incarnational Inhabitation (v. 33–38)
The poem culminates in a magnificent display of divine sovereignty over creation, contrasting physical nature with the unique destiny of Israel:
Elements like light and the stars are personified as eager servants. When God calls them, they tremble (v. 33) and yell out, “Paremen!” ("We are present!", v. 35), shining like soldiers at their posts.
Yet, this transcendent Architect does not keep Wisdom locked in the sky. Verse 38 contains an extraordinary theological climax: Wisdom epi gēs ōphthē kai en tois anthrōpois synanestraphē ("appeared upon earth and lived/interacted among humans"). Wisdom is explicitly historicized, localized, and embedded within the tangible framework of the Torah given to Jacob. The stars must stay in their distant watches (v. 34), but the ultimate architectural blueprint of reality has actually walked on the earth.