19
Blot out our iniquities, and do away with our errors, and shew forth thy compassion in this hour.
20
Let thy mercies quickly go before us. Grant us peace, that the cast down and broken hearted may praise thee with their mouth.
21
At that time God, who seeth all things, who is beyond all Holy among the holy, heard that prayer, so suitable; and scourged the man greatly uplifted with scorn and insolence.
22
Shaking him to and fro as a reed is shaken with the wind, he cast him upon the pavement, powerless, with limbs paralyzed; by a righteous judgment deprived of the faculty of speech.
23
His friends and bodyguards, beholding the swift recompense which had suddenly overtaken him, struck with exceeding terror, and fearing that he would die, speedily removed him.
24
When in course of time he had come to himself, this severe check caused no repentance within him, but he departed with bitter threatenings.
25
He proceeded to Egypt, grew worse in wickedness through his before mentioned companions in wine, who were lost to all goodness;
26
and not satisfied with countless acts of impiety, his audacity so increased that he raised evil reports there, and many of his friends, watching his purpose attentively, joined in furthering his will.
27
His purpose was to indict a public stigma upon our race; wherefore he erected a pillar at the tower-porch, and caused the following inscription to be engraved upon it:
28
That entrance to their own temple was to be refused to all those who would not sacrifice; that all the Jews were to be registered among the common people; that those who resisted were to be forcibly seized and put to death;
29
that those who were thus registered, were to be marked on their persons by the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysus, and to be set apart with these limited rights.