Wisdom 17

Terror Strikes the Egyptians at Night

¹Great are your judgments and hard to describe;

therefore uninstructed souls have gone astray.

²For when lawless people supposed that they held the holy nation in their power,

they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night,

shut in under their roofs, exiles from eternal providence.

³For thinking that in their secret sins they were unobserved

behind a dark curtain of forgetfulness,

they were scattered, terribly alarmed,

and appalled by specters.

⁴For not even the inner chamber that held them protected them from fear,

but terrifying sounds rang out around them,

and dismal phantoms with gloomy faces appeared.

⁵And no power of fire was able to give light,

nor did the brilliant flames of the stars

avail to illumine that hateful night.

⁶Nothing was shining through to them

except a dreadful, self-kindled fire,

and in terror they deemed the things that they saw

to be worse than that unseen appearance.

⁷The delusions of their magic art lay humbled,

and their boasted wisdom was scornfully rebuked.

⁸For those who promised to drive off the fears and disorders of a sick soul

were sick themselves with ridiculous fear.

⁹For even if nothing disturbing frightened them,

yet, scared by the passing of wild animals and the hissing of snakes

¹⁰they perished in trembling fear,

refusing to look even at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided.

¹¹For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by its own testimony;[#17.11 Meaning of Gk uncertain]

distressed by conscience, it has always exaggerated the difficulties.

¹²For fear is nothing but a giving up of the helps that come from reason;

¹³and hope, defeated by this inward weakness,

prefers ignorance of what causes the torment.

¹⁴But throughout the night, which was really powerless

and which came upon them from the recesses of powerless Hades,

they all slept the same sleep,

¹⁵and now were driven by monstrous specters,

and now were paralyzed by their souls' surrender;

for sudden and unexpected fear overwhelmed them.

¹⁶And whoever was there fell down,

and thus was kept shut up in a prison not made of iron;

¹⁷for whether they were farmers or shepherds

or workers who toiled in the wilderness,

they were seized, and endured the inescapable fate;

for with one chain of darkness they all were bound.

¹⁸Whether there came a whistling wind,

or a melodious sound of birds in wide-spreading branches,

or the rhythm of violently rushing water,

¹⁹or the harsh crash of rocks hurled down,

or the unseen running of leaping animals,

or the sound of the most savage roaring beasts,

or an echo thrown back from a hollow of the mountains,

it paralyzed them with terror.

²⁰For the whole world was illumined with brilliant light,

and went about its work unhindered,

²¹while over those people alone heavy night was spread,

an image of the darkness that was destined to receive them;

but still heavier than darkness were they to themselves.