1. For your judgments, O Lord, are great, and your words are indescribable. Therefore, undisciplined souls have wandered astray.
2. For, while they managed to convince the unjust, so as to obtain dominion over the holy nation, they themselves were fettered with chains of darkness and of endless night, enclosed in their houses, fugitives of everlasting providence, lying in ruins.
3. And, while they thought to escape notice in their secret sins, they were scattered under a dark veil of oblivion, being horribly afraid, and having been disturbed with great astonishment.
4. For neither did the cave which enclosed them preserve them from fear, because descending noises disturbed them, and the sorrowful persons appearing to them intensified their fear.
5. And, indeed, even fire had no strength to provide them light, nor could the clear flames of the stars illuminate that horrible night.
6. Yet there appeared to them a sudden fire, filled with fear; and, having been struck with the fear of that face which is unseen, they considered those things which they did see to be worse,
7. and, having been ridiculed, the illusions were removed from their arts along with their contemptuous rebuke of glorious wisdom.
8. Indeed, those who promised to drive away fears and disturbances from a languishing soul, though they were filled with derision, were themselves languishing in fear.