English Bible
Wisdom 17
Big screen- 1For great are your judgments, and can’t be expressed: therefore unnurtured souls have erred.
- 2For when unrighteous men thought to oppress the holy nation; they being shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay there exiled from the eternal providence.
- 3For while they supposed to lie hid in their secret sins, they were scattered under a dark veil of forgetfulness, being horribly astonished, and troubled with strange apparitions.
- 4For neither might the corner that held them keep them from fear: but noises as of waters falling down sounded about them, and sad visions appeared to them with heavy countenances.
- 5No power of the fire might give them light: neither could the bright flames of the stars endure to lighten that horrible night.
- 6Only there appeared to them a fire kindled of itself, very dreadful: for being much terrified, they thought the things which they saw to be worse than the sight they saw not.
- 7As for the illusions of are magick, they were put down, and their vaunting in wisdom was reproved with disgrace.
- 8For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at.
- 9For though no terrible thing did fear them; yet being scared with beasts that passed by, and hissing of serpents,
- 10They died for fear, denying that they saw the air, which could of no side be avoided.
- 11For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed with conscience, always forecasts grievous things.
- 12For fear is nothing else but a betraying of the help which reason offers.
- 13And the expectation from within, being less, counts the ignorance more than the cause which brings the torment.
- 14But they sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable hell,
- 15Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted, their heart failing them: for a sudden fear, and not looked for, came upon them.
- 16So then whoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a prison without iron bars,
- 17For whether he were husbandman, or shepherd, or a labourer in the field, he was overtaken, and endured that necessity, which could not be avoided: for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.
- 18Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently,
- 19Or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these things made them to swoon for fear.
- 20For the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in their labor:
- 21Over them only was spread an heavy night, an image of that darkness which should afterward receive them: but yet were they to themselves more grievous than the darkness.