8. You showed your people through their own experience of thirst how you punished their opponents.
9. When your people were put to the test, you disciplined them, but you also showed mercy. But they learned from this how harshly the ungodly were tormented when you judged them.
10. You disciplined your people in the same way that parents warn their children, but you examined and passed sentence on the ungodly like a strict ruler.
11. Whether they were distant or close by, you still afflicted them.
12. They groaned on account of their punishment and on account of the memory of the things that they had done.
13. When they heard that the Hebrews were benefiting from their punishment, they perceived that it was the Lord’s doing.
14. They thirsted, but their thirst was so different from the thirst of those who do what is right! In the end, they stood in awe of the man they had mockingly rejected long ago because he had been set adrift and exposed.
15. Because their foolish and wicked thoughts had led them astray to worship unthinking reptiles and worthless animals, you sent hordes of mindless creatures upon them as a punishment.
16. In this way they learned that people are punished by the very same things by which they sin.
17. Your all-powerful hand, which had brought the world into being out of formless matter, would have been more than able to send a host of bears and fierce lions against them.
18. Or they could have been met by newly created beasts that no one had ever seen before, full of rage, breathing fire, belching smoke, and shooting deadly sparks from their eyes.