15. Any nation will be punished if it does not welcome foreigners,
16. but these people, who had earlier welcomed the foreigners with happy celebrations and treated them as equals, later made them suffer cruelly.
17. These people were also struck with blindness, like the men of Sodom who came to the door of that righteous man Lot. They found themselves in total darkness, as each one groped around to find his own door.
18. On a harp each string keeps its own pitch, but each sound can be combined with others to make different melodies. That is how it was in those days, when the very elements entered into new combinations. Look at what happened!
19. Land animals took to the water, and swimming creatures came up on the land.
20. Fire burned even in water, which could not put it out.
21. And yet the flames could not burn the flesh of the perishable creatures walking in them, and did not melt that heavenly food that would ordinarily have melted like frost.
22. Lord, you have made your people great — glorious in all respects. You have never neglected them. You have given them help, always, everywhere.