Catholic Public Domain Version

Wisdom 17:1-4 Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV)

1. For your judgments, O Lord, are great, and your words are indescribable. Therefore, undisciplined souls have wandered astray.

2. For, while they managed to convince the unjust, so as to obtain dominion over the holy nation, they themselves were fettered with chains of darkness and of endless night, enclosed in their houses, fugitives of everlasting providence, lying in ruins.

3. And, while they thought to escape notice in their secret sins, they were scattered under a dark veil of oblivion, being horribly afraid, and having been disturbed with great astonishment.

4. For neither did the cave which enclosed them preserve them from fear, because descending noises disturbed them, and the sorrowful persons appearing to them intensified their fear.