Wisdom 17-18

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

17 Great are thy judgments and hard to describe;
therefore uninstructed souls have gone astray.
² For when lawless men supposed that they held the holy nation in their power,
they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night,
shut in under their roofs, exiles from eternal providence.
³ For thinking that in their secret sins they were unobserved
behind a dark curtain of forgetfulness,
they were scattered, terribly^[a] alarmed,
and appalled by specters.
⁴ For not even the inner chamber that held them protected them from fear,
but terrifying sounds rang out around them,
and dismal phantoms with gloomy faces appeared.
⁵ And no power of fire was able to give light,
nor did the brilliant flames of the stars
avail to illumine that hateful night.
⁶ Nothing was shining through to them
except a dreadful, self-kindled fire,
and in terror they deemed the things which they saw
to be worse than that unseen appearance.
⁷ The delusions of their magic art lay humbled,
and their boasted wisdom was scornfully rebuked.
⁸ For those who promised to drive off the fears and disorders of a sick soul
were sick themselves with ridiculous fear.
⁹ For even if nothing disturbing frightened them,
yet, scared by the passing of beasts and the hissing of serpents,
¹⁰ they perished in trembling fear,
refusing to look even at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided.
¹¹ For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by its own testimony;^[b]
distressed by conscience, it has always exaggerated^[c] the difficulties.
¹² For fear is nothing but surrender of the helps that come from reason;
¹³ and the inner expectation of help, being weak,
prefers ignorance of what causes the torment.
¹⁴ But throughout the night, which was really powerless,
and which beset them from the recesses of powerless Hades,
they all slept the same sleep,
¹⁵ and now were driven by monstrous specters,
and now were paralyzed by their souls’ surrender,
for sudden and unexpected fear overwhelmed them.
¹⁶ And whoever was there fell down,
and thus was kept shut up in a prison not made of iron;
¹⁷ for whether he was a farmer or a shepherd
or a workman who toiled in the wilderness,
he was seized, and endured the inescapable fate;
for with one chain of darkness they all were bound.
¹⁸ Whether there came a whistling wind,
or a melodious sound of birds in wide-spreading branches,
or the rhythm of violently rushing water,
¹⁹ or the harsh crash of rocks hurled down,
or the unseen running of leaping animals,
or the sound of the most savage roaring beasts,
or an echo thrown back from a hollow of the mountains,
it paralyzed them with terror.
²⁰ For the whole world was illumined with brilliant light,
and was engaged in unhindered work,
²¹ while over those men alone heavy night was spread,
an image of the darkness that was destined to receive them;
but still heavier than darkness were they to themselves.

18 But for thy holy ones there was very great light.
Their enemies^[d] heard their voices but did not see their forms,
and counted them happy for not having suffered,
² and were thankful that thy holy ones,^[e] though previously wronged, were doing them no injury;
and they begged their pardon for having been at variance with them.^[f]
3 Therefore thou didst provide a flaming pillar of fire
as a guide for thy people’s^[g] unknown journey,
and a harmless sun for their glorious wandering.
⁴ For their enemies^[h] deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness,
those who had kept thy sons imprisoned,
through whom the imperishable light of the law was to be given to the world.

⁵ When they had resolved to kill the babes of thy holy ones,
and one child had been exposed and rescued,
thou didst in punishment take away a multitude of their children;
and thou didst destroy them all together by a mighty flood.
⁶ That night was made known beforehand to our fathers,
so that they might rejoice in sure knowledge of the oaths in which they trusted.
⁷ The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies
were expected by thy people.
⁸ For by the same means by which thou didst punish our enemies
thou didst call us to thyself and glorify us.
⁹ For in secret the holy children of good men offered sacrifices,
and with one accord agreed to the divine law,
that the saints would share alike the same things,
both blessings and dangers;
and already they were singing the praises of the fathers.^[i]
10 But the discordant cry of their enemies echoed back,
and their piteous lament for their children was spread abroad.
¹¹ The slave was punished with the same penalty as the master,
and the common man suffered the same loss as the king;
¹² and they all together, by the one form of death,
had corpses too many to count.
For the living were not sufficient even to bury them,
since in one instant their most valued children had been destroyed.
¹³ For though they had disbelieved everything because of their magic arts,
yet, when their first-born were destroyed, they acknowledged thy people to be God’s son.
¹⁴ For while gentle silence enveloped all things,
and night in its swift course was now half gone,
¹⁵ thy all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne,
into the midst of the land that was doomed,
a stern warrior ¹⁶ carrying the sharp sword of thy authentic command,
and stood and filled all things with death,
and touched heaven while standing on the earth.
¹⁷ Then at once apparitions in dreadful dreams greatly troubled them,
and unexpected fears assailed them;
¹⁸ and one here and another there, hurled down half dead,
made known why they were dying;
¹⁹ for the dreams which disturbed them forewarned them of this,
so that they might not perish without knowing why they suffered.

²⁰ The experience of death touched also the righteous,
and a plague came upon the multitude in the desert,
but the wrath did not long continue.
²¹ For a blameless man was quick to act as their champion;
he brought forward the shield of his ministry,
prayer and propitiation by incense;
he withstood the anger and put an end to the disaster,
showing that he was thy servant.
²² He conquered the wrath^[j] not by strength of body,
and not by force of arms,
but by his word he subdued the punisher,
appealing to the oaths and covenants given to our fathers.
²³ For when the dead had already fallen on one another in heaps,
he intervened and held back the wrath,
and cut off its way to the living.
²⁴ For upon his long robe the whole world was depicted,
and the glories of the fathers were engraved on the four rows of stones,
and thy majesty on the diadem upon his head.
²⁵ To these the destroyer yielded, these he^[k] feared;
for merely to test the wrath was enough.