Wisdom 17

NEW JERUSALEM	NEW AMERICAN BIBLE
1 Yes, your judgements are great and impenetrable, which is why uninstructed souls have gone astray.	1 For great are your judgments, and hardly to be described; therefore the unruly souls were wrong.
2 While the wicked supposed they had a holy nation in their power, they themselves lay prisoners of thedark, in the fetters of long night, confined under their own roofs, banished from eternal providence.	2 For when the lawless thought to enslave the holy nation, shackled with darkness, fettered by the long night, they lay confined beneath their own roofs as exiles from the eternal providence.
3 While they thought to remain unnoticed with their secret sins, curtained by dark forgetfulness, theywere scattered in fearful dismay, terrified by apparitions.	3 For they who supposed their secret sins were hid under the dark veil of oblivion Were scattered in fearful trembling, terrified by apparitions.
4 The hiding place sheltering them could not ward off their fear; terrifying noises echoed round them;and gloomy, grim-faced spectres haunted them.	4 For not even their inner chambers kept them fearless, for crashing sounds on all sides terrified them, and mute phantoms with somber looks appeared.
5 No fire had power enough to give them light, nor could the brightly blazing stars il uminate that dreadfulnight.	5 No force, even of fire, was able to give light, nor did the flaming brilliance of the stars succeed in lighting up that gloomy night.
6 The only light for them was a great, spontaneous blaze -- a fearful sight to see! And in their terror,once that sight had vanished, they thought what they had seen more terrible than ever.	6 But only intermittent, fearful fires flashed through upon them; And in their terror they thought beholding these was worse than the times when that sight was no longer to be seen.
7 Their magical il usions were powerless now, and their claims to intel igence were ignominiouslyconfounded;	7 And mockeries of the magic art were in readiness, and a jeering reproof of their vaunted shrewdness.
8 for those who promised to drive out fears and disorders from sick souls were now themselves sick withludicrous fright.	8 For they who undertook to banish fears and terrors from the sick soul themselves sickened with a ridiculous fear.
9 Even when there was nothing frightful to scare them, the vermin creeping past and the hissing ofreptiles filled them with panic;	9 For even though no monstrous thing frightened them, they shook at the passing of insects and the hissing of reptiles,
10 they died convulsed with fright, refusing even to look at empty air, which cannot be eluded anyhow!	10 And perished trembling, reluctant to face even the air that they could nowhere escape.
11 Wickedness is confessedly very cowardly, and it condemns itself; under pressure from conscience italways assumes the worst.	11 For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation, and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes.
12 Fear, indeed, is nothing other than the failure of the help offered by reason;	12 For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason;
13 the less you rely within yourself on this, the more alarming it is not to know the cause of yoursuffering.	13 and the more one's expectation is of itself uncertain, the more one makes of not knowing the cause that brings on torment.
14 And they, al locked in the same sleep, while that darkness lasted -- which was in fact quite powerlessand had issued from the depths of equal y powerless Hades-	14 So they, during that night, powerless though it was, that had come upon them from the recesses of a powerless nether world, while all sleeping the same sleep,
15 were now chased by monstrous spectres, now paralysed by the fainting of their souls; for a sudden,unexpected terror had attacked them.	15 Were partly smitten by fearsome apparitions and partly stricken by their souls' surrender; for fear came upon them, sudden and unexpected.
16 And thus, whoever it might be that fel there stayed clamped to the spot in this prison without bars.	16 Thus, then, whoever was there fell into that unbarred prison and was kept confined.
17 Whether he was ploughman or shepherd, or somebody at work in the desert, he was stil overtakenand suffered the inevitable fate, for al had been bound by the one same chain of darkness.	17 For whether one was a farmer, or a shepherd, or a worker at tasks in the wasteland, Taken unawares, he served out the inescapable sentence;
18 The soughing of the wind, the tuneful noise of birds in the spreading branches, the measured beat ofwater in its powerful course, the headlong din of rocks cascading down,	18 for all were bound by the one bond of darkness. And were it only the whistling wind, or the melodious song of birds in the spreading branches, Or the steady sound of rushing water,
19 the unseen course of bounding animals, the roaring of the most savage of wild beasts, the echorebounding from the clefts in the mountains, all held them paralysed with fear.	19 or the rude crash of overthrown rocks, Or the unseen gallop of bounding animals, or the roaring cry of the fiercest beasts, Or an echo resounding from the hollow of the hills, these sounds, inspiring terror, paralyzed them.
20 For the whole world shone with the light of day and, unhindered, went about its work;	20 For the whole world shone with brilliant light and continued its works without interruption;
21 over them alone there spread a heavy darkness, image of the dark that would receive them. Butheavier than the darkness was the burden they were to themselves.	21 Over them alone was spread oppressive night, an image of the darkness that next should come upon them; yet they were to themselves more burdensome than the darkness.