Terror Strikes the Egyptians at Night

¹ Great are your judgements and hard to describe; therefore uninstructed souls have gone astray.

² For when the lawless supposed that they held the holy nation in their power, they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night, shut in under their roofs, exiles from eternal providence.

³ For thinking that in their secret sins they were unobserved behind a dark curtain of forgetfulness, they were scattered, terribly alarmed, and appalled by spectres.

⁴ For not even the inner chamber that held them protected them from fear, but terrifying sounds rang out around them, and dismal phantoms with gloomy faces appeared.

⁵ And no power of fire was able to give light, nor did the brilliant flames of the stars avail to illumine that hateful night.

⁶ Nothing was shining through to them except a dreadful, self-kindled fire, and in terror they deemed the things that they saw to be worse than that unseen appearance.

⁷ The delusions of their magic art lay humbled, and their boasted wisdom was scornfully rebuked.

⁸ For those who promised to drive off the fears and disorders of a sick soul were themselves sick with ridiculous fear.

⁹ For even if nothing disturbing frightened them, yet, scared by the passing of beasts and the hissing of serpents,

¹⁰ they perished in trembling fear, refusing to look even at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided.

¹¹ For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by its own testimony; distressed by conscience, it has always exaggerated the difficulties.

¹² For fear is nothing but surrender of the helps that come from reason;

¹³ and inner expectation, being weak, prefers ignorance of what causes the torment.

¹⁴ But throughout the night, which was really powerless and which beset them from the recesses of powerless Hades, they all slept the same sleep

¹⁵ and now were driven by monstrous spectres and now were paralysed by their souls’ surrender, for sudden and unexpected fear overwhelmed them.

¹⁶ And whoever was there fell down and thus was kept shut up in a prison not made of iron;

¹⁷ for whether he was a farmer or a shepherd or a worker who toiled in the wilderness, he was seized and endured the inescapable fate; for with one chain of darkness they all were bound.

¹⁸ Whether there came a whistling wind or a melodious sound of birds in wide-spreading branches or the rhythm of violently rushing water

¹⁹ or the harsh crash of rocks hurled down or the unseen running of leaping animals or the sound of the most savage roaring beasts or an echo thrown back from a hollow of the mountains, it paralysed them with terror.

²⁰ For the whole world was illumined with brilliant light and was engaged in unhindered work,

²¹ while over those people alone heavy night was spread, an image of the darkness that was about to receive them; but still heavier than darkness were they to themselves.