ODE 28.

This Ode is a musical gem.

1 As the wings of doves over their nestlings; and the mouth of their nestlings towards their mouths.
2 So also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart:
3 My heart is delighted and exults: like the babe who exults in the womb of his mother:
4 I believed; therefore I was at rest; for faithful is He in whom I have believed:
5 He has richly blessed me and my head is with Him: and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar;
6 For I am ready before destruction comes; and I have been set on His immortal pinions:
7 And He showed me His sign: forth and given me to drink, and from that life is the spirit within me, and it cannot die, for it lives.
8 They who saw me marvelled at me, because I was persecuted, and they supposed that I was swallowed up: for I seemed to them as one of the lost;
9 And my oppression became my salvation; and I was their reprobation because there was no zeal in me;
10 Because I did good to every man I was hated,
11 And they came round me like mad dogs, who ignorantly attack their masters,
12 For their thought is corrupt and their understanding perverted.
13 But I was carrying water in my right hand, and their bitterness I endured by my sweetness;
14 And I did not perish, for I was not their brother nor was my birth like theirs.
15 And they sought for my death and did not find it: for I was older than the memorial of them;
16 And vainly did they make attack upon me and those who, without reward, came after me:
17 They sought to destroy the memorial of him who was before them.
18 For the thought of the Most High cannot be anticipated; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.