Wisdom 18

¹ But for your holy ones all was great light. The Egyptians who could hear their voices, though not see their shapes, called them fortunate because they had not suffered too;

² they thanked them for doing no injury in return for previous wrongs and asked forgiveness for their past ill-will.

³ In contrast to the darkness, you gave your people a pillar of blazing fire, to guide them on their unknown journey, a mild sun for their ambitious migration.

⁴ But well they deserved, those others, to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness, for having kept in captivity your children, by whom the imperishable light of the Law was to be given to the world.

⁵ As they had resolved to kill the infants of the holy ones, and as of those exposed only one child had been saved, to punish them, you made away with thousands of their children, and destroyed them all together in the wild waves.

⁶ That night had been foretold to our ancestors, so that, once they saw what kind of oaths they had put their trust in, they would joyfully take courage.

⁷ This was the expectation of your people, the saving of the virtuous and the ruin of their enemies;

⁸ for by the same act with which you took vengeance on our foes you made us glorious by calling us to you.

⁹ The devout children of worthy men offered sacrifice[*a] in secret and this divine pact they struck with one accord: that the saints would share the same blessings and dangers alike; and forthwith they had begun to chant the hymns of the fathers.[*b]

¹⁰ In echo came the discordant cries of their enemies and the pitiful sound rang out of those lamenting their children.

¹¹ The same punishment struck slave and master alike, commoner and king suffered the selfsame loss.

¹² All had innumerable dead alike, struck by the same death. There were not enough living left to bury them, for in a moment the flower of their race had perished.

¹³ They who, thanks to their sorceries, had been wholly incredulous, at the destruction of their first-born now acknowledged this people to be son of God.

¹⁴ When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run the half of her swift course,

¹⁵ down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-powerful Word; into the heart of a doomed land the stern warrior leapt. Carrying your unambiguous command like a sharp sword,

¹⁶ he stood, and filled the universe with death; he touched the sky, yet trod the earth.

¹⁷ Immediately, dreams and gruesome visions overwhelmed them with terror, unexpected fears assailed them.

¹⁸ Hurled down, some here, some there, half dead, they proclaimed why it was they were dying;

¹⁹ for the dreams that had troubled them had warned them why beforehand, so that they might not perish without knowing why they had been struck down.

²⁰ But the virtuous, too, felt the touch of death; a multitude was struck down in the wilderness. But the wrath did not last long,

²¹ for a blameless man[*c] hastened to champion their cause. Wielding the weapons of his sacred office, prayer and atoning incense, he took his stand against the Anger and put an end to the calamity, showing that he was indeed your servant.

²² He conquered the bitter plague, not by physical strength, not by force of arms; but by word he prevailed over the Punisher, by recalling the oaths made to the Fathers, and the covenants.

²³ Already the corpses lay piled in heaps, when he interposed and beat back the wrath and cut off its approach to the living.

²⁴ For the whole world was on his flowing robe,[*d] the glorious names of the Fathers on the four rows of stones, and your Majesty on the diadem on his head.

²⁵ From these the Destroyer recoiled, he was afraid of these; a mere taste of the wrath had been enough.