Anonymous (Septuagint) · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| But on the ungodly, to the very end, a merciless wrath fell; for God knew beforehand even their future deeds,
2| that though they themselves had agreed to let the people go and had eagerly sent them off, they would then change their minds and pursue them.
3| For while they still had mourning in their hands and were weeping at the tombs of their dead, they seized upon another foolish reasoning, and pursued as fugitives those whom they had begged, with pleading, to leave.
4| For a deserved necessity was dragging them on to this end, and it cast over them forgetfulness of what had happened, so that they might fill up the punishment still lacking to their torments,
5| and that your people might experience an extraordinary journey, while those others found a strange death.
6| For the whole of creation, in its own kind, was fashioned anew again from the beginning, serving your commands alone, so that your children might be kept unharmed.
7| The cloud was seen overshadowing the camp, and where water had stood before, dry land emerging, an unobstructed road out of the Red Sea, and a grassy plain out of the violent surge.
8| Through it the whole nation passed, those sheltered by your hand, watching marvelous wonders.
9| For they ranged like horses at pasture, and leapt like lambs, praising you, Lord, who rescued them.
10| For they still remembered the things of their sojourn there, how instead of the bearing of living creatures the land brought forth gnats, and instead of water creatures the river vomited up a multitude of frogs.
11| And afterward they saw also a new origin of birds, when, led on by desire, they asked for delicacies of luxury;
12| for as a comfort to them there came up from the sea the quail.
13| And retribution overtook the sinners, preceded by clear signs given beforehand amid the fury of the lightning strikes; for they were justly suffering for their own wickedness, since indeed they had practiced a harsher hatred of strangers.
14| For the others had refused to receive strangers who came to them not knowing them, but these were enslaving guests who were their benefactors.
15| And not only so, but there will be some reckoning upon them, since those others received foreigners with hostility;
16| while these, having welcomed with festivities men who already shared the same rights as themselves, afflicted them with dreadful hardships.
17| And they too were struck with blindness, just as those others had been outside the entrance of the righteous man's house, when, wrapped in yawning darkness, each groped to find the way through his own doorway.
18| For the elements, changing places among themselves, just as on a harp the notes change the character of the rhythm while ever remaining the same sound, may be conjectured precisely from the sight of what had happened.
19| For creatures of the land were changed into creatures of the water, and swimming creatures crossed over onto the land;
20| fire kept its own power strong even in water, and water forgot its power to quench;
21| flames, on the contrary, did not wither the flesh of perishable creatures walking about within them, nor melt that easily-melting, crystal-like kind of ambrosial food.
22| For in every way, Lord, you magnified your people and glorified them, and you did not overlook them, standing by them in every time and place.