He is God!
Thou seest me, O my God, on this lofty mountain; the sublime
and supreme threshold; the shelter of every great one and the refuge of all the
glorious and noble.
Verily, the youths whose hearts were burning with the fire
of the love of God in the past ages have taken shelter therein—the meeting
place of the prophets, the refuge of his holiness Elijah, the shelter of
Isaiah. The spirit of God, Jesus, the Christ—upon Him be greeting and
praise!—passed over it, and in the Supreme Threshold, pressed by the feet of
the Lord of Hosts.
O Lord, this is a mountain to which Thou hast given the name
Carmel in the Torah. And thou hast attributed it to Thyself in the innermost
heart of the tablets and scriptures.
O Lord, verily, I invoke Thee in this Supreme Threshold,
under the wing of the gloomy nights; pray to Thee with throbbing heart and
flowing tears, imploring Thee, supplicating between Thy hands and cry, O my
Lord, verily, the fire of battles is raging in the valleys, hills and streams,
and the fire of war is burning even under the seas and high in the air, in
destruction and devastation. The earth is enveloped by its own fires and the
seas are encompassed by its storms, thunderbolts and floods.
O Lord, the souls are stifling, the death rattle is in their
throats, the earth quakes and has become so small that even the birds are
frightened in their nests and the animals terrified in their lairs and caves.
We hear only the sighs of the maidens and the cries of the
orphans, the moaning of the mothers, the tears of the fathers because of false
reports. We see only tears flowing from every bereaved mother and the heart of
every father, bereft of sons, burning. Towns are being devastated, people are
perishing, the children are made orphans and the women are becoming widows. And
this is only because of our heedlessness of Thy commemoration and our
deprivation of Thy love. Verily, we have been occupied with ourselves. The
intoxication of passion seized us; we have taken the road of heedlessness and
blindness; have abandoned the path of guidance and have chosen the path of
obstinacy and forgotten the commandments of the ancient scriptures. We have
forsaken the exhortations in the preserved tablets and parchments—the great
verses.
