Anonymous (Septuagint) · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| But for your holy ones there was very great light. Hearing their voice but not seeing their form, the Egyptians counted them blessed, because they too had suffered as they had;
2| and because, though wronged before, they did not injure them in return, they gave thanks, and begged pardon for their former quarrel.
3| In return you gave your people a fire-blazing pillar, a guide for their unknown journey, and a harmless sun for their proud sojourning.
4| For those others deserved to be robbed of light and shut away in darkness, since they had kept locked up your sons, through whom the law's undying light was about to be given to the world.
5| When they had plotted to kill the infants of the holy ones, and one child had been exposed and saved, you took away in punishment the multitude of their own children, and destroyed them all together in the raging water.
6| That night was made known beforehand to our fathers, so that knowing with certainty the oaths they had trusted, they might take courage.
7| Your people awaited the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies.
8| For with the very means by which you punished our adversaries, you glorified us, calling us to yourself.
9| For in secret the holy children of good men were offering sacrifice, and with one accord bound themselves to the covenant of the divine law, that the saints would share alike in the same blessings and the same dangers, the fathers already leading the hymns of praise.
10| But the discordant cry of their enemies echoed back, and the pitiable sound of children being mourned spread abroad.
11| With the same sentence the slave was punished together with his master, and the commoner suffered the same as the king;
12| and all alike, under one name of death, had countless dead. For the living were not even sufficient to bury them, since in a single moment their most valued offspring had been destroyed.
13| For though they had disbelieved everything because of their sorceries, at the destruction of the firstborn they confessed that this people was a son of God.
14| For while peaceful silence enveloped all things, and night in its own swiftness was at its midpoint,
15| your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne, a stern warrior into the midst of the doomed land,
16| bearing your unfeigned command like a sharp sword, and standing it filled all things with death; it touched heaven, yet stood upon the earth.
17| Then suddenly visions of dreadful dreams troubled them greatly, and unforeseen fears fell upon them,
18| and one flung down here, another there, half-dead, made known the reason for which he was dying;
19| for the dreams that had troubled them foretold this, so that they should not perish without knowing why they were suffering these evils.
20| The trial of death touched the righteous also, and a plague fell upon the crowd in the wilderness; yet the wrath did not last long.
21| For a blameless man hastened to fight on their behalf, bringing the weapon of his own ministry, prayer and the atonement of incense; he withstood the wrath and put an end to the disaster, showing that he was your servant.
22| He overcame the destroyer not by strength of body, nor by the force of arms, but by word he subdued the one who punished, reminding him of the oaths and covenants made to the fathers.
23| For when the dead had already fallen in heaps upon one another, he stood in the midst and checked the wrath, and cut off its path to the living.
24| For upon his full-length robe was the whole world, and the glories of the fathers were engraved upon the four rows of stone, and your majesty was upon the diadem of his head.
25| To these the destroyer yielded, these he feared; for the mere trial of the wrath was enough.