The unbelievers have raised up war against the Lord of heaven and earth — dry leaves against the mountain wind! While the wind murmurs, the rustling of the leaves is heard. But when the wind rises to a roar, the leaves will be scattered across marshes and highways, and abandoned, leaf by leaf they will lose their voice and cleave to the mud.
For the unbeliever feels strong in the crowd, and gives out his voice. In solitude, fear and weakness devour him. But the believer, when he is in the crowd, shares the weakness of the crowd, while in solitude he shares might with Thee; therefore solitude is his strength and his song.
Against whom do you raise war, O senseless ones? Is it against Him, who with His thought kindles suns, and drives flocks of suns and stars with His staff? Truly, less laughable is the war that willows declare upon the thunders, and water loaches upon dread condors.
You have forged weapons with which you cut down one another, and then you have risen up to wage war with those same weapons against Him. But behold, He can walk upon your swords as upon soft moss. Nor does He fear your fortresses any more than your graves.
You have invented petty words, with which you revile and demean one another, and do you think that with your petty words you will demean Him, who alone knows what a word is and whence it comes? Behold, He fashioned the vocal cords in your throat, and spread out the lungs beneath the cords, and cut open the mouth, and bound the tongue within the mouth. Truly, less laughable is a revolt of flutes in the shop against their master, and of strings on the harp against the hand that strikes them.
You have declared war not on God but on yourselves, and God looks with pity upon your suicide. Dry leaves proclaim war on iron wheels!
The longer you wage war against Him, the more unrestrainably He withdraws Himself from you. The Lord withdraws His strength from you, His beauty, His health, His wisdom, and His blessedness. This is the manner of warfare of the Lord Most High with His adversaries.
What remains of you, O warlike fighters, when the Lord draws out of you that which is His? Does not weakness remain, and ugliness, and sickness, and senselessness, and misfortune? The Lord will take nothing from you of that which is yours. And yours is weakness. And when He takes back His might, which you misuse, there will remain to you your weakness of the grave, which is neither for use nor for misuse.
The Lord will wrench His beauty out of you, and the frogs will flee headlong from your ugliness.
The Lord will wrench His health out of you, and your blood will turn to pus, and you will be an odor pleasing to worms, an odor at which cities will shut their gates.
The Lord will return His wisdom to Himself, and you in your senselessness will rush through the groves and quarrel with the caves.
His blessedness and His peace the Lord will recall to Himself, and at your unrest the springs will take fright and flee; and from your misfortune the vine on the hillside will wither, and the earth in the field will return its fruit back to the earth.
Such is the manner of warfare of the Lord Most High with His adversaries.
Like a child, He is powerless to do evil. And He does not repay evil with evil, for He is too poor in evil. But He only gathers up His good gifts and departs with them from him who gnashes his teeth at Him. And the Lord leaves the unbelievers to themselves. And they decay like worm-eaten wood, out of which the sap has gone, and through whose rottenness worms roam in search of food, as through an abandoned house.
So it is also with a people that declares war on the Giver of Life.
I said to my people — remember: such is the victory of the Giver of Life, and such is the defeat of the godless.