| 1 Then shall the just one with great assurance confront his oppressors who set at nought his labors. |
| 2 Seeing this, they shall be shaken with dreadful fear, and amazed at the unlooked-for salvation. |
| 3 They shall say among themselves, rueful and groaning through anguish of spirit: "This is he whom once we held as a laughingstock and as a type for mockery, |
| 4 fools that we were! His life we accounted madness, and his death dishonored. |
| 5 See how he is accounted among the sons of God; how his lot is with the saints! |
| 6 We, then, have strayed from the way of truth, and the light of justice did not shine for us, and the sun did not rise for us. |
| 7 We had our fill of the ways of mischief and of ruin; we journeyed through impassable deserts, but the way of the LORD we knew not. |
| 8 What did our pride avail us? What have wealth and its boastfulness afforded us? |
| 9 All of them passed like a shadow and like a fleeting rumor; |
| 10 Like a ship traversing the heaving water, of which, when it has passed, no trace can be found, no path of its keel in the waves. |
| 11 Or like a bird flying through the air; no evidence of its course is to be found- But the fluid air, lashed by the beat of pinions, and cleft by the rushing force Of speeding wings, is traversed: and afterward no mark of passage can be found in it. |
| 12 Or as, when an arrow has been shot at a mark, the parted air straightway flows together again so that none discerns the way it went through- |
| 13 Even so we, once born, abruptly came to nought and held no sign of virtue to display, but were consumed in our wickedness." |
| 14 Yes, the hope of the wicked is like thistledown borne on the wind, and like fine, tempest-driven foam; Like smoke scattered by the wind, and like the passing memory of the nomad camping for a single day. |
| 15 But the just live forever, and in the LORD is their recompense, and the thought of them is with the Most High. |
| 16 Therefore shall they receive the splendid crown, the beauteous diadem, from the hand of the LORD- For he shall shelter them with his right hand, and protect them with his arm. |
| 17 He shall take his zeal for armor and he shall arm creation to requite the enemy; |
| 18 He shall don justice for a breastplate and shall wear sure judgment for a helmet; |
| 19 He shall take invincible rectitude as a shield |
| 20 and whet his sudden anger for a sword, And the universe shall war with him against the foolhardy. |
| 21 Well-aimed shafts of lightnings shall go forth and from the clouds as from a well-drawn bow shall leap to the mark; |
| 22 and as from his sling, wrathful hailstones shall be hurled. The water of the sea shall be enraged against them and the streams shall abruptly overflow; |
| 23 A mighty wind shall confront them and a tempest winnow them out; Thus lawlessness shall lay the whole earth waste and evildoing overturn the thrones of potentates. |