Melchal. And I heal them." And I said to him: "I am Solomon; when therefore thou wouldst do harm, by whose aid dost thou do it?" But he said to me: "By the angel's, by whom also the third day's fever is lulled to rest." So I questioned him, and said: "And by what name[1]?" And he answered: "That of the archangel Azael." And I summoned the archangel Azael, and set a seal on the demon, and commanded him to seize great stones, and toss them up to the workmen on the higher parts of the Temple. And, being compelled, the demon began to do what he was bidden to do.
34. And I glorified God afresh who gave me this authority, and ordered another demon to come before me. And there came seven spirits[2], females, bound and woven together, fair in appearance and comely. And I Solomon, seeing them, questioned them and said: "Who are ye?" But they, with one accord, said with one voice[3]: "We are of the thirty-three elements of the cosmic ruler of the darkness[4]." And the first said: "I am Deception." The second: "I am Strife." The third: "I am Klothod, which is battle." The fourth: "I am Jealousy." The fifth: "I am Power." The sixth: "I am Error." The seventh: "I am the worst of all, and our stars are in heaven. Seven stars humble in sheen, and all together. And we are called as it were goddesses. We change our place all together, and together we live, sometimes in Lydia, sometimes in Olympus, sometimes in a great mountain."
35. So I Solomon questioned them one by one, beginning with the first, and going down to the seventh. The first said: "I am Deception, I deceive and weave snares here and there. I whet and excite heresies. But I have an angel who frustrates me, Lamechalal."
- ↑ Cp. Acts iv. 7 ἐν ποίᾳ δυνάμει ἢ ἐν ποίῳ ὀνόματι ἐποιήσατε τοῦτο ὑμεῖς; and Peter answers ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Ναζωραίου
- ↑ The Pleiades seem to be referred to. Cp. Job xxxviii. 31, in the Revised Version: "Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades?" They had a malign influence. The grouping of evil spirits by sevens is common in Babylonian and Jewish folk-lore. As examples I may cite the Testamentum of Reuben, ch. 2, and the seven evil spirits of the N. T. Possibly, however, the Seven Planets are here in question; though this is unlikely, for they do not tally with the description given.
- ↑ Rom. xv. 6 has the same phrase, ὁμοθυμαδὸν ἐν ἑπὶ στόματι. For "thirty-three" we should read "thirty-six" elements. Note that later in the Testament these seven spirits are not among the Kosmokrators, a proof that the document before us is a composite one.
- ↑ Paul speaks of the Kosmokrators in Eph. vi. 12: "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness"; πρὸς τοὺς κοσμοκράτορας τοῦ σκότους αἰῶνος τούτου. See Iren. Haer. I. i. 10.
