Wisdom 19 • The sea crossing and creation renewed in service — 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 19 • The sea crossing and creation renewed in service
The pursuit and its end
Verse 19:1
Greek–English Saints Priority
But merciless fury came upon the ungodly to the end,
for He knew beforehand even what they would do,
Textual & Reception Notes
The understood subject of foreknowledge is God. The following verse specifies the future action.
Verse 19:2
Greek–English Saints Priority
that after permitting the people to depart
and sending them on their way with haste,
they would change their minds and pursue them.
Textual & Reception Notes
The pronoun groups are distinguished in English by supplying ‘the people.’
Verse 19:3
Greek–English Saints Priority
For while their griefs were still at hand
and they were lamenting beside the graves of the dead,
they drew upon themselves another senseless plan,
and pursued as fugitives those whom they had begged to leave.
Textual & Reception Notes
The reversal from urging departure to pursuing fugitives is explicit.
Verse 19:4
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the compulsion they deserved drew them toward this end
and cast upon them forgetfulness of what had happened,
so that they might fill up the punishment still lacking in their torments,
Textual & Reception Notes
The agent is the deserved compulsion, not a new human adviser. The purpose clause remains.
Verse 19:5
Greek–English Saints Priority
and Your people might experience an astonishing journey,
while those others found an extraordinary death.
Textual & Reception Notes
Creation serves the deliverance of God’s children
Verse 19:6
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the whole creation, in its own kind, was being fashioned anew from the beginning,
serving Your commands,
so that Your children might be guarded unharmed.
Textual & Reception Notes
The renewal of creation and its own kind are both stated; the translation does not supply a modern physical mechanism.
Verse 19:7
Greek–English Saints Priority
The cloud overshadowing the camp was seen,
and dry land rising from water that had existed before,
an unobstructed way out of the Red Sea,
and a grass-bearing plain out of the violent surge;
Textual & Reception Notes
The visible signs include a grassy plain, not only a bare passage through water.
Verse 19:8
Greek–English Saints Priority
through it those sheltered by Your hand passed as an entire nation,
having seen marvelous wonders.
Textual & Reception Notes
Πανεθνεί explicitly describes the nation as a whole.
Verse 19:9
Greek–English Saints Priority
For they grazed like horses
and leaped like lambs, praising You, Lord, who rescued them.
Textual & Reception Notes
Both animal comparisons are retained.
Verse 19:10
Greek–English Saints Priority
For they still remembered the things from their sojourn:
how, instead of producing animals, the earth brought forth gnats,
and instead of aquatic creatures the river disgorged a multitude of frogs.
Textual & Reception Notes
The contrasts involving earth and river are the author’s retelling and are preserved without correction to another account.
Verse 19:11
Greek–English Saints Priority
Later they also saw a new production of birds,
when, urged on by desire, they asked for luxurious foods;
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 19:12
Greek–English Saints Priority
for as a consolation quail came up to them from the sea.
Textual & Reception Notes
The source explicitly says from the sea; the direction is retained.
Hostility to strangers receives judgment
Verse 19:13
Greek–English Saints Priority
Punishments also came upon the sinners,
not without earlier signs in the violence of thunderbolts;
for they suffered justly for their own wickedness,
since they had practiced a harsher hatred of strangers.
Textual & Reception Notes
Μισοξενία is hatred of strangers. The comparative harsher introduces the following comparison between two groups.
Verse 19:14
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the former did not receive unfamiliar visitors when they came,
but these enslaved strangers who had benefited them.
Textual & Reception Notes
The groups remain unnamed. The latter wrongdoing includes enslavement of benefactors, not merely failure to welcome strangers.
Verse 19:15
Greek–English Saints Priority
And not only that: there will be a visitation upon the former,
since they received foreigners with hostility;
Textual & Reception Notes
The connective and pronoun relation are compressed. ‘The former’ is adopted to maintain the comparison with the group in 19:16; the exact construction remains for review.
Verse 19:16
Greek–English Saints Priority
but the latter, after receiving with celebrations
those who had already shared in the same rights,
afflicted them with terrible labors.
Textual & Reception Notes
The prior welcome and shared rights sharpen the subsequent mistreatment.
Verse 19:17
Greek–English Saints Priority
They were also struck with blindness,
like those at the righteous man’s doors,
when, surrounded by yawning darkness,
each sought the passage through his own doors.
Textual & Reception Notes
The unnamed comparison remains a comparison; no participants’ names are inserted. The source says each one’s own doors.
The elements change their operation
Verse 19:18
Greek–English Saints Priority
For the elements were being rearranged among themselves,
as notes on a harp change the pattern of the rhythm,
while always retaining their sound;
this can be inferred precisely from observing what happened.
Textual & Reception Notes
The musical comparison is difficult. ‘Pattern’ renders the force of the literal ‘name of the rhythm’; the preservation of sound amid rearrangement is retained without asserting a reconstructed ancient musical theory.
Verse 19:19
Greek–English Saints Priority
For land creatures were changed into water creatures,
and swimming creatures moved onto land;
Textual & Reception Notes
The stated transformations are retained as the author’s account.
Verse 19:20
Greek–English Saints Priority
fire in water exceeded its own power,
and water forgot its nature of extinguishing;
Textual & Reception Notes
The genitive of power is understood comparatively, in line with the preceding fire-and-water account. The personified forgetting remains.
Verse 19:21
Greek–English Saints Priority
flames, conversely, did not wither the flesh
of perishable animals walking among them,
nor the meltable, crystal-like kind of heavenly food that readily melts.
Textual & Reception Notes
Ἀμβροσία τροφή is heavenly or imperishable food; the repeated meltability terms are preserved. The contrast concerns fire’s restraint, not ordinary resistance of all food to heat.
Verse 19:22
Greek–English Saints Priority
For in every way, Lord, You magnified and glorified Your people,
and did not disregard them, standing beside them at every time and place.
Textual & Reception Notes
The book closes with the comprehensive time-and-place expression and the negative ‘did not disregard.’