The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
shall crash together into one, into a shape utterly desolate.
For all the stars will fall from heaven into the sea,
and all the souls of men will gnash with their teeth,
burning in a river and in brimstone and in the onrush of fire
on a raging floor, and ash will cover everything.
And then all the elements of the world will be left widowed,
air, earth, sea, light, sky, days, nights;
and no longer will the countless birds fly in the air,
no swimming creatures will swim at all any more in the sea,
no laden ship will voyage upon the waves,
no guiding oxen will plow the field,
no rustling of trees beneath the gales; yet everything together
will melt into one and be sifted out pure.
But when the undying messengers of the immortal God
Barakiel, Ramiel, Uriel, Samiel, and Azael,
themselves knowing all the evils each man wrought before,
shall lead the souls of men out of the murky darkness
all of them to judgment, before the tribunal of God,
the great immortal one; for he alone is undying,
the Almighty himself, who will be judge of mortals;
and then to those below souls and spirit and voice
the heavenly one will give, and bones fitted
with joints of every kind, flesh and sinews . . .
and veins and skin about the flesh, and hair as before,
immortally knit together, and breathing, set in motion,
the bodies of earth-dwellers will rise up in a single day.
And then, of unyielding and unbreakable adamant
the monstrous bolts of the gates and the unforged doors of Hades,
Uriel the great angel, bursting them, will straightway cast down,
and he will lead to judgment all the many-mourned forms
of phantoms, above all of the primeval Titans
and of the Giants, and as many as the flood took,
and as many as the wave of the sea destroyed in the deep,
and as many as beasts and reptiles and birds
feasted upon, all these he will summon to the tribunal;
and again those whom the flesh-devouring fire destroyed in flame,
these too, gathering them, he will set before the tribunal of God.
And when he has raised up the dead, dissolving their fate,
and Sabaoth Adonai, the high-thundering one, is seated
upon the heavenly throne, and sets up a great pillar,
he himself, the undying one, will come on a cloud to the undying one,
in glory, Christ, with his blameless messengers,
and will sit at the right hand of the Great One, judging from the tribunal
the life of the pious and the ways of impious men.
Moses too will come, the great friend of the Most High,
putting on flesh again; and Abraham himself, the great one, will come,
Isaac and Jacob, Joshua, Daniel and Elijah,
Habakkuk and Jonah, and those whom the Hebrews killed.
And those after Jeremiah he will destroy utterly at the tribunal,
the Hebrews being judged, so that they may receive the wages of their deeds