1He prospered their works by the hand of a holy prophet.
2They journeyed through an uninhabited wilderness, and in pathless places they pitched their tents.
3They stood against their adversaries and defended themselves from their enemies.
4They thirsted and called upon you, and water was given to them from a sheer rock, and a cure for their thirst from hard stone.
5For by the very things their enemies were punished, they themselves were benefited in their time of need.
6Instead of the source of an ever-flowing river, polluted with gory blood—
7as a rebuke for the infant-killing decree—you gave them abundant water unexpectedly,
8thereby showing through their thirst at that time how you punished their adversaries.
9For when they were tested, though disciplined in mercy, they understood how the ungodly, when judged in wrath, were tormented.
10For you tested the one group as a father giving admonition, but the other you examined as a stern king passing sentence.
11And whether the Israelites were present or absent, the Egyptians were afflicted equally.
12For a double grief seized them, and a groaning at the memory of things past.
13For when they heard that the others were being benefited by means of their own punishments, they perceived the Lord.
14For him whom they had long ago cast out and rejected with mockery, they marveled at in the final outcome, since their thirst was not like that of the righteous.
15And in return for the foolish reasonings of their unrighteousness, by which they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and contemptible vermin, you sent upon them a multitude of irrational creatures for vengeance,
16so that they might know that by whatever things a person sins, by those same things he is punished.
17For your all-powerful hand, which created the world from formless matter, was not at a loss to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions,
18or newly created, unknown beasts full of rage—whether breathing out a fiery breath, or scattering foul-smelling smoke, or flashing terrible sparks from their eyes—
19whose harm alone could have annihilated them, but even the sight of which could have utterly destroyed them in terror.
20Yes, even without these, they could have fallen by a single breath, pursued by Justice and winnowed away by the breath of your power. But you have arranged all things by measure and number and weight.
21For to be greatly powerful is always yours, and who can withstand the might of your arm?
22Because the whole world before you is like a speck on a balance, and like a drop of morning dew that has come down upon the earth.
23But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things, and you overlook the sins of humankind for the sake of repentance.
24For you love all things that exist and loathe nothing that you have made; for you would not have created anything if you had hated it.
25And how could anything have remained in existence if you had not willed it, or have been preserved if not called into being by you?
26But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Master, lover of souls.
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