But as for the peoples, seeing and understanding not, neither laying this to heart, that grace and mercy are with his chosen, and that he visiteth his holy ones:-- But a righteous man that is dead shall condemn the ungodly that are living, and youth that is quickly perfected the many years of an unrighteous man’s old age; For the ungodly shall see a wise man’s end, and shall not understand what the Lord purposed concerning him, and for what he safely kept him:-- They shall see, and they shall despise; but them the Lord shall laugh to scorn. And after this they shall become a dishonoured carcase, and a reproach among the dead for ever: Because he shall dash them speechless to the ground, and shall shake them from the foundations, and they shall lie utterly waste, and they shall be in anguish, and their memory shall perish. * * * * * They shall come, when their sins are reckoned up, with coward fear; and their lawless deeds shall convict them to their face. =5= Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of them that afflicted him, and them that make his labours of no account. When they see it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the marvel of God’s salvation. They shall say within themselves repenting, and for distress of spirit shall they groan, This was he whom aforetime we had in derision, and made a parable of reproach: We fools accounted his life madness, and his end without honour: How was he numbered among sons of God? and how is his lot among saints? Verily we went astray from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not for us, and the sun rose not for us. We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness and destruction, and we journeyed through trackless deserts, but the way of the Lord we knew not. What did our arrogancy profit us? and what good have riches and vaunting brought us? Those things all passed away as a shadow, and as a message that runneth by: As a ship passing through the billowy water, whereof, when it is gone by, there is no trace to be found, neither pathway of its keel in the billows: Or as when a bird flieth through the air, no token of her passage is found, but the light wind, lashed with the stroke of her pinions, and rent asunder with the violent rush of the moving wings, is passed through, and afterwards no sign of her coming is found therein: Or as when an arrow is shot at a mark, the air disparted closeth up again immediately, so that men know not where it passed through: So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be: and of virtue we had no sign to shew, but in our wickedness we were utterly consumed. Because the hope of the ungodly man is as chaff carried by the wind, and as foam vanishing before a tempest; and is scattered as smoke is scattered by the wind, and passeth by as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day. * * * * *