18. But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency,and with much lenience you govern us;for power, whenever you will, attends you.
19. You taught your people, by these deeds,that those who are righteous must be kind;And you gave your children reason to hopethat you would allow them to repent for their sins.
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.
24. For they went far astray in the paths of error,taking for gods the worthless and disgusting among beasts,being deceived like senseless infants.
25. Therefore as though upon unreasoning children,you sent your judgment on them as a mockery;
26. But they who took no heed of a punishment which was but child’s playwere to experience a condemnation worthy of God.
27. For by the things through which they suffered distress,being tortured by the very things they deemed gods,They saw and recognized the true God whom formerly they had refused to know;with this, their final condemnation came upon them.