Wisdom 17:1–9
1For your judgments are great, and hard to interpret; therefore undisciplined souls went astray.↗
2For 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.↗
3For 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.↗
4For 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.↗
5And no power of fire prevailed to give light, neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illuminate that gloomy night;↗
6but 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.↗
7The mockeries of their magic arts were powerless, now, and a shameful rebuke of their boasted understanding:↗
8For those who promised to drive away terrors and disorders from a sick soul, these were sick with a ludicrous fearfulness.↗
9For even if no troubling thing frighted them, yet, scared with the creeping of vermin and hissing of serpents,↗
Source: World English Bible (Catholic), public domain. Text is taken directly from the source. Headings are editorial, not biblical verses.
Languages: English public-domain source is available throughout all 73 books. Slovenian and German Scripture editions will be published only after their precise source texts are verified; we do not substitute machine-written translations.