2461 verses about Righteousness

For you have a treasure of good works laid up with the Most High, but it shall not be showed you until the last times.

The third order, they see the witness which he that fashioned them bears concerning them, that while they lived they kept the law which was given them in trust.

And I answered and said, if I have found favor in your sight, show further to me your servant whether in the day of judgment the just will be able to intercede for the ungodly or to entreat the Most High for them,

so never shall anyone pray for another in that day, neither shall one lay a burden on another, for then shall all bear every one his own righteousness or unrighteousness.

and Hezekiah for the people in the days of Sennacherib: and many for many?

If therefore now, when corruption is grown up, and unrighteousness increased, the righteous have prayed for the ungodly, wherefore shall it not be so then also?

intemperance is at an end, infidelity is cut off, but righteousness is grown, and truth is sprung up.

And that the glory of the Most High shall defend them which have led a pure life, whereas we have walked in the most wicked ways of all?

Yes, you have brought it up in your righteousness, and nurtured it in your law, and corrected it with your judgement.

O look not upon the sins of your people; but on those who have served you in truth,

Regard not the doings of those who deal wickedly, but of those who have kept your covenants in affliction.

Think not upon those that have walked feignedly before you; but remember them which have willingly known your fear.

For if you have a desire to have mercy upon us, then shall you be called merciful, to us, namely, that have no works of righteousness.

For the just, which have many good works laid up with you, shall for their own deeds receive reward.

For in truth there is no man among those who are born, but he has dealt wickedly; and among them that have lived there is none which have not done amiss.

For in this, O Lord, your righteousness and your goodness shall be declared, if you be merciful to them which have no store of good works.

but I will rejoice over the framing of the righteous, their pilgrimage also, and the salvation, and the reward, that they shall have.

For you come far short that you should be able to love my creature more than I. But you have brought yourself full near to the unrighteous. Let this never be.

Yet in this shall you be admirable to the Most High;

in that you have humbled yourself, as it becomes you, and have not judged yourself worthy to be among the righteous, so as to be much glorified.

Moreover they have trodden down his righteous,

And therefore be you no longer curious how the ungodly shall be punished; but inquire how the righteous shall be saved, they whose the world is, and for whom the world was created.

For, behold, I sow my law in you, and it shall bring forth fruit in you, and you⌃ shall be glorified in it forever.

He has seen that your way is right: for that you sorrowest continually for your people, and make great lamentation for Sion.

For you are blessed above many, and with the Most High are called by name, like as but few.

And I said, O Lord that bear rule, if I have found favor in your sight, and if I am justified with you above many others, and if my prayer indeed be come up before your face;

And the lion, whom you saw rising up out of the wood, and roaring, and speaking to the eagle, and rebuking her for her unrighteousness, and all her words which you have heard;

this is the anointed one, whom the Most High has kept to the end [of days, who shall spring up out of the seed of David, and he shall come and speak] to them and reprove them for their wickedness and unrighteousness, and shall heap up before them their contemptuous dealings.

But those that be left behind of your people are those who are found within my holy border.

Now therefore set your house in order, and reprove your people, comfort the lowly among them, and instruct such of them as be wise, and now renounce the life that is corruptible,

Then was the land, even the land of Sion, given you for a possession: but you⌃ yourselves, and your fathers, have done unrighteousness, and have not kept the ways which the Most High commanded you.

And forasmuch as he is a righteous judge, he took from you for a while the thing that he had given you.

For after death shall the judgement come, when we shall live again: and then shall the names of the righteous be manifest, and the works of the ungodly shall be declared.

I will hold my peace no more as touching their wickedness, which they profanely commit, neither will I suffer them in these things, which they wickedly practise: behold, the innocent and righteous blood cries to me, and the souls of the righteous cry out continually.

Just as a right honest and virtuous woman hates a harlot,

so shall righteousness hate iniquity, when she decketh herself, and shall accuse her to her face, when he comes that shall defend him that diligently searcheth out every sin upon earth.

For yet a little while, and iniquity shall be taken away out of the earth, and righteousness shall reign over us.

For reason is necessary to every one as a step to science: and more especially does it embrace the praise of prudence, the highest virtue.

For their virtues, then, it is right that I should commend those men who died with their mother at this time in behalf of rectitude; and for their honors, I may count them happy.

Reasoning is, then, intellect accompanied by a life of rectitude, putting foremost the consideration of wisdom.

And He gave a law to this mind, by living according to which it will maintain a temperate, and just, and good, and manly reign.

But he, though parched with thirst, reasoned that a draught reputed of equal value to blood, would be terribly dangerous to his soul.

And when many had been seized, a foremost man of the assembly, a Hebrew, by name Eleazar, a priest by family, by profession a lawyer, and advanced in years, and for this reason known to many of the king’s followers, was brought near to him.

And indeed, were our law (as you suppose) not truly divine, and if we wrongly think it divine, we should have no right even in that case to destroy our sense of religion.

And it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we render what is due; and it teaches us piety, so that we worship the one only God becomingly.

but you shall not have this cause of laughter against me;

nor will I transgress the sacred oaths of my forefathers to keep the law.

Mouth! you shall not pollute my old age, nor the full stature of a perfect life.

My fathers shall receive me pure, not having quailed before your compulsion, though to death.

And first, they stripped the old man, adorned as he was with the comeliness of piety.

for it were irrational, if having lived up to old age in all truth, and having scrupulously guarded our character for it, we should now turn back,

Thus speaking, the holy man departed, noble in his torments, and even to the agonies of death resisted in his reasoning for the sake of the law.

The reasoning of our father Eleazar, like a first-rate pilot, steering the vessel of piety in the sea of passions,

in no way shifted the rudder of piety till it sailed into the harbour of victory over death.

Not so has ever a city, when besieged, held out against many and various machines, as did that holy man, when his pious soul was tried with the fiery trial of tortures and rackings, move his besiegers through the religious reasoning that shielded him.

O priest worthy of the priesthood! you did not pollute your sacred teeth; nor make your appetite, which had always embraced the clean and lawful, a partaker of profanity.

O harmonizer with the law, and sage devoted to a divine life!

You, father, have gloriously established our right government by your endurance; and making of much account our service past, prevented its destruction, and, by your deeds, have made credible the words of philosophy.

O aged man of more power than tortures, elder more vigorous than fire, greatest king over the passions, Eleazar!

so, Eleazar, the descendant of Aaron, wasted away by the fire, did not give up his reasoning.

O blessed old age, and reverend hoar head, and life obedient to the law, which the faithful seal of death perfected.

If, then, an old man, through religion, despised tortures even to death, confessedly religious reasoning is ruler of the passions.

since what person, walking religiously by the whole rule of philosophy, and believing in God,

and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his passion?

Fear, young men, and the righteousness which you⌃ worship will be merciful to you if you err from compulsion.

For they were well aware of the sufferings, and masters of the pains. So that as soon as the tyrant had ceased counselling them to eat the unclean, they altogether with one voice, as from the same heart said:

O tyrant, counsellor of law-breaking, do not, hating us as you do, pity us more than we pity ourselves.

For we through this ill-treatment and endurance shall bear off the rewards of virtue.

O most accursed tyrant, and enemy of heavenly justice, and cruel-hearted, I am no murderer, nor sacrilegious man, whom you thus ill-usest; but a defender of the Divine law.

And although the framework of his bones was now destroyed the high-minded and Abrahamic youth did not groan.

But, as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings, saying

Imitate me, O kindred, nor ever desert your station, nor abjure my brotherhood in courage: fight the holy and honorable fight of religion;

Thinkest you not, most cruel of all tyrants, that you are now tortured more than I, finding your overweening conception of tyranny conquered by our perseverance in behalf of our religion?

For I lighten my suffering by the pleasures which are connected with virtue.

We, O accursed tyrant, suffer this for the sake of Divine education and virtue.

By the blessed death of my kindred, and the eternal punishment of the tyrant, and the glorious life of the pious, I will not repudiate the noble brotherhood.

I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?

But this is worthy of honors, not torments;

A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my kindred.

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion towards God.

But you shall groan according to your deserts for having slain without cause the champions of virtue.

If then, the seven kindred despised troubles even to death, it is confessed on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the passions.

so that seven-towered right-reasoning of the young men, securing the harbour of religion, conquered the intermperance of passions.

For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying,

Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

For being educated in the same law, and practising the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other.

For a like ardour for what is right and honorable increased their fellow-feeling towards each other.

For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed to death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

For they were both just and temperate, and manly, and high-minded, and fond of their kindred, and so fond of their mother that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.

Nor, should I die, shall I have a son to bury me. But with such a lament as this the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none of them.

For it were disgraceful that this old man should endure pains for the sake of righteousness, and that you who are younger should be afraid of the tortures.

And the righteous Daniel was cast to the lions; and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, were slung out into a furnace of fire; yet they endured through God.

For it is unreasonable that they who know religion should not stand up against troubles.

Not so gracious does the moon appear with the stars in heaven, as you are established honorable before God, and fixed in the firmament with your sons who you did illuminate with religion to the stars.