20. For these were enemies of your servants, doomed to death;yet, while you punished them with such solicitude and indulgence,granting time and opportunity to abandon wickedness,
21. With what exactitude you judged your children,to whose ancestors you gave the sworn covenants of goodly promises!
22. Therefore to give us a lesson you punish our enemies with measured deliberationso that we may think earnestly of your goodness when we judge,and, when being judged, we may look for mercy.
23. Hence those unrighteous who lived a life of folly,you tormented through their own abominations.