Wisdom 11 • Water, judgment, and the mercy of the Creator — Greek text and reception
Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.
Chapter 11 • Water, judgment, and the mercy of the Creator
The same element brings benefit and punishment
Verse 11:1
Greek–English Saints Priority
She prospered their works by the hand of a holy prophet.
Textual & Reception Notes
Wisdom remains the subject from the preceding chapter.
Verse 11:2
Greek–English Saints Priority
They traveled through an uninhabited desert
and pitched tents in trackless places;
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:3
Greek–English Saints Priority
they opposed their adversaries and repelled their enemies.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:4
Greek–English Saints Priority
They thirsted and called upon You,
and water was given them from a sheer rock,
and a cure for thirst from hard stone.
Textual & Reception Notes
The verse resumes direct address to God. The rock and hard-stone descriptions are both retained.
Verse 11:5
Greek–English Saints Priority
For through the very things by which their enemies were punished,
they themselves received benefits in their need.
Textual & Reception Notes
This comparative principle governs the following contrast.
Verse 11:6
Greek–English Saints Priority
Instead of the source of an ever-flowing river
turbid with bloody gore,
Textual & Reception Notes
The contrast continues into the next verse; the river is not named in the source.
Verse 11:7
Greek–English Saints Priority
as a rebuke to the decree for killing infants,
You gave them abundant water beyond their expectation,
Textual & Reception Notes
The decree’s purpose is explicit; it is not softened into a general harsh policy.
Verse 11:8
Greek–English Saints Priority
showing through the thirst of that time
how You punished their opponents.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:9
Greek–English Saints Priority
For when they were tested, although disciplined in mercy,
they learned how the ungodly were tormented when judged in wrath.
Textual & Reception Notes
The two modes—merciful discipline and wrathful judgment—remain distinct.
Verse 11:10
Greek–English Saints Priority
For these You tested as a father giving instruction,
but those You examined as a stern king condemning them.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:11
Greek–English Saints Priority
Whether absent or present, they were worn down alike;
Textual & Reception Notes
The subject is the punished opponents in the preceding contrast.
Verse 11:12
Greek–English Saints Priority
for a twofold sorrow seized them,
and a groaning at the remembrance of what had passed.
Textual & Reception Notes
The numerical force of διπλῆ is preserved as twofold.
Verse 11:13
Greek–English Saints Priority
For when they heard that the others had received benefits through their own punishments,
they became aware of the Lord.
Textual & Reception Notes
‘The others’ distinguishes the benefited people from those undergoing punishment; both groups are pronominal in Greek.
Verse 11:14
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the one long ago cast out in exposure, whom they rejected with mockery,
they marveled at in the final outcome,
having thirsted unlike the righteous.
Textual & Reception Notes
The unnamed exposed child is retained as the source’s description. The final thirst comparison is not removed from the sentence.
Measured punishment and unlimited power
Verse 11:15
Greek–English Saints Priority
In return for the senseless reasonings of their unrighteousness,
in which they went astray and worshiped irrational creeping things and worthless beasts,
You sent upon them a multitude of irrational animals for vengeance,
Textual & Reception Notes
Ἄλογος is repeated for what they worshiped and what punished them. The connection is preserved.
Verse 11:16
Greek–English Saints Priority
so that they might know that through the things by which someone sins, through those things he is punished.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:17
Greek–English Saints Priority
For Your all-powerful hand,
which created the world from unformed matter,
was not at a loss to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions,
Textual & Reception Notes
‘From unformed matter’ is explicit in the declared Greek. The wording is retained without adding a philosophical account of that matter’s origin.
Verse 11:18
Greek–English Saints Priority
or newly created, unknown beasts full of fury,
either breathing a fire-breathing blast,
or scattering a stench of smoke,
or flashing dreadful sparks from their eyes,
Textual & Reception Notes
The hypothetical beasts’ three possible actions are all represented. Βρόμος is rendered stench here, with the smoke image.
Verse 11:19
Greek–English Saints Priority
whose injury could not only utterly crush them,
but whose very appearance could terrify and destroy them.
Textual & Reception Notes
The injury and the mere sight are distinct means in the rhetorical description.
Verse 11:20
Greek–English Saints Priority
Even without these, they could have fallen at a single breath,
pursued by justice
and winnowed away by the breath of Your power;
but You arranged all things by measure and number and weight.
Textual & Reception Notes
Πνεῦμα is rendered breath in both clauses. The final triad—measure, number, weight—is preserved without modern units.
The Master who loves life
Verse 11:21
Greek–English Saints Priority
For great strength is always at Your disposal,
and who will oppose the might of Your arm?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:22
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the whole world before You is like a slight tipping of the scales,
and like a drop of morning dew that has fallen upon the earth.
Textual & Reception Notes
Ῥοπή is a tipping or inclination of the balance; the translation does not introduce an unexpressed grain as the thing weighed.
Verse 11:23
Greek–English Saints Priority
But You have mercy on all, because You can do all things,
and You overlook human sins with a view to repentance.
Textual & Reception Notes
The purpose εἰς μετάνοιαν connects overlooking with repentance, not simple indifference to wrongdoing.
Verse 11:24
Greek–English Saints Priority
For You love all existing things
and abhor nothing that You made;
for You would not have fashioned anything while hating it.
Textual & Reception Notes
The universal language is preserved; no exception is added to the running text.
Verse 11:25
Greek–English Saints Priority
How could anything have endured unless You willed it,
or what had not been called by You have been preserved?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 11:26
Greek–English Saints Priority
But You spare all things, because they are Yours, Master who loves life.
Textual & Reception Notes
Φιλόψυχος is one who loves life or living beings; the title’s positive force here is retained.