Wisdom 11

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

²They traveled through a desert without inhabitant,

and they pitched their tents in trackless regions.

³They withstood enemies and repelled foes.

⁴They thirsted, and they called upon you,

and water was given to them out of the flinty rock,

and healing of their thirst out of the hard stone.

⁵For by what things their foes were punished,

by these they in their need were benefited.

⁶When enemies were troubled with clotted blood

instead of a river’s ever-flowing fountain,

⁷to rebuke the decree for the slaying of babies,

you gave them abundant water beyond all hope,

⁸having shown by the thirst which they had suffered

how you punished the adversaries.

⁹For when they were tried, although chastened in mercy,

they learned how the ungodly were tormented, being judged with wrath.

¹⁰For you tested these as a father admonishing them;

but you searched out those as a stern king condemning them.

¹¹Yes and whether they were far off or near,

they were equally distressed;

¹²for a double grief seized them,

and a groaning at the memory of things past.

¹³For when they heard that through their own punishments the others benefited,

they recognized the Lord.

¹⁴For him who long before was thrown out and exposed they stopped mocking.

In the end of what happened, they marveled,

having thirsted in another manner than the righteous.

¹⁵But in return for the senseless imaginings of their unrighteousness,

wherein they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and wretched vermin,

you sent upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them,

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

¹⁷For your all-powerful hand

that created the world out of formless matter

didn’t lack means to send upon them a multitude of bears, fierce lions,1

¹⁸or newly-created and unknown wild beasts, full of rage,

either breathing out a blast of fiery breath,

or belching out smoke,

or flashing dreadful sparks from their eyes;

¹⁹which had power not only to consume them by their violence,

but to destroy them even by the terror of their sight.

²⁰Yes and without these they might have fallen by a single breath,

being pursued by Justice, and scattered abroad by the breath of your power;

but you arranged all things by measure, number, and weight.1

²¹For to be greatly strong is yours at all times.

Who could withstand the might of your arm?1

²²Because the whole world before you is as a grain in a balance,

and as a drop of dew that comes down upon the earth in the morning.

²³But you have mercy on all men, because you have power to do all things,

and you overlook the sins of men to the end that they may repent.

²⁴For you love all things that are,

and abhor none of the things which you made;

For you never would have formed anything if you hated it.

²⁵How would anything have endured unless you had willed it?

Or that which was not called by you, how would it have been preserved?1

²⁶But you spare all things, because they are yours,

O Sovereign Lord, you who love the living.