1. She prospered their works in the hand of a holy prophet.
2. They journeyed through a desert without inhabitant, And in trackless regions they pitched their tents.
3. They withstood enemies, and repelled foes.
4. They thirsted, and they called upon you, And there was given them water out of the flinty rock, And healing of their thirst out of the hard stone.
5. For by what things their foes were punished, By these they in their need were benefited.
6. When the enemy were troubled with clotted blood instead of a river’s ever-flowing fountain,
7. To rebuke the decree for the slaying of babes, You gave them abundant water beyond all hope,
8. Having shewn them by the thirst which they had suffered how you did punish the adversaries.
9. For when they were tried, albeit but in mercy chastened, They learned how the ungodly were tormented, being judged with wrath:
10. For these, as a father, admonishing them, you did prove; But those, as a stern king, condemning them, you did search out.
11. Yes and whether they were far off from the righteous or near them, they were alike distressed;
12. For a double grief took hold on them, And a groaning at the remembrance of things past.
13. For when they heard that through their own punishments the others had been benefited, They felt the presence of the Lord;
14. For him who long before was cast forth and exposed they left off mocking: In the last issue of what came to pass they marveled, Having thirsted in another manner than the righteous.
15. But in requital of the senseless imaginings of their unrighteousness, Wherein they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and wretched vermin, You did send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures for vengeance;
16. That they might learn, that by what things a man sins, by these he is punished.