Wisdom of Solomon 18

1But for your holy ones there was very great light; hearing their voice but not seeing their form, since they indeed had not suffered the same things, they counted them blessed.

2because, though they had been attacked before, they gave thanks that they were not being harmed, and they begged pardon for their hostility.

3Instead of these things, you provided a pillar blazing with fire, both as a guide for an unknown journey and as a harmless sun for their honored exile.

4For those men were worthy to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness, they who had kept your sons shut in, through whom the imperishable light of the law was about to be given to the age.

5When they had resolved to kill the infants of the holy ones, and one child had been exposed and rescued, you took away their multitude of children as a rebuke and destroyed them all together in mighty water.

6That night was made known beforehand to our fathers, so that, knowing with certainty the oaths in which they had trusted, they might be encouraged.

7So your people expected both the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies;

8For just as you punished the adversaries, so by this, having summoned us, you glorified us.

9For the holy children of good men were secretly offering sacrifices, and in unity they established the divine law, that the holy ones would share alike in the same good things and dangers, while their fathers were already singing beforehand hymns of praise.

10But the discordant cry of enemies echoed back, and the pitiful lament for children being mourned was carried abroad.

11And servant and master alike were punished with the same judgment, and the commoner suffered the same things as the king.

12And all together, under one sentence of death, they had countless dead; for the living were not even sufficient to bury them, since in a single moment their most honored offspring was destroyed.

13For though they had disbelieved everything because of their sorceries, at the destruction of the firstborn they acknowledged that this people was God's son.

14For while a calm silence encompassed all things, and the night in its swift course was halfway gone,

15your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from royal thrones, a relentless warrior, into the midst of the doomed land;

16bearing your sharp sword—your unfeigned command—and standing, he filled all things with death; and while he touched heaven, he had stepped upon the earth.

17Then at once terrifying dream-visions troubled them, and unexpected fears came upon them,

18and another, cast down elsewhere, half-dead, made known the cause for which he was dying.

19For the dreams that troubled them foretold this, so that they might not perish without knowing why they were suffering.

20But the trial of death also touched the righteous, and a destruction of the multitude occurred in the wilderness; yet the wrath did not remain for long.

21For a blameless man hurried forward and fought in the front line, bringing the weapon of his own service—prayer and atonement by incense; he stood against the wrath and put an end to the disaster, showing that he is your servant.

22He overcame the multitude not by strength of body, nor by the force of weapons, but by a word he subdued the punisher, reminding him of the oaths to the fathers and the covenants.

23For when heaps of dead had already fallen one upon another, he stood in the midst and checked the wrath, and cut off the way to the living.

24For on the full-length robe was the whole world, and the glory of the fathers was on the engraving of the four-rowed stones, and your majesty was on the diadem upon his head.

25The destroyer gave way before this man, and feared these things; for the mere testing of wrath was sufficient.