BOOK I

Therefore, I wander in the desert,
My thoughts and intentions waver.
You, who gave comfort to the sorrowful
By granting Seth the third son of Adam and Eve in place of Abel,
To be the lineage of the first-created
And the patriarch of a good race,
Dispel, O Lord, also from me
The mourning of one who has lost his children.
These are the remnants of wisdom,
Born as children of active labor.
And cause to grow in me again
The incorruptible seed of the Word,
The light-born understanding
Of angelic and heavenly things.
Let me not be like the sons of Seth
Who desired the daughters of Cain the first murderer.
But rather like the patriarch Enos son of Seth,
Who hoped in the One first of all.
And like the blameless Enoch a figure taken by God to heaven,
Who was translated into paradise,
Having inherited the ancestral state
By keeping the commandment.
But what shall I profit from these,
Since I am not like them?
For I do not follow their paths,
Nor do I ascend in my mind to heaven.