Wisdom 4

¹ Better to have no children yet to have virtue, since immortality perpetuates its memory and God and men both think highly of it.

² Present, we imitate it, absent, we long for it; crowned, it holds triumph through eternity, having striven for blameless prizes and emerged the victor.

³ But the swarming brood of the godless shall bring no advantage; offspring of bastard stock, it will never strike deep roots, never put down firm foundations.

⁴ Branch out for a time they may; but, frailly rooted, they will sway in the wind, be torn up by the violence of the storm;

⁵ hardly grown, their branches will be snapped off, their fruit be useless, too unripe to eat, fit for nothing.

⁶ For children begotten of unlawful intercourse witness, when God judges them, to the wrong their parents did.

⁷ The virtuous man, though he die before his time, will find rest.

⁸ Length of days is not what makes age honourable, nor number of years the true measure of life;

⁹ understanding, this is man’s grey hairs, untarnished life, this is ripe old age.

¹⁰ He has sought to please God, so God has loved him; as he was living among sinners, he has been taken up.

¹¹ He has been carried off so that evil may not warp his understanding or treachery seduce his soul;

¹² for the fascination of evil throws good things into the shade, and the whirlwind of desire corrupts a simple heart.

¹³ Coming to perfection in so short a while, he achieved long life;

¹⁴ his soul being pleasing to the Lord, he has taken him quickly from the wickedness around him. Yet people look on, uncomprehending; it does not enter their heads

¹⁵ that grace and mercy await the chosen of the Lord, and protection, his holy ones.

¹⁶ The virtuous man who dies condemns the godless who survive, and youth’s untimely end the protracted age of the wicked.

¹⁷ These people see the wise man’s ending without understanding what the Lord has in store for him or why he has taken him to safety;

¹⁸ they look on and sneer, but the Lord will laugh at them.

¹⁹ Soon they will be corpses without honour, objects of scorn among the dead for ever. The Lord will dash them down headlong, dumb. He will tear them from their foundations, they will be utterly laid waste, anguish will be theirs, and their memory shall perish.

²⁰ They will come trembling to the reckoning of their sins, and their crimes, confronting them, will accuse them.