The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The Fourth Oracle
Hear, people of Asia and of great-boasting Europe,
all that through my honey-voiced, great mouth
I am about to prophesy, all of it true —
no lying oracle-speaker of Phoebus, whom vain
men have called a god, and lied about their seer;
but of the great God, whom the hands of men did not shape
in the likeness of speechless idols smoothed from stone.
For he has no house, no stone dragged into a temple,
utterly dumb and toothless, a grief and shame to mortals;
but he is one no eye can see from earth, nor measure
with mortal eyes, nor was he shaped by a mortal hand;
he who looks upon all men at once is seen by none;
whose are the murky night and the day and the sun,
the stars and the moon and the fish-filled sea,
and the earth and the rivers and the mouths of ever-flowing springs,
creations for life, and the rains that with them bring forth the fruit of the field,
and trees, and the vine, and the olive.
This God has driven a goad through the depths of my mind,
all that now is for men and all that shall be hereafter,
from the first generation until it reaches the tenth;
to recount exactly; for he himself will bring all to proof
in the fulfilling. So hear all this, O people, from the Sibyl,
pouring forth the true voice from a holy mouth.
Blessed among men will those be upon the earth,
as many as will love and bless the great God
before eating and drinking, trusting in their reverence;
who will renounce all temples once they see them
and altars, vain seats of dumb stones,
and stone-carved images and idols made by hand,
defiled with the blood of living things and with the sacrifices
of four-footed beasts; but they will look to the great glory of one God,
committing no wicked murder, and no thievish
gain trafficking away, which are the most dreadful of deeds,
nor holding shameful desire for another's bed,
[nor for the hateful and detestable outrage against a male].
The manner of their piety and their ways, other men
will never imitate, in their love of shamelessness;
but they will mock them with jeering and laughter,
fools, and in their folly slander them with lies,
for the very deeds of wickedness and evil which they themselves commit.
For the whole race of mortals is unbelieving. But when at last
the judgment of the world and of mortals comes, which God himself
will bring about, judging the impious together with the pious;
and then he will send the impious under darkness into fire,
[and then they will recognize how great was the impiety they wrought];
but the pious will remain upon the life-giving earth,
God giving them his spirit, and life, and grace besides.
But all this will be fulfilled in the tenth generation;
now I will tell what shall be from the first generation onward.