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Wisdom of Ben Sira 36:1-4
New Catholic Bible
Wisdom of Ben Sira 36:1-4
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 36
Show Mercy, Lord, to the People Called by Your Name[a]
1 Have pity on us, Master, Lord of the universe,
2 and put the nations in dread of you.
3 Lift up your hand against the foreign nations,
and let them behold your mighty deeds.
4 As you have used us to display your holiness to them,
so now use them to show your glory to us.
Footnotes
- Wisdom of Ben Sira 36:1 This prayer, formulated some twenty years before the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the revolt of the Maccabees, is a moving one. It expresses the suffering of a people threatened in its national and religious traditions, in its deepest convictions. It vibrates with the hope—which until then had been absent from the writings of the sages—that the salvation announced by the Prophets and attained by Israel will come.
