Wisdom 17:10–18

¹⁰they perished trembling in fear, refusing even to look at the air, which could not be escaped on any side.↗

¹¹For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a coward thing, and, being pressed hard by conscience, always has added forecasts of the worst.↗

¹²For fear is nothing else but a surrender of the help which reason offers;↗

¹³and from within, the expectation of being less prefers ignorance of the cause that brings the torment.↗

¹⁴But they, all through the night which was powerless indeed, and which came upon them out of the recesses of powerless Hades, sleeping the same sleep,↗

¹⁵now were haunted by monstrous apparitions, and now were paralyzed by their soul’s surrendering; for sudden and unexpected fear came upon them.↗

¹⁶So then whoever it might be, sinking down in his place, was kept captive, shut up in that prison which was not barred with iron;↗

¹⁷for 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.↗

¹⁸Whether there was a whistling wind, or a melodious sound of birds among the spreading branches, or a measured fall of water running violently,↗