Wisdom of Solomon 17:1–21

¹ For your judgments are great, and hard to interpret; therefore undisciplined souls went astray. (WEB) ² 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. (WEB) ³ 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. (WEB) ⁴ 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. (WEB) ⁵ And no power of fire prevailed to give light, neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illuminate that gloomy night; (WEB) ⁶ but only the glimmering of a self-kindled fire appeared to them, full of fear. In terror, they considered the things which they saw to be worse than that sight, on which they could not gaze. (WEB) ⁷ The mockeries of their magic arts were powerless, now, and a shameful rebuke of their boasted understanding: (WEB) ⁸ For those who promised to drive away terrors and disorders from a sick soul, these were sick with a ludicrous fearfulness. (WEB) ⁹ For even if no troubling thing frighted them, yet, scared with the creeping of vermin and hissing of serpents, (WEB) ¹⁰ they perished trembling in fear, refusing even to look at the air, which could not be escaped on any side. (WEB) ¹¹ For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a coward thing, and, being pressed hard by conscience, always has added forecasts of the worst. (WEB) ¹² For fear is nothing else but a surrender of the help which reason offers; (WEB) ¹³ and from within, the expectation of being less prefers ignorance of the cause that brings the torment. (WEB) ¹⁴ 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, (WEB) ¹⁵ now were haunted by monstrous apparitions, and now were paralyzed by their soul’s surrendering; for sudden and unexpected fear came upon them. (WEB) ¹⁶ 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; (WEB) ¹⁷ 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. (WEB) ¹⁸ Whether there was a whistling wind, or a melodious sound of birds among the spreading branches, or a measured fall of water running violently, (WEB) ¹⁹ or a harsh crashing of rocks hurled down, or the swift course of… (WEB) ²⁰ … (WEB)