Wisdom 17:1-2
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Chapter 17
Fourth Example: Darkness Afflicts the Egyptians, While the Israelites Have Light[a]
1 For great are your judgments, and hard to describe;
therefore the unruly souls went astray.(A)
2 For when the lawless thought to enslave the holy nation,
they themselves lay shackled with darkness, fettered by the long night,
confined beneath their own roofs as exiles from the eternal providence.(B)
Footnotes
- 17:1–18:4 The description of the darkness of the ninth plague is a very creative development of Ex 10:21–29. It betrays a wide knowledge of contemporary thought. For the first and only time in the Septuagint the Greek word for “conscience” occurs, in 17:11. There is no Hebrew word that is equivalent; the idea is expressed indirectly. The horrendous darkness is illumined by “fires” (v. 6), i.e., lightnings that only contributed to the terror.
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