Wisdom of Solomon

¹ She prospered their works in the hand of a holy prophet.

² They journeyed through a desert without inhabitant, And in trackless regions they pitched their tents.

³ They withstood enemies, and repelled foes.

⁴ They thirsted, and they called upon thee, And there was given them water out of the flinty rock, And healing of their thirst out of the hard stone.

⁵ For by what things their foes were punished, By these they in their need were benefited.

⁶ When the enemy were troubled with clotted blood instead of a river’s ever-flowing fountain,

⁷ To rebuke the decree for the slaying of babes, Thou gavest them abundant water beyond all hope,

⁸ Having shewn them by the thirst which they had suffered how thou didst punish the adversaries.

⁹ For when they were tried, albeit but in mercy chastened, They learned how the ungodly were tormented, being judged with wrath:

¹⁰ For these, as a father, admonishing them, thou didst prove; But those, as a stern king, condemning them, thou didst search out.

¹¹ Yea and whether they were far off from the righteous or near them, they were alike distressed;

¹² For a double grief took hold on them, And a groaning at the remembrance of things past.

¹³ For when they heard that through their own punishments the others had been benefited, They felt the presence of the Lord;

¹⁴ For him who long before was cast forth and exposed they left off mocking: In the last issue of what came to pass they marvelled, Having thirsted in another manner than the righteous.

¹⁵ But in requital of the senseless imaginings of their unrighteousness, Wherein they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and wretched vermin, Thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures for vengeance;

¹⁶ That they might learn, that by what things a man sinneth, by these he is punished.

¹⁷ For thine all-powerful hand, That created the world out of formless matter, Lacked not means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or fierce lions,

¹⁸ Or new-created wild beasts, full of rage, of unknown kind, Either breathing out a blast of fiery breath, Or blowing forth from their nostrils noisome smoke, Or flashing dreadful sparkles from their eyes;

¹⁹ Which had power not only to consume them by their violence, But to destroy them even by the terror of their sight.

²⁰ Yea and without these might they have fallen by a single breath, Being pursued by Justice, and scattered abroad by the breath of thy power. But by measure and number and weight thou didst order all things.

²¹ For to be greatly strong is thine at all times; And the might of thine arm who shall withstand?

²² Because the whole world before thee is as a grain in a balance, And as a drop of dew that at morning cometh down upon the earth.

²³ But thou hast mercy on all men, because thou hast power to do all things, And thou overlookest the sins of men to the end they may repent.

²⁴ For thou lovest all things that are, And abhorrest none of the things which thou didst make; For never wouldest thou have formed anything if thou didst hate it.

²⁵ And how would anything have endured, except thou hadst willed it? Or that which was not called by thee, how would it have been preserved?

²⁶ But thou sparest all things, because they are thine, O Soverign Lord, thou lover of men’s lives;