Wisdom 11

¹ At the hand of a holy prophet[*a] she gave their actions success.

² They journeyed through an unpeopled wilderness and pitched their tents in inaccessible places.

³ They stood firm against their enemies, fought off their foes.

⁴ On you[*b] they called when they were thirsty, and from the rocky cliff water was given them, from hard stone their thirst was quenched.

⁵ Thus, what served to punish their enemies became a benefit for them in their distress.

⁶ You gave them not that ever-flowing source of river water turbid with defiling floods,

⁷ stern answer for their decree of infanticide,[*c] but, against all hope, water in abundance,

⁸ showing by the thirst that then was raging how severely you punished their enemies.

⁹ From their ordeals, which were no more than the reproofs of Mercy, they learned what tortures a sentence of wrath inflicts on the godless;

¹⁰ you tested them indeed, correcting them like a father, but the others you strictly examined, like a severe king who condemns.

¹¹ Near or far away,[*d] they were equally worn down,

¹² double indeed was the grief that seized on them, double the groaning at the memory of the past;

¹³ hearing that what punished them[*e] had set the others rejoicing, they saw the Lord in it,

¹⁴ and for him whom long ago they had cast out, exposed, and later mockingly rebuffed,[*f] they felt only amazement when all was done; the thirst of the virtuous and theirs had worked so differently.

¹⁵ As their foolish and wicked notions led them astray into worshipping mindless reptiles and contemptible beasts, you sent hordes of mindless creatures to punish them

¹⁶ and teach them that the instruments of sin are instruments of punishment.

¹⁷ And indeed your all-powerful hand did not lack means – the hand that from formless matter created the world – to unleash a horde of bears or savage lions on them

¹⁸ or unknown beasts, newly created, full of rage, exhaling fiery breath, ejecting swirls of stinking smoke or flashing fearful sparks from their eyes,

¹⁹ beasts not only able to crush them with a blow, but also to destroy them by their terrifying appearance.

²⁰ But even without these, they could have dropped dead at a single breath, pursued by your justice, whirled away by the breath of your power. But no, you ordered all things by measure, number, weight.

²¹ For your great strength is always at your call; who can withstand the might of your arm?

²² In your sight the whole world is like a grain of dust that tips the scales, like a drop of morning dew falling on the ground.

²³ Yet you are merciful to all, because you can do all things and overlook men’s sins so that they can repent.

²⁴ Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it.

²⁵ And how, had you not willed it, could a thing persist, how be conserved if not called forth by you?

²⁶ You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life,