|
3.
51
And cast away his head a hundred cubits from his body, and give his body to my slaves that they may bury it. And thou shalt have laid up a great treasure with me.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
52
And then the swordsman did as Haiqar had commanded him, and he went to the king and said to him, 'May thy head live for ever!'
|
|
|
|
|
3.
53
Then Haiqar's wife let down to him in the hiding-place every week what sufficed for him, and no one knew of it but herself.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
54
And the story was reported and repeated and spread abroad in every place of how Haiqar the Sage had been slain and was dead, and all the people of that city mourned for him.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
55
And they wept and said: 'Alas for thee, O Haiqar! and for thy learning and thy courtesy! How sad about thee and about thy knowledge! Where can another like thee be found? and where can there be a man so intelligent, so learned, so skilled in ruling as to resemble thee that he may fill thy place?'
|
|
|
|
|
3.
56
But the king was repenting about Haiqar, and his repentance availed him naught.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
57
Then he called for Nadan and said to him, 'Go and take thy friends with thee and make a mourning and a weeping for thy uncle Haiqar, and lament for him as the custom is, doing honour to his memory.'
|
|
|
|
|
3.
58
But when Nadan, the foolish, the ignorant, the hardhearted, went to the house of his uncle, he neither wept nor sorrowed nor wailed, but assembled heartless and dissolute people and set about eating and drinking. [*1]
|
|
|
|
|
3.
59
And Nadan began to seize the maidservants and the slaves belonging to Haiqar, and bound them and tortured them and drubbed them with a sore drubbing.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
60
And he did not respect the wife of his uncle, she who had brought him up like her own boy, but wanted her to fall into sin with him.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
61
But Haiqar had been cut into the hiding-place, and he heard the weeping of his slaves and his neighbours, and he praised the Most High God, the Merciful One, and gave thanks, and he always prayed and besought the Most High God.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
62
And the swordsman came from time to time to Haiqar whilst he was in the midst of the hiding-place: and Haiqar came and entreated him. And he comforted him and wished him deliverance.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
63
And when the story was reported in other countries that Haiqar the Sage had been slain, all the kings were grieved and despised king Sennacherib, and they lamented over Haiqar the solver of riddles.
|
|
|
|
|
3.
Footnotes ^207:1 Compare this account of Nadan's revelry and his beating of the servants with Matthew XXIV. 48-51 and Luke XII. 43-46. You will see that the language of Ahikar has colored one of our Lord's parables.
|
|
|
|
