Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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Terror Strikes the Egyptians at Night
1 O Lord, your acts of judgment
are marvelous and hard
to explain; that is why people who
had not been taught about them
went astray.
2 When lawless people
imagined that they had your holy nation
in their power, they were themselves
imprisoned in a long night of
darkness. They lay in their own
houses, shut off from your eternal
care.
3 They thought that their sins
had been secret and unnoticed,
shielded from view by a dark curtain
of forgetfulness, but now they were
horribly afraid, confused, and terrified
by ghostly forms.
4 Not even the
dark corners where they lay could
protect them from fear. They were
surrounded by horrible noises; grim
ghosts with gloomy faces appeared
before their eyes.
5 No fire had
power to give them light, and the
brilliant stars could do nothing to relieve
that deathly darkness.
6 There
was only a dreadful fire, lit by no human
hand, that shone on them, and
in their terror they believed that the
real world was even worse than the
things they imagined.
7 The illusions
produced by their magic tricks were
put to shame, and all the wisdom
they had boasted of came to nothing.
8 They had claimed they could
drive away all the fears and illnesses
of sick minds, but now they themselves
were sick with silly, groundless
fears.
9 Even though nothing
dangerous had actually happened,
they were terrified by hissing snakes
and animals advancing on them.
10 And so they died, shaking with
fear, afraid even to open their eyes,
yet unable to keep them shut.
11 Wickedness is cowardly in itself
and stands self-condemned. noteSomeone
with a guilty conscience will always
imagine things to be worse
than they really are.
12 Fear is nothing
but the failure to use the help
that reason gives.
13 When you lack
the confidence to rely on reason, you
give in to the fears caused by ignorance.
14 All night long those people slept
the same restless sleep, even though
the night held no power over them,
since it came from the powerless
depths of the world of the dead.
15 They were chased by hideous
forms and lay paralyzed as they surrendered
themselves to the sudden,
unexpected fear that came over
them.
16 People would suddenly collapse
and lie locked in the chains of
their own fear.
17 Farmers, shepherds,
and laborers out in the countryside
were captured by the same
inevitable fate and bound in the
darkness by the same invisible
chain.
18
19 They were panic-stricken
by the sighing of the wind or by the
singing of birds in the trees or by the
roar of rushing water or by the rumble
of falling rock or by the sound of
unseen creatures running about or
by the savage roaring of wild animals
or by the echoes from the
mountains.
20 In the full light of day,
the rest of the world went about its
business undisturbed.
21 Only those
people were covered by this heavy
night, a foretaste of the darkness of
death that was waiting for them.
They were a burden to themselves
that was even heavier than the darkness.
-- --
Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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