Chapter 5
(21).
While Satan and Hades were thus speaking to each
other, there was a great voice like thunder, saying: Lift up your
gates, O ye rulers; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates; and the
King of glory shall come in.1943
When
Hades heard, he said to
Satan: Go forth, if thou art able, and
withstand him.
Satan therefore went forth to the outside.
Then
Hades says to his
demons:
Secure well and strongly the
gates
of
brass and the bars of
iron, and attend to my bolts, and stand in
order,
1944
and see
to everything; for if he
come in here, woe will
seize us.
The forefathers having heard this, began all to
revile him, saying: O all-devouring and insatiable! open, that
the King of glory may come in. David the prophet says: Dost
thou not know, O blind, that I when living in the world prophesied this
saying: Lift up your gates, O ye rulers? Hesaias
said: I, foreseeing this by the Holy Spirit, wrote: The
dead shall rise up, and those in their tombs shall be raised, and those
in the earth shall rejoice.1945
And where,
O
death, is thy
sting? where, O
Hades, is thy
victory?
1946
There came, then, again a voice saying: Lift
up the gates. Hades, hearing the voice the second time, answered
as if forsooth he did not know, and says: Who is this King of
glory? The angels of the Lord say: The Lord strong and
mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.1947
And
immediately with these words the brazen
gates were shattered, and the
iron bars broken, and all the dead who had been bound came out of the
prisons, and we with them. And the King of glory came in in the
form of a man, and all the dark places of Hades were lighted
up.
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