Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 16

¹ Do not long for a brood of worthless children, and take no pleasure in godless sons.

² However many you have, take no pleasure in them, unless the fear of the Lord lives among them.

³ Do not count on their having long life, do not put too much faith in their future; for better have one than a thousand, better die childless than have godless ones.

⁴ One man of sense can populate a city, but the race of lawless men will be destroyed.

⁵ My eyes have seen many such things, my ears have heard things still more impressive.

⁶ Fire will be kindled in a community of sinners; the wrath was kindled in a disobedient nation.

⁷ God did not pardon the giants of old who, confident in their strength, rebelled.

⁸ He did not spare the people with whom Lot lived, whom he abhorred for their pride.

⁹ He had no pity on that people doomed to destruction, who were wiped out in their sins,

¹⁰ nor on the six hundred thousand men on the march who banded together in their obstinacy[*a].

¹¹ Had there been even only one stubborn man, it would have been astonishing if he had escaped unpunished, since mercy and wrath alike belong to the Lord who is mighty to forgive and to pour out wrath.

¹² His mercy is great, but his severity is as great; he judges every man as his deeds deserve:

¹³ the sinner shall not escape with his ill-gotten gains, nor the devout man’s patience go for nothing.

¹⁴ He allows free play to his mercy; yet every man shall be treated as his deeds deserve.

¹⁷ Do not say, ‘I will hide from the Lord, who will remember me up there? I shall certainly not be noticed among so many; what am I in the immensity of creation?’

¹⁸ Why look, the sky and the heavens above the sky, the deep and the earth tremble at his visitation.

¹⁹ The mountains and the base of the earth together quail and tremble when he looks at them.

²⁰ But who bothers his head about such things? Who attempts to understand the way he moves?

²¹ The storm wind itself is invisible, and most of what he does goes undetected.

²² ‘Who will report whether justice has been done? Who will be expecting it? The covenant is far away.’

²³ Such are the thoughts of the man of little sense, the rash misguided man, who loves his illusions.

²⁴ Listen to me, my son, and learn knowledge, and give your whole mind to my words.

²⁵ I will expound discipline to a nicety, and proclaim knowledge with precision.

²⁶ When God created his works in the beginning, he allotted them their portions as soon as they were made.

²⁷ He determined his works for all time, from their beginnings to their distant future. They know neither hunger nor weariness, and they never desert their duties.

²⁸ None has ever jostled its neighbour, they will never disobey his word[*b].

²⁹ And afterwards the Lord looked at the earth, and filled it with his good things.

³⁰ He covered its surface with every kind of animal, and to it they will return.