Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

106 JEHUDAH HALEVI

74

ELIJAH AND ELISHAH

Our portents linger—
Where is the God of Elijah?¹

The son who hearkeneth unto His words,
Crying of violence out of his sorrows,
Saith, Where is the Rock and His Names?²
A thousand years He hath not answered him.3

The Tishbite decreed for Ephraim,
And closed up the heavens;
At his word came fire and water down;
i Kings 18. On Mount Carmel—there he proved Him.

i Kings17,10-16.He spake of the jar and the cruse,

And therein set a blessing flowering;
i Kings17,1724־.He restored the dead from the pit—

Who hath heard such things and who hath
seen them?

11 Kings 1,9-14. He caused the burning of the captains and
their fifties;
He fasted forty days with their nights;

¹ See Mai. 3,23.

² Another rendering may possibly be שנותיו for שמותיו.
See Ps. 61,7.

ג Jehudah Halevi lived about 1000 years after the
destruction.