Wisdom of Solomon 16–19: Your All-Powerful Word Leaped from Heaven": The Exodus Told Again
Scripture: World English Bible
For this cause, they were deservedly punished through creatures like those which they worship,and tormented through a multitude of vermin.Instead of this punishment, you, giving benefits to your people,prepared quails for food,a delicacy to satisfy the desire of their appetite,to the end that your enemies, desiring food,might for the hideousness of the creatures sent among them,loathe even the necessary appetite;but these, your people, having for a short time suffered lack,might even partake of delicacies.For it was necessary that inescapable lack should come upon those oppressors,but that to these it should only be showed how their enemies were tormented.For even when terrible raging of wild beasts came upon your people,and they were perishing by the bites of crooked serpents,your wrath didn’t continue to the uttermost;but for admonition were they troubled for a short time,having a token of salvationto put them in remembrance of the commandment of your law;
for he who turned toward it was not saved because of that which was seen,but because of you, the Savior of all.Yes, and in this you persuaded our enemiesthat you are he who delivers out of every evil.For the bites of locusts and flies truly killed them.No healing for their life was found,because they were worthy to be punished by such things.But your children weren’t overcome by the very fangs of venomous dragons,for your mercy passed by where they were and healed them.For they were bitten to put them in remembrance of your oracles,and were quickly saved, lest, falling into deep forgetfulness,they should become unable to respond to your kindness.For truly it was neither herb nor poultice that cured them,but your word, O Lord, which heals all people.For you have authority over life and death,and you lead down to the gates of Hades, and lead up again.But though a man kills by his wickedness,he can’t retrieve the spirit that has departedor release the imprisoned soul.
But it is not possible to escape your hand;for ungodly men, refusing to know you, were scourged in the strength of your arm,pursued with strange rains and hails and relentless storms,and utterly consumed with fire.For, what was most marvelous,in the water which quenches all things, the fire burned hotter;for the world fights for the righteous.For at one time the flame was restrained,that it might not burn up the creatures sent against the ungodly,but that these themselves as they looked might see that they were chased by the judgment of God.At another time even in the midst of water it burns more intensely than fire,that it may destroy the produce of an unrighteous land.Instead of these things, you gave your people angels’ food to eat,and you provided ready-to-eat bread for them from heaven without toil,having the virtue of every pleasant flavor,and agreeable to every taste.For your nature showed your sweetness toward your children,while that bread, serving the desire of the eater,changed itself according to every man’s choice.But snow and ice endured fire, and didn’t melt,that people might know that fire was destroying the fruits of the enemies,burning in the hail and flashing in the rains;and that this fire, again, in order that righteous people may be nourished,has even forgotten its own power.For the creation, ministering to you, its maker,strains its force against the unrighteous for punishmentand in kindness, slackens it on behalf of those who trust in you.Therefore at that time also, converting itself into all forms,it ministered to your all-nourishing bounty,according to the desire of those who had need,that your children, whom you loved, O Lord, might learnthat it is not the growth of crops that nourishes a man,but that your word preserves those who trust you.For that which was not destroyed by fire,melted away when it was simply warmed by a faint sunbeam,that it might be known that we must rise before the sun to give you thanks,and must pray to you at the dawning of the light;for the hope of the unthankful will melt as the winter’s hoar frost,and will flow away as water that has no use.
For your judgments are great, and hard to interpret;therefore undisciplined souls went astray.For when lawless men had supposed that they held a holy nation in their power,they, prisoners of darkness, and bound in the fetters of a long night,kept close beneath their roofs,lay exiled from the eternal providence.For while they thought that they were unseen in their secret sins,they were divided from one another by a dark curtain of forgetfulness,stricken with terrible awe, and very troubled by apparitions.For neither did the dark recesses that held them guard them from fears,but terrifying sounds rang around them,and dismal phantoms appeared with unsmiling faces.And no power of fire prevailed to give light,neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illuminate that gloomy night;but only the glimmering of a self-kindled fire appeared to them, full of fear.In terror, they considered the things which they sawto be worse than that sight, on which they could not gaze.The mockeries of their magic arts were powerless, now,and a shameful rebuke of their boasted understanding:For those who promised to drive away terrors and disorders from a sick soul,these were sick with a ludicrous fearfulness.For even if no troubling thing frighted them,yet, scared with the creeping of vermin and hissing of serpents,they perished trembling in fear,refusing even to look at the air, which could not be escaped on any side.For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a coward thing,and, being pressed hard by conscience, always has added forecasts of the worst.For fear is nothing else but a surrender of the help which reason offers;and from within, the expectation of being lessprefers ignorance of the cause that brings the torment.But they, all through the night which was powerless indeed,and which came upon them out of the recesses of powerless Hades,sleeping the same sleep,now were haunted by monstrous apparitions,and now were paralyzed by their soul’s surrendering;for sudden and unexpected fear came upon them.So then whoever it might be, sinking down in his place,was kept captive, shut up in that prison which was not barred with iron;for whether he was a farmer, or a shepherd,or a laborer whose toils were in the wilderness,he was overtaken, and endured that inescapable sentence;for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.Whether there was a whistling wind,or a melodious sound of birds among the spreading branches,or a measured fall of water running violently,or a harsh crashing of rocks hurled down,or the swift course of animals bounding along unseen,or the voice of wild beasts harshly roaring,or an echo rebounding from the hollows of the mountains,all these things paralyzed them with terror.For the whole world was illuminated with clear light,and was occupied with unhindered works,while over them alone was spread a heavy night,an image of the darkness that should afterward receive them;but to themselves, they were heavier than darkness.But for your holy ones there was great light.Their enemies, hearing their voice but not seeing their form,counted it a happy thing that they had not suffered,yet for that they do not hurt them, though wronged by them before, they are thankful;and because they had been at variance with them, they begged for pardon.Therefore you provided a burning pillar of fire,to be a guide for your people’s unknown journey,and a harmless sun for their glorious exile.For the Egyptians well deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned by darkness,they who had imprisoned your children,through whom the incorruptible light of the law was to be given to the race of men.
After they had taken counsel to kill the babes of the holy ones,and when a single child had been abandoned and saved to convict them of their sin,you took away from them their multitude of children,and destroyed all their army together in a mighty flood.Our fathers were made aware of that night beforehand,that, having sure knowledge, they might be cheered by the oaths which they had trusted.Salvation of the righteous and destruction of the enemies was expected by your people.For as you took vengeance on the adversaries,by the same means, calling us to yourself, you glorified us.For holy children of good men offered sacrifice in secret,and with one consent they agreed to the covenant of the divine law,that they would partake alike in the same good things and the same perils,the fathers already leading the sacred songs of praise.But the discordant cry of the enemies echoed back,and a pitiful voice of lamentation for children was spread abroad.Both servant and master were punished with the same just doom,and the commoner suffering the same as king;Yes, they all together, under one form of death,had corpses without number.For the living were not sufficient even to bury them,Since at a single stroke, their most cherished offspring was consumed.For while they were disbelieving all things by reason of the enchantments,upon the destruction of the firstborn they confessed the people to be God’s children.For while peaceful silence wrapped all things,and night in her own swiftness was half spent,your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne,a stern warrior, into the midst of the doomed land,bearing as a sharp sword your authentic commandment,and standing, it filled all things with death,and while it touched the sky it stood upon the earth.Then immediately apparitions in dreams terribly troubled them,and unexpected fears came upon them.And each, one thrown here half dead, another there,made known why he was dying;for the dreams, disturbing them, forewarned them of this,that they might not perish without knowing why they were afflicted.
The experience of death also touched the righteous,and a multitude were destroyed in the wilderness,but the wrath didn’t last long.For a blameless man hurried to be their champion,bringing the weapon of his own ministry,prayer, and the atoning sacrifice of incense.He withstood the indignation and set an end to the calamity,showing that he was your servant.And he overcame the anger,not by strength of body, not by force of weapons,but by his word, he subdued the avengerby bringing to remembrance oaths and covenants made with the fathers.For when the dead had already fallen in heaps one upon another,he intervened and stopped the wrath,and cut off its way to the living.For the whole world was pictured on his long robe,and the glories of the fathers were upon the engraving of the four rows of precious stones,and your majesty was upon the diadem on his head.The destroyer yielded to these, and they feared;for it was enough only to test the wrath.
But indignation without mercy came upon the ungodly to the end;for God also foreknew their future,how, having changed their minds to let your people go,and having sped them eagerly on their way,they would change their minds and pursue them.For while they were yet in the midst of their mourning,and lamenting at the graves of the dead,they made another foolish decision,and pursued as fugitives those whom they had begged to leave and driven out.For the doom which they deserved was drawing them to this end,and it made them forget the things that had happened to them,that they might fill up the punishment which was yet lacking from their torments,and that your people might journey on by a marvelous road,but they themselves might find a strange death.
For the whole creation, each part in its diverse kind, was made new again,complying with your commandments,that your servants might be kept unharmed.Then the cloud that overshadowed the camp was seen,and dry land rising up out of what had been water,out of the Red sea an unhindered highway,and a grassy plain out of the violent surge,by which they passed over with all their army,these who were covered with your hand,having seen strange marvels.For like horses they roamed at large,and they skipped about like lambs,praising you, O Lord, who was their deliverer.For they still remembered the things that happened in the time of their sojourning,how instead of bearing cattle, the land brought forth lice,and instead of fish, the river spewed out a multitude of frogs.But afterwards, they also saw a new kind of birds,when, led on by desire, they asked for luxurious dainties;for, to comfort them, quails came up for them from the sea.
Punishments came upon the sinners,not without the signs that were given beforehand by the violence of the thunder,for they justly suffered through their own wickednesses,for the hatred which they practiced toward guests was grievous indeed.For while the others didn’t receive the strangers when they came to them,the Egyptians made slaves of guests who were their benefactors.And not only so, but while punishment of some sort will come upon the former,since they received as enemies those who were aliens;because these first welcomed with feastings,and then afflicted with dreadful toils,those who had already shared with them in the same rights.And moreover they were stricken with loss of sight(even as were those others at the righteous man’s doors),when, being surrounded with yawning darkness,they each looked for the passage through his own door.
For as the notes of a lute vary the character of the rhythm,even so the elements, changing their order one with another,continuing always in its sound,as may clearly be conjectured from the sight of the things that have happened.For creatures of the dry land were turned into creatures of the waters,and creatures that swim moved upon the land.Fire kept the mastery of its own power in water,and water forgot its quenching nature.On the contrary, flames didn’t consume flesh of perishable creatures that walked among them,neither did they melt the crystalline grains of ambrosial food that were melted easily.
For in all things, O Lord, you magnified your people,and you glorified them and didn’t lightly regard them,standing by their side in every time and place.