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.