1But upon the ungodly, unmerciful wrath came until the end, for he foreknew their future actions:
2that after they themselves permitted them to depart and sent them off with haste, they would change their minds and pursue them.
3For while they were still in the midst of mourning and lamenting at the tombs of the dead, they adopted another foolish design and pursued as fugitives those whom they had cast out with entreaties.
4For a fitting necessity drew them to this end and cast a forgetfulness over what had happened, so that they might fill up the punishment that was lacking to their torments,
5and so that your people might experience a miraculous journey, while those men might find a strange death.
6For the whole creation, in its own kind, was reshaped again from above, serving your commands, so that your children might be kept unharmed.
7The cloud overshadowing the camp was seen, and from the water that stood before, an emergence of dry land; from the Red Sea, an unimpeded road, and from the violent surge, a grassy plain;
8through which the whole nation passed, sheltered by your hand, as they beheld marvelous wonders.
9For they grazed like horses and skipped like lambs, praising you, O Lord, their deliverer.
10For they still remembered the events of their sojourning: how, instead of the normal birth of animals, the earth brought forth gnats, and instead of water creatures, the river spewed forth a multitude of frogs.
11But later they also saw a new creation of birds, when, led on by craving, they asked for delicacies to eat.
12for to satisfy them, quails came up for them from the sea.
13And punishments came upon the sinners, not without prior signs given by the violence of thunderbolts. For they suffered justly for their own wicked deeds, since they had practiced a more grievous inhospitality.
14For the former did not welcome strangers when they arrived, but these enslaved guests who were their benefactors.
15And not only this, but some consideration will be given to the former, since they received the foreigners with hostility.
16But the latter, after welcoming with festivities those who had already shared in the same rights, afflicted them with terrible labors.
17They were also struck with blindness, just as those others were at the doors of the righteous man, when, enveloped in gaping darkness, each one sought the way to his own door.
18For the elements were interchanged with one another, just as the notes of a psaltery change their mode while the melody remains the same; this one can accurately infer from the sight of what happened.
19For land creatures were changed into water creatures, and swimming creatures went about on land.
20Fire maintained its power in water, and water forgot its power to extinguish.
21Conversely, flames did not scorch the flesh of the perishable creatures walking about in them, nor did they melt the easily melted, crystal-like kind of ambrosial food.
22For in all things, O Lord, you magnified and glorified your people; you did not neglect them, but stood by them in every time and place.
Open in the interactive reader →