Wisdom of Solomon Chapter XI

his excerpt is taken from The Apocrapha An American Translation by: Edgar J. Goodspeed. Vintage Books (A Division of Random House) New York. C. 1959. 1938.


1 She made their doings prosper by means of a holy prophet.
2 They traveled through an uninhabited desert,
And pitched their tents in trackless places.
3 They withstood their enemies and repulsed their foes.
4 They grew thirsty and called upon you,
And water was given them out of a rocky cliff,
And a cure for their thirst out of the hard stone.
5 For the means by which their enemies were punished
Benefited them in their time of need. 
6 Instead of the fountain of an ever flowing river,
Stirred up with filthy blood,
7 As a rebuke for the decree to kill the babes,
You gave them plenty of water, in a way unlooked for,
8 Showing through their thirst at that time
How you punished their adversaries.
9 For when they were tried, although they were only disciplined
in mercy,
They learned how the ungodly were tormented, when they 
were judged in wrath.
10 For these you tested like a father, warning them,
But those you examined like a stern king, condemning 
them.
11 Whether absent or present, they were harassed alike;
12 For a double grief seized them,
And groaning over the memory of the past.
13 For when they heard that through their punishments
The others were benefited, they felt it was the Lord.
14 For the man who had long before been cast forth and exposed,
and whom they had rejected with scorn,
As events resulted, they admired,
When they felt thirst in a different way from the upright.
15 But the foolish fancies of their unrighteousness,
Misled by which they worshiped unreasoning reptiles
and worthless vermin,
You sent a multitude of unreasoning creatures upon them 
to punish them,
16 So that they should know that a man is punished by the 
things through which he sins. 
17 For your all-powerful hand, which created the world out 
of formless matter,
Did not lack means to send upon them a multitude of 
bears, or bold lions,
18 Or newly created wild animals, unknown before, and full of 
rage,
Either puffing out a fiery breath,
Or scattering a roar of smoke,
Or flashing dreadful sparks from their eyes,
19 Which could not only have destroyed them utterly by the harm 
they did,
But have made them die of fright at the very sight of them.
20 Why, without these, they might have been felled by a
single breath,
Being pursued by justice,
And scattered by the breath of your power.
But you ordered everything by measure and number and 
weight.
21 For it is always yours to have great strength,
And who can withstand the might of your arm?
22 For in your sight the whole world is like what turns the 
scale in a balance,
And like drop of dew that comes down on the earth in the 
morning.
23 But you have mercy on all men, because you can do all 
things,
And you overlook men's sins to lead them to repent,
24 For you love all things that exist,
And abhor none of the things that you have made;
For you would never have formed anything if you hated it.
25 And how could anything have endured, if you had not
willed it,
Or what had not been called forth by you have been
preserved?
26 But you spare all, because they are yours, Lord, lover of life...