2. And because they who formerly had been wronged did not harm them, they thanked them,and because of the difference between them, pleaded with them.
3. Instead of this, you furnished the flaming pillar,a guide on the unknown way,and the mild sun for an honorable migration.
4. For they deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned by darkness,they had kept your children confined,through whom the imperishable light of the law was to be given to the world.
5. When they determined to put to death the infants of the holy ones,and when a single boy had been cast forth and then saved,As a reproof you carried off a multitude of their childrenand made them perish all at once in the mighty water.
6. That night was known beforehand to our ancestors,so that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith, they might have courage.
7. The expectation of your peoplewas the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of their foes.
8. For by the same means with which you punished our adversaries,you glorified us whom you had summoned.
9. For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrificeand carried out with one mind the divine institution,So that your holy ones should share alike the same blessings and dangers,once they had sung the ancestral hymns of praise.
10. But the discordant cry of their enemies echoed back,and the piteous wail of mourning for children was borne to them.
11. And the slave was smitten with the same retribution as the master;even the commoner suffered the same as the king.
12. And all alike by one common form of deathhad countless dead;For the living were not even sufficient for the burial,since at a single instant their most valued offspring had been destroyed.
13. For though they disbelieved at every turn on account of sorceries,at the destruction of the firstborn they acknowledged that this people was God’s son.
14. For when peaceful stillness encompassed everythingand the night in its swift course was half spent,
15. Your all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throneleapt into the doomed land,
16. a fierce warrior bearing the sharp sword of your inexorable decree,And alighted, and filled every place with death,and touched heaven, while standing upon the earth.