Chapter 64
1 Tell me, you three young men—remember me, I beg, that I too together with you may obtain the same lot, that of testimony—who was the fourth with you, who walked in the midst of the furnace and as with one mouth hymned God with you? Describe to us his form and beauty, so that we too, seeing him made flesh, may recognize him.
2 Who was it who so orderly recounted all creation through your mouth, so that you left out nothing of the things that are and that have come to be?
3 Spending a single hour in the furnace, you were being taught the fashioning of the creation; for the Word was with you and speaking through you, He who also knows the fashioning of the creation.
4 For wonderful, beloved, are the things uttered through hymns by the three young men in the furnace: how they left out none of the created things, lest any be reckoned as something free or self-governing, but, having included and named all things together—the heavenly and the earthly and those beneath the earth—they showed all to be servants of God, who created all things through the Word, so that no one might boast that any of the creatures is unbegotten or without beginning.
5 Let them cease, therefore, the dogmatists of the heresiarchs, who, naming powers and aeons and emanations, devise empty monstrous tales, so that through strange words they may easily deceive men and destroy them, and compel them to worship the things that are not as though they were—fashioning yet other images in the hearts of men, just as Nebuchadnezzar did.
6 For the Scripture, having included all things together—whether principalities or authorities or powers or thrones or dominions or every name that is named—subjected them all and made them servants to God, that as Lord and Master they should hymn and bless and glorify the One who made them.
7 And for this reason Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, after declaring all the things that are, added, saying: “Bless Him, all you who revere the Lord, the God of gods; sing and give thanks, for His mercy endures forever.”