2714 verses about Death

Bury me decently, and your mother with me. Don’t stay at Nineveh. See, my child, what Aman did to Achiacharus that nourished him, how out of light he brought him into darkness, and all the recompense that he made him. Achiacharus was saved, but the other had his recompense, and he went down into darkness. Manasses gave alms, and escaped the snare of death which he set for him; but Aman fell into the snare, and perished.

And now, my children, consider what alms does, and how righteousness delivers.” While he was saying these things, he gave up the ghost in the bed; but he was one hundred fifty eight years old. Tobias buried him magnificently.

When Anna died, he buried her with his father. But Tobias departed with his wife and his sons to Ecbatana to Raguel his father-in-law,

and he grew old in honor, and he buried his father-in-law and mother-in-law magnificently, and he inherited their possessions, and his father Tobit’s.

He died at Ecbatana of Media, being one hundred twenty seven years old.

Before he died, he heard of the destruction of Nineveh, which Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus took captive. Before his death, he rejoiced over Nineveh.

He took Arphaxad in the mountains of Ragau, struck him through with his darts, and utterly destroyed him, to this day.

They decreed to destroy all flesh which didn’t follow the word of his mouth.

Their slain will fill their valleys and brooks, and the river will be filled with their dead until it overflows.

For with them we will burn them up. Their mountains will be drunken with their blood. Their plains will be filled with their dead bodies. Their footsteps will not stand before us, but they will surely perish, says king Nebuchadnezzar, lord of all the earth; for he said, ‘The words that I have spoken will not be in vain.’

You will not perish until you are destroyed with them.

They will be consumed with famine, they and their wives and their children. Before the sword comes against them they will be laid low in the streets where they dwell.

Their young children were discouraged. The women and the young men fainted for thirst. They fell down in the streets of the city, and in the passages of the gates. There was no longer any strength in them.

For it is better for us to be made a plunder to them. For we will be servants, and our souls will live, and we will not see the death of our babies before our eyes, and our wives and our children fainting in death.

Her husband was Manasses, of her tribe and of her family. He died in the days of barley harvest.

For he stood over those who bound sheaves in the field, and the heat came upon his head, and he fell on his bed, and died in his city Bethulia. So they buried him with his fathers in the field which is between Dothaim and Balamon.

Judith was a widow in her house three years and four months.

And now, that my lord be not defeated and frustrate of his purpose, and that death may fall upon them, their sin has overtaken them, wherewith they will provoke their God to anger, whenever they do wickedness.

Judith said to him, “Who am I, that I should contradict my lord? For whatever would be pleasing in his eyes, I will do speedily, and this will be my joy to the day of my death.”

She struck twice upon his neck with all her might, and took away his head from him,

tumbled his body down from the bed, and took down the canopy from the pillars. After a little while she went out, and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid;

Then she took the head out of the bag and showed it, and said to them, “Behold, the head of Holofernes, the chief captain of the army of Asshur, and behold, the canopy, in which he laid in his drunkenness. The Lord struck him by the hand of a woman.

But before you do these things, summon Achior the Ammonite to me, that he may see and know him that despised the house of Israel, and that sent him to us, as it were to death.

And they called Achior out of the house of Ozias; but when he came, and saw the head of Holofernes in a man’s hand in the assembly of the people, he fell upon his face, and his spirit failed.

But as soon as the morning arose, they hanged the head of Holofernes upon the wall, and every man took up his weapons, and they went forth by bands to the ascents of the mountain.

But when no one listened to him, he opened it, and went into the bedchamber, and found him cast upon the threshold dead, and his head had been taken from him.

Her sandal ravished his eye. Her beauty took his soul prisoner. The scimitar passed through his neck.

The sons of ladies pierced them through, and wounded them as fugatives’ children. They perished by the battle of my Lord.

Many desired her, and no man knew her all the days of her life, from the day that Manasses her husband died and was gathered to his people.

She increased in greatness exceedingly; and she grew old in her husband’s house, to one hundred five years, and let her maid go free. Then she died in Bethulia. They buried her in the cave of her husband Manasses.

The house of Israel mourned for her seven days. She distributed her goods before she died to all those who were nearest of kin to Manasses her husband, and to those who were nearest of her own kindred.

There was no one that made the children of Israel afraid any more in the days of Judith, nor a long time after her death.

And he gave him the copy of the writing that was published in Susa concerning their destruction, to show to Esther; and told him to charge her to go in and entreat the king, and to beg him for the people, remembering, said he , the days of your low estate, how you were nursed by my hand: because Haman who holds the next place to the king has spoken against us for death. Do you call upon the Lord, and speak to the king concerning us, to deliver us from death.

And in the city Susa the Jews killed five hundred men:

including Pharsannes, and Delphon and Phasga,

the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha the Bugaean, the enemy of the Jews, and they plundered their property on the same day:

and the number of them that perished in Susa was rendered to the king.

And he permitted it to be so done; and he gave up to the Jews of the city the bodies of the sons of Haman to hang.

Court not death in the error of your life; Neither draw upon yourselves destruction by the works of your hands:

Because God made not death; Neither delights he when the living perish:

For he created all things that they might have being: And the generative powers of the world are healthsome, And there is no poison of destruction in them: Nor has Hades royal dominion upon earth,

For righteousness is immortal:

But ungodly men by their hands and their words called death to them: Deeming him a friend they consumed away, And they made a covenant with him, Because they are worthy to be of his portion.

For they said within themselves, reasoning not aright, Short and sorrowful is our life; And there is no healing when a man comes to his end, And none was ever known that gave release from Hades.

Because by mere chance were we born, And hereafter we will be as though we had never been: Because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, And while our heart beats reason is a spark,

Which being extinguished, the body will be turned into ashes, And the spirit will be dispersed as thin air;

And our name will be forgotten in time, And no man will remember our works; And our life will pass away as the traces of a cloud, And will be scattered as is a mist, When it is chased by the beams of the sun, And overcome by the heat thereof.

For our alloted time is the passing of a shadow, And our end retreats not; Because it is fast sealed, and none turns it back.

Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered:

Let us see if his words be true, And let us try what shall befall in the ending of his life.

Let us condemn him to a shameful death; For he will be visited according to his words.

But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, And those who are of his portion make trial thereof.

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, And no torment will touch them.

In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died; And their departure was accounted to be their hurt,

And their journeying away from us to be their ruin: But they are in peace.

For even if in the sight of men they be punished, Their hope is full of immortality;

For if they live long, they will be held in no account, And at the last their old age will be without honor.

And if they die quickly, they will have no hope, Nor in the day of decision will they have consolation.

Better than this is childishness with virtue; For in the memory of virtue is immortality: Because it is recognized both before God and before men.

For even if these put forth boughs and flourish for a season, q1 Yet, standing unsure, they will be shaken by the wind, And by the violence of winds they will be rooted out.

Their branches will be broken off before they come to maturity, and their fruit will be useless, Never ripe to eat, and fit for nothing.

But a righteous man, though he die before his time, will be at rest.

(For honorable old age is not that which stands in length of time, Nor is its measure given by number of years:

Being made perfect in a little while, he fulfilled long years;

For his soul was pleasing to the Lord: Therefore hurried he out of the midst of wickedness.

But a righteous man that is dead will condemn the ungodly that are living, And youth that is quickly perfected the many years of an unrighteous man’s old age;

For the ungodly will see a wise man’s end, And will not understand what the Lord purposed concerning him, And for what he safely kept him:—

They will see, and they will despise; But them the Lord will laugh to scorn. And after this they will become a dishonored carcase, And a reproach among the dead forever:

Those things all passed away as a shadow, And as a message that runs by:

As a ship passing through the billowy water, Whereof, when it is gone by, there is no trace to be found, Neither pathway of its keel in the billows:

Or as when a bird flieth through the air, No token of her passage is found, But the light wind, lashed with the stroke of her pinions, And tore asunder with the violent rush of the moving wings, is passed through, And afterwards no sign of her coming is found therein:

Or as when an arrow is shot at a mark, The air disparted closeth up again immediately, So that men know not where it passed through:

So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be; And of virtue we had no sign to show, But in our wickedness we were utterly consumed.

Because the hope of the ungodly man is as chaff carried by the wind, And as foam vanishing before a tempest; And is scattered as smoke is scattered by the wind, And passes by as the remembrance of a guest that waits but a day.

I myself also am mortal, like to all, And am sprung from one born of the earth, the man first formed,

But all men have one entrance into life, and a like departure.

For a corruptible body weighs down the soul, And the earthy frame lies heavy on a mind that is full of cares.

But when an unrighteous man fell away from her in his anger, He perished himself in the rage wherewith he killed his brother.

For if on those who were enemies of your servants and due to death You did take vengeance with so great heedfulness and indulgence, Giving them times and place whereby they might escape from their wickedness;

But miserable were they, and in dead things were their hopes, Who called them gods which are works of men’s hands, Gold and silver, wrought with careful are, and likenesses of animals, Or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand.

Yes for health he calls upon that which is weak, And for life he implores that which is dead, And for aid he supplicateth that which has least experience. And for a good journey that which can’t so much as move a step,

For in the old time also, when proud giants were perishing, The hope of the world, taking refuge on a raft, Left to the race of men a seed of generations to come, Your hand guiding the helm.

For by the vaingloriousness of men they entered into the world, And therefore was a speedy end devised for them.

For a father worn with untimely grief, Making an image of the child quickly taken away, Now honored him as a god which was then a dead man, And delivered to those that were under him mysteries and solemn rites.

No longer do they guard either life or purity of marriage, But one brings upon another either death by treachery, or anguish by adulterate offspring.

And also, laboring to an evil end, he mouldeth a vain god out of the same clay, He who, having but a little before been made of earth, After a short space goes his way to the earth out of which he was taken, When he is required to render back the soul which was lent him.

His heart is ashes, And his hope of less value than earth, And his life of less honor than clay:

But, being mortal, he makes a dead thing by the work of lawless hands; For he is better than the objects of his worship, Forasmuch as he indeed had life, but they never.

For even when terrible raging of wild beasts came upon your people, And they were perishing by the bites of crooked serpents, Your wrath continued not to the uttermost;

For you have authority over life and death, And you lead down to the gates of Hades, and lead up again.

But though a man may kill by his wickedness, Yet the spirit that is gone forth he turns not again, Neither gives release to the soul that Hades has received.

For that which was not marred by fire, When it was simply warmed by a faint sunbeam melted away;

For while they thought that they were unseen in their secret sins, They were sundered one from another by a dark curtain of forgetfulness, Stricken with terrible awe, and sore troubled by spectral forms.

they perished for very trembling, Refusing even to look on the air, which could on no side be escaped.

But they, all through the night which was powerless indeed, And which came upon them out of the recesses of powerless Hades, All sleeping the same sleep,

So then every man, whoever it might be, sinking down in his place, Was kept in ward shut up in that prison which was barred not with iron:

For whether he were a husbandman, or a shepherd, Or a labourer whose toils were in the wilderness, He was overtaken, and endured that inevitable necessity, For with one chain of darkness were they all bound.

While over them alone was spread a heavy night, An image of the darkness that should afterward receive them; But yet heavier than darkness were they to themselves.

Yes, all the people together, under one form of death, Had with them corpses without number; For the living were not sufficient even to bury them, Since at a single stroke their nobler offspring was consumed.

For while they were disbelieving all things by reason of the enchantments, Upon the destruction of the firstborn they confessed the people to be God’s son.