Their wives are foolish and their children evil; their offspring are accursed.

But children of adulterers will not come to maturity, and the offspring of an unlawful union will perish.

For children born of unlawful unions are witnesses of evil against their parents when God examines them.

Why have they been numbered among the children of God? And why is their lot among the holy ones?

give me the wisdom that sits by your throne, and do not reject me from among your children.

their merciless slaughter of children, and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood. These initiates from the midst of a bloody revelry,

so that the land most precious of all to you might receive a worthy colony of the children of God.

God’s Lessons for Israel

Through such works you have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins.

For if you punished with such great care and indulgence the enemies of your children and those deserving of death, granting them time and opportunity to give up their wickedness,

with what strictness you have judged your children, to whose ancestors you gave oaths and covenants full of good promises!

Therefore, as though to children who cannot reason, you sent your judgment to mock them.

When he prays about possessions and his marriage and children, he is not ashamed to address a lifeless thing. For health he appeals to a thing that is weak;

For whether they kill children in their initiations or celebrate secret mysteries or hold frenzied revels with strange customs,

But your children were not conquered even by the fangs of venomous serpents, for your mercy came to their help and healed them.

For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children, and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to suit everyone’s liking.

so that your children, whom you loved, O Lord, might learn that it is not the production of crops that feeds humankind but that your word sustains those who trust in you.

For their enemies deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness, those who had kept your children imprisoned, through whom the imperishable light of the law was to be given to the world.

The Death of the Egyptian Firstborn

When they had resolved to kill the infants of your holy ones, and one child had been abandoned and rescued, you in punishment took away a multitude of their children, and you destroyed them all together by a mighty flood.

For in secret the holy children of good people offered sacrifices and with one accord agreed to the divine law, so that the holy ones would share alike the same things, both blessings and dangers, and already they were singing the praises of the ancestors.

But the discordant cry of their enemies echoed back, and their piteous lament for their children was spread abroad.

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.

God Guides and Protects His People

For the whole creation in its nature was fashioned anew, complying with your commands, so that your children might be kept unharmed.