He knows thee, as the beast knows thee.

[iirochka]

Need your help again for my translation!
A crazy guy is killing a gay boy who intruded into his house and keeps shouting out some quotes or quasi quotes from the Bible.
Here's this piece:

"He was talking straight to God. 'He knows thee, as the beast knows thee. As thou hast no mouth to hear (sic!) not lips to speak nor sign of righteousness'.

There's probably no sense at all but still it must be somehow translated. Could you please paraphrase the first sentence somehow? Thanks a lot!

[smorodina]

Privet, iirochka. I ass-u-me that you're Russian from your other question! In the first line the word 'straight' means the same as 'directly', so you'd get something like: Он говорил прямо Богу.

In case you're not familiar with it, the words thou and thee are old singular forms of 'you' which have died out. They used to be used exactly like ты and тебя in Russian. If you have any more problems let us know!

[iirochka]

Smorodina, thanks a lot! Sorry, I knew about thee and thou. My problem is in understanding the whole sense of the sentence. Who knows whom? Is "thee" God? And "he" - the boy this crazy guy is killing? And what sense does it all make? Please, help again!!

[smorodina]

Logically, if he's talking to God, the 'He' should refer to the boy and 'thee' to God. This would be in line with the normal practice of refering to God using 'thee'. When I first read it, however, I thought 'thee' was the boy.  But why would he be saying God had no sign of righteousness? You're right, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Can you quote a little more? What is it from?

[iirochka]

It's from Manchester Slingback by Nicholas Blincoe...
Actually the guy saying it was really out of his mind so probably I'm wrong trying to find any sense there and making you do it too! Think, I'll just translate it as it is... Thanks a lot anyway!

[jno]

don't think it's from the Bible. There's a beast in Revelation (it might have meant Nero; 666 is the number of...) - so I think you're right that this is quasi-scriptural babbling.