10. Yet not even the fangs of poisonous snakes were able to overcome your children, because your mercy traveled along with them and healed them.
11. You did sting them in order to remind them of the things that you had told them. But you came to their rescue quickly so that they might not fall into a deep forgetfulness of your goodwill toward them.
12. It wasn’t any herb or ointment that healed them but your word alone, Lord, which heals everything.
13. You have power over life and death. You lead people down to the gates of hell, and you bring them back up again.
14. Humans can indeed kill by their evil, but they can’t bring back the life that has expired or restore the spirit that has been taken away.
15. It is impossible to escape from your hand.
16. Even though the ungodly denied any knowledge of you, it was your strong arm that afflicted them. They were pursued by strange rainfalls that never stopped, and by hailstorms and downpours. They were pursued by a fire that consumed everything.
17. The most unusual thing about this fire was that it showed that it was stronger than water, which normally quenches any fire. Yet the universe itself comes to the defense of those who do what is right.
18. At one point the flame did die down, so that it might not destroy the creatures that had been sent but only punish them. The ungodly noticed and realized it was God’s judgment that was hunting them down.
19. Then suddenly the fire flared up again, right in the midst of water, with an even greater intensity than normal fire. It destroyed the crops in a land dominated by wrongdoing.