Wisdom of Solomon 11

1 She made their works prosper through the hand of a holy prophet. 2 They crossed an uninhabited wilderness and pitched tents in places where no road existed. 3 They stood against enemies and defended themselves against adversaries. 4 When they were thirsty, they called on you. Water was given from a flinty rock, and a remedy for thirst came from hard stone.

5 The very things used to punish their enemies became benefits for them in their need. 6 Instead of a spring from an ever-flowing river fouled with blood, 7 as a rebuke for the decree that killed infants, you unexpectedly gave your people abundant water. 8 Through their thirst you showed them how you had punished their adversaries.

9 When they were tested, though disciplined in mercy, they learned how the ungodly were judged in wrath and tormented. 10 You tested your people as a father giving a warning, but you examined and condemned the others as a severe king. 11 Whether absent or present, they were distressed alike. 12 A double grief seized them, and they groaned as they remembered what had happened. 13 When they heard that others had benefited through the very things used to punish them, they perceived the Lord. 14 They had once rejected with mocking the man who long before had been cast out and left exposed as an infant. But when they saw the final outcome, they marveled at him, having suffered thirst unlike that of the righteous.

15 Because of the foolish thoughts born of their wrongdoing, by which they were deceived into worshiping irrational crawling creatures and worthless animals, you sent a multitude of irrational creatures against them for vengeance. 16 In this way they learned that a person is punished by the same thing through which he sins. 17 Your all-powerful hand, which created the world from formless matter, did not lack the means to send a multitude of bears or fierce lions against them, 18 or unknown wild animals newly created and full of rage, breathing out fiery vapor or scattering foul-smelling smoke or shooting terrifying sparks from their eyes. 19 Not only could these animals’ attacks have destroyed them at once; their terrifying appearance alone could have annihilated them.

20 Even without them, they could have fallen from a single breath, pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of your power. But you arranged everything by measure, number, and weight. 21 You can display your great strength whenever you wish. Who can resist the power of your arm? 22 The whole world before you is like the slightest tilt of a balance or a drop of morning dew falling on the earth.

23 Yet you have mercy on everyone because you can do everything, and you overlook people’s sins so they may change their hearts. 24 You love everything that exists and detest nothing you made, for you would never have formed anything if you hated it. 25 How could anything have endured if you had not willed it, or been preserved if you had not called it into being? 26 You spare everything because it belongs to you, Master, lover of life.