1. For great are your judgments, and hard to describe;therefore the unruly souls went astray.
2. For when the lawless thought to enslave the holy nation,they themselves lay shackled with darkness, fettered by the long night,confined beneath their own roofs as exiles from the eternal providence.
3. For they, who supposed their secret sins were hidunder the dark veil of oblivion,Were scattered in fearful trembling,terrified by apparitions.
4. For not even their inner chambers kept them unafraid,for crashing sounds on all sides terrified them,and mute phantoms with somber looks appeared.
5. No fire had force enough to give light,nor did the flaming brilliance of the starssucceed in lighting up that gloomy night.
6. But only intermittent, fearful firesflashed through upon them;And in their terror they thought beholding these was worsethan the times when that sight was no longer to be seen.
7. And mockeries of their magic art failed,and there was a humiliating refutation of their vaunted shrewdness.
8. For they who undertook to banish fears and terrors from the sick soulthemselves sickened with ridiculous fear.
9. For even though no monstrous thing frightened them,they shook at the passing of insects and the hissing of reptiles,
10. And perished trembling,reluctant to face even the air that they could nowhere escape.
11. For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation,and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes.
12. For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason;