1 But for Your holy ones there was a very great light. Their enemies heard their voice but did not see their form; And they considered them blessed because they had also not suffered,
2 For Your holy ones did not harm those Who previously wronged them. So they were thankful and begged for grace for being at variance with them.
3 Therefore You provided a flaming pillar of fire As a guide for their unknown journey, And a harmless sun for their glorious exile.
4 For their enemies deserved to be deprived of light And imprisoned in darkness, Those whom prisoned Your children, Through whom the incorruptible light of the law was to be given to the world.
5 When they resolved to kill the babes of Your holy ones And one child was exposed and rescued, You took away as a rebuke a multitude of their children; And You destroyed them together in the violent water.
6 That night was made known beforehand to our fathers So they might rejoice with sure know ledge in the oaths they trusted.
7 The salvation of the righteous and the destruction of enemies were expected by Your people,
8 For You punished our enemies with the same means by which You called and glorified us.
9 For in secret the holy children of good people offered sacrifices, And in harmony with the divine law made a covenant, That the saints would share alike in good things and in dangers; And already they were singing the praises of their fathers.
10 But the discordant cry of their enemies resounded, And their pitiful outcry and mourning for their children spread abroad.
11 The servant was punished with the same penalty as the master, And the common man suffered the same thing as the king.
12 They all together by the one name of death Had innumerable dead persons, For there were not enough living even to bury them; Because in one critical moment their valued children were destroyed.
13 For they disbelieved every thing because of their sorceries, But at the destruction of their firstborn, They acknowledged the people to be God's son.
14 For while gentle silence embraced everything And night at its own speed was half over,
15 Your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, Into the midst of a doomed land, A relentless warrior carrying the sharp sword Of Your irrevocable command,
16 And He stood and filled all things with death And touched heaven while standing on earth.
17 Then immediately apparitions in terrifying dreams troubled them, And unexpected fears set upon them,
18 And they threw them selves to the ground half-dead, One apparition here and another there, To make known to them the reason they were dying.
19 For the dreams which disturbed them revealed this beforehand, So they might not die without understanding Why it was they suffered.
20 The experience of death also touched the righteous, And a plague came upon the multitude in the desert; But the wrath did not last long.
21 For a blameless man hastened and acted as their champion. He carried the instrument of his ministry: Prayer and the atonement of incense, And withstood the anger and put an end to the calamity, Showing that he was Your servant.
22 He conquered the wrath not by strength of body, And not by the power of weapons, But by a word he subdued the punisher, Because he remembered the oaths and covenants of the fathers.
23 For when the dead had already fallen on one another in heaps, He stood in the midst and drove back the wrath And cut off its path to the living.
24 For the whole world was on his long robe, And the glories of the fathers were a carved work Arranged in four rows of stones; And Your majesty was on the diadem on his head.
25 To these the destroyer yielded And these he feared; For the trial of his wrath alone was enough.