Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various SourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various Sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends
The fire lasted till the morrow; Satan, without showing himself,
keeping it supplied with fresh fuel. Adam and Eve did not venture to
approach, but recommended themselves to God; and the Evil One, finding
that his plan had failed, let the fire die out and departed.
Adam and Eve slept the following night at the foot of a mountain near
their lost Eden. Satan beholding them, said, “God has made a compact
with Adam, whom he desires to save, but I will slay him, and the earth
shall be mine.”
He therefore summoned his attendant angels, and they dislodged a huge
rock from the mountain and hurled it upon the sleepers. But as this
mass was bounding down the flank of the mountain, and was in mid-air in
one of its leaps, God arrested it above the heads of the sleepers, and
it sheltered them from the dews of night.
Adam and Eve awoke greatly troubled by their dreams, and they asked of
God garments to cover their naked bodies, for they suffered from the
scorching sun by day, and the frost by night. God replied, “Go to the
shore of the sea; you will there find the skins of sheep which have
been devoured by lions: of them make to yourselves raiment.”
Satan heard the words of God, and he outran our first parents, that he
might secure the skins and destroyed them, in the hopes that Adam and
Eve, finding no hides, would doubt God and think that he had failed in
His word. But God fastened Satan in his naked hideousness beside the
skins, immovable, till Adam and Eve arrived, when he addressed them
in these terms: “Behold him who has seduced you; see what has become
of his beauty. After having made you such promises, he was about to
rob you of these hides.” Adam and Eve took the skins and made of them
garments. A few days after, God said to them, “Go to the west till you
arrive at a black land; there you will find food.” They obeyed, and
they saw corn full ripe, and God inspired Adam with knowledge how to
make bread. But not having sickles they tore the corn up by the roots,
and having made a rick of it, they slept, expecting to thrash it out
and grind it on the morrow. But Satan fired this rick and reduced their
harvest to ashes.
Whilst they wept and lamented, Satan came to them as an angel, and
said, “This is the work of your Enemy the Fiend, but God has sent me to
bring you into a field where you will find better corn.”
They followed him, nothing doubting, and he led them for eight days,
and they fainted with exhaustion and were foot-sore. Then he left them
in an unknown land; but God was their protector, He brought them back
to their harvest and restored their rick of corn, and they made bread
and offered to God the first sacrifice.[89]
But enough of this apocryphal work, which contains a string of absurd
tricks played by Satan on our first parents, which are invariably
defeated by God; of these the specimens given above are sufficient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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