what angel is it that frustrates thee?" And she said to me: "He that in thee[1] is reigning." And I thought that she mocked me, and bade a soldier strike her. But she cried aloud, and said: "I am [subjected] to thee, O king, by the wisdom of God given to thee, and by the angel Joel."
20. So I commanded her to spin the hemp for the ropes used in the building of the house of God; and accordingly, when I had sealed and bound her, she was so overcome and brought to naught as to stand night and day spinning the hemp.
21. And I at once bade another demon to be led unto me; and instantly there approached me the demon Asmodeus[2], bound, and I asked him: "Who art thou?" But he shot on me a glance of anger and rage, and said: "And who art thou?" And I said to him: "Thus punished as thou art, answerest thou me?" But he, with rage, said to me: "But how shall I answer thee, for thou art a son of man; whereas I was born an angel's seed by a daughter of man, so that no word of our heavenly kind addressed to the earthborn can be overweening. Wherefore also my star is bright in heaven, and men call it, some the Wain, and some the dragon's-child. I keep near unto this star. So ask me not many things; for thy kingdom also after a little time is to be disrupted, and thy glory is but for a season. And short will be thy tyranny over us; and then we shall again have free range over mankind, so as that they shall revere us as if we were gods[3], not knowing, men that they are, the names of the angels[4] set over us."
22. And I Solomon, on hearing this, bound him more carefully, and ordered him to be flogged with thongs of ox-hide, and to tell me humbly what was his name and what his business. And he answered me thus: "I am called Asmodeus among mortals, and my business is to plot against the newly wedded, so that they may not know one another. And I sever them utterly by many calamities, and I waste away the beauty of virgin women, and estrange their hearts."
23. And I said to him: "Is this thy only business?" And he answered me: "I transport men into fits of madness and desire, when they have wives of their own, so that they leave them, and go off by- ↑ Or (?) "through thee," ἐν σοί being taken as a hebraism.
- ↑ The particulars given about Asmodeus are clearly drawn from the apocryph of Tobit.
- ↑ Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, and most of the early Fathers have the same account of the origin of polytheism, namely, that demons caused men to regard them as gods.
- ↑ The knowledge of the names of the angels was part of the secret lore of the Essenes, according to Josephus.
