The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Solomon 17
1 For your judgments are great, and hard to
interpret; therefore undisciplined souls went
astray.
2 For when lawless men had supposed
that they held a holy nation in their
power, they, prisoners of darkness, and
bound in the fetters of a long night,
kept close beneath their roofs,
lay exiled from the eternal providence.
3 For while they thought that they were
unseen in their secret sins,
they were divided from one another
by a dark curtain of forgetfulness,
stricken with terrible awe, and very
troubled by apparitions.
4 For neither did the dark recesses that
held them guard them from fears,
but terrifying sounds rang around
them, and dismal phantoms appeared with
unsmiling faces.
5 And no power of fire prevailed to give
light, neither were the brightest flames of
the stars strong enough to illuminate that gloomy night;
6 but only the glimmering of a self-kindled
fire appeared to them, full of fear.
In terror, they considered the things
which they saw to be worse than that sight, on which
they could not gaze.
7 The mockeries of their magic arts were
powerless, now, and a shameful rebuke of their
boasted understanding:
8 For those who promised to drive away
terrors and disorders from a sick
soul, these were sick with a ludicrous fearfulness.
9 For even if no troubling thing frighted
them, yet, scared with the creeping of
vermin and hissing of serpents,
10 they perished trembling in fear,
refusing even to look at the air, which
could not be escaped on any side.
11 For wickedness, condemned by a witness
within, is a coward thing, and, being pressed
hard by conscience, always has added forecasts
of the worst.
12 For fear is nothing else but a surrender of
the help which reason offers;
13 and from within, the expectation of
being less prefers ignorance of the cause that
brings the torment.
14 Butthey, allthrough the night which was
powerless indeed, and which came upon them out of the
recesses of powerless Hades, sleeping the same sleep,
15 now were haunted by monstrous
apparitions,and now were paralyzed by their
soul’s surrendering; for sudden and unexpected
fear came upon them.
16 So then whoever it might be, sinking
down in his place, was kept captive,
shut up in that prison which was not
barred with iron;
17 for whether he was a farmer, or a shepherd,
or a laborer whose toils were in the
wilderness, he was overtaken, and endured that
inescapable sentence; for they were all
bound with one chain of darkness.
18 Whether there was a whistling wind,
or a melodious sound of birds among
the spreading branches, or a measured
fall of water running violently,
19 or a harsh crashing of rocks hurled
down, or the swift course of animals
bounding along unseen, or the voice of
wild beasts harshly roaring, or an echo
rebounding from the hollows of the mountains,
all these things paralyzed them with
terror.
20 For the whole world was illuminated
with clear light, and was occupied
with unhindered works,
21 while over them alone was spread a
heavy night, an image of the darkness that should
afterward receive them; but to themselves, they were heavier
than darkness.