John the Baptist, twice Precursor, the second time to the Psalm-praying righteous (and unrighteous?) dead in Hades

     "The prophets and all the righteous [dead] prayed (constantly) to God from [Hades] with unceasing prayers, asking for deliverance from that very dolorous (and) miserable domination of the enemy and from the deepening [(πανεσπέρου)] of th[at] very gloomy darkness.  And one of them said to God, 'Out of the belly of Hades my cry, thou didst hear my voice(; thou didst cast me back into the deep, into the heart of the sea)' [(Jon 2:2-3 =Cant. 6:3)].  And the other:  'Out of the depths I cried to thee, O Lord!  Lord, hear my voice!' [(Ps 130:1)].  And the other:  'Let thy face shine, and we shall be saved!' [(Ps 80:3, 7, & 19)].   And another:  '[Thou] who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth!' [(Ps 80:1)].  Another:  'Stir up thy might, and come to save us!' [(Ps 80:2)].  And another:  'Let thy compassion go speedily before us, O Lord' [(Ps 79:8)].  And the other:  'Deliver my soul from deepest Hades' [(Ps 86:13)].  And another:  'O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades' (Ps 80:3).  And the other:  'Thou dost not give me up to Hades' (Ps 16:10).  And another: 'Let my life rise from corruption towards thee, O Lord my God' [(Jon 2:6? =Cant. 6:7)].
     "Hearing them all, [our] very merciful [Lord] decided to proclaim his love of men not only to the dead of his time and after him, but also to those that hell possessed before his coming and who 'sat in darkness and (in) the shadow of death'.  This is why [our] God and Word on the one hand visited [on earth] the men who were in the flesh with an ensouled flesh, [and] on the other hand illuminated in hell the souls who were without flesh with his own divine and very pure soul, separated from [its] body, but not from [its] divinity," John the Baptist (who preached to the dead as well as to the living, and was thus twice precursor), having been "sent [before him] from the prison of Herod to the prison of the souls of the just and the unjust" to preach "Christ to all those of the tomb".

     Pseudo-Epiphanius, Homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (In Sabbato magno, Homily for the Great and Holy Saturday, Ancient homily on Holy Saturday, The Lord's descent into Hades, On the burial of the divine body, Homily on the burial of Jesus, etc.) 9 & 8, as translated from the French of A. Vaillant, L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ:  Texte vieux-slave, texte grec et traduction française (Zagreb:  1958), 93.  For the helpful footnotes associated with the Greek and Old Slavic (which I have not closely examined), see pp. 54-55.  Cf. Dindorf, p. 20 ll. 32 ff.  The quotations from the Psalms have been taken from (and cited in accordance with) the RSV, but modified in the direction of the French translation of Vaillant, not his Old Slavic and Greek originals.  For an online English translation of the Greek provided by Vaillant, go here.