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[THE DREAM-VISIONS. First Dream-Vision on the Deluge.]
[1] And now, my son Methuselah, I will show thee all my visions which I have seen, recounting them before thee,
[2] Two visions I saw before I took a wife, and the one was quite unlike the other: the first when I was learning to write: the second before I took thy mother, (when) I saw a terrible vision. And regarding them I prayed to the Lord,
[3] I had laid me down in the house of my grandfather Mahalalel, (when) I saw in a vision how the heaven collapsed and was borne off and fell to the earth,
[4] And when it fell to the earth I saw how the earth was swallowed up in a great abyss, and mountains were suspended on mountains, and hills sank down on hills, and high trees were rent from their stems, and hurled down and sunk in the abyss,
[5] And thereupon a word fell into my mouth, and I lifted up (my voice) to cry aloud, and said: The earth is destroyed,
[6] And my grandfather Mahalalel waked me as I lay near him, and said unto me: Why dost thou cry so, my son, and why dost thou make such lamentation?
[7] And I recounted to him the whole vision which I had seen, and he said unto me: A terrible thing hast thou seen, my son, and of grave moment is thy dream-vision as to the secrets of all the sin of the earth: it must sink into the abyss and be destroyed with a great destruction,
[8] And now, my son, arise and make petition to the Lord of glory, since thou art a believer, that a remnant may remain on the earth, and that He may not destroy the whole earth,
[9] My son, from heaven all this will come upon the earth, and upon the earth there will be great destruction,
[10] After that I arose and prayed and implored and besought, and wrote down my prayer for the generations of the world, and I will show everything to thee, my son Methuselah,
[11] And when I had gone forth below and seen the heaven, and the sun rising in the east, and the moon setting in the west, and a few stars, and the whole earth, and everything as +He had known+ it in the beginning, then I blessed the Lord of judgement and extolled Him because He had made the sun to go forth from the windows of the east, +and he ascended and rose on the face of the heaven, and set out and kept traversing the path shown unto him.
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