1Meanwhile, for your holy ones there was great light. The Egyptians heard their voice without seeing them; they called them fortunate because they had not suffered; 2they also thanked them, for in spite of the injustice done to them they had not retaliated, and asked their pardon for previous wrongs.
3In contrast to this darkness, you gave your holy people a pillar of fire as a guide in their unmapped journey, as a mild sun during their glorious migration. 4The enemy deserved to be without light and imprisoned in darkness for having imprisoned your sons, the people through whom the imperishable light of your laws would be given to the world.
5They had intended to kill the infants of your holy people – and of those exposed only one child was saved. Because of that you retaliated by doing away with a multitude of their sons who perished together in the raging sea.
6That night had been foretold to our ancestors, and knowing in what promise they trusted, they could rejoice in all surety. 7Your people waited for both the salvation of the just and the downfall of their enemies, 8for the very punishment of our enemies brought glory to the people you have called – that is, to us.
9The holy race secretly offered the Passover sacrifice and really agreed on this worthy pact: that they would share alike both blessings and dangers. And forthwith they began to sing the hymns of their fathers.
10Then came discordant echoes from their enemies: plaintive voices mourning their children.
11The same sentence struck slave and master alike; the common man and the king endured equal suffering. 12They mourned together for innumerable victims, all stricken with the same kind of death.
The living were not enough to bury them, for the flower of their race had perished in an instant.
13Although sorcery had turned them into unbelievers, after the death of their firstborn they acknowledged that your people were the children of God.
14While all was in quiet silence and the night was in the middle of its course, 15your almighty Word leapt down from the Royal Throne – a stern warrior to a doomed world. 16Carrying your fearful command like a sharpened sword and stretching from heaven to earth, he filled the universe with death.
17Immediately they were overwhelmed with terrible dreams and hallucinations and assailed by sudden fears. 18Thrown half-dead, some here and some there, they made known why they were dying, 19for the dreams that had troubled them had also instructed them, lest they perish without knowing the reason for their misfortune.
20Indeed the righteous, too, experienced death when a scourge struck a great number of them in the desert, but God’s anger was short-lived.
21A blameless man hastened to their defense. Using the weapons of his sacred office – prayer and atonement incense – he confronted the divine Wrath, putting an end to their affliction, and was thus recognized as your servant.
22He vanquished your Wrath, but not by physical strength or by the force of arms. He won over the Punisher by reminding him of the sworn promises and covenants made with our ancestors.
23The dead were already piled up, one on top of the other, when he intervened, beating back Wrath and cutting it off from the living. 24For the whole world was represented on his flowing robe, the glorious names of the fathers on the four rows of stones, and your majesty engraved on the diadem on his head.
25The Destroyer, afraid of these, recoiled; a mere taste of Wrath had been sufficient.
