Wisdom

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, 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.

²¹For to be greatly strong is yours at all times. Who could withstand the might of your arm? 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? ²⁶But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Sovereign Lord, you who love the living.