In the night when we had punished those foolish persons in the house of God, in the early morning of the ninth of the month of Tybi, while they were confined and bound because we had decided to make those unclean ones strangers to the abodes of Christ, I saw the following while I was asking the Most High, the Lord of All, whether it was right to leave them in these congregations or to pluck out their root from them.

Behold, a man who took the form of an official who had been sent by someone greater than himself entered through the doors of these abodes without knocking, while another one followed him as if he were subordinate to that man. He grabbed hold of me as I was going along in the streets of these abodes in distress over those pestilent persons. He began to raise his hand against me so as to do battle with me, acting as if he were someone who worried about those persons. I too fought against him, so that I might choke him with the thing that was around his neck and on his shoulders, and I was saying these words: “I'm not at all afraid, nor am I disturbed.” I asked him, “What are you? Why are you hiding and have not made yourself known? If you are a spirit or an angel that has come from God, I too am his servant, and even if you persist (in fighting), I will not persist. So will you tell me, if you have been sent, whether it's they who have sinned against God or it's we who have sinned against him? For we're considering whether to leave them among us. Otherwise, I won't let you go; rather, I'll fight against you even more.”

While I was saying these and other things, he wrestled with me, wanting to escape, and I wrestled with him and prevailed against him and over him.