Repentance of the Wicked

They shall say within themselves repenting:

‘Verily we went astray from the way of truth,

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,

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, is passed through by the motion of her wings,

And afterwards no sign of her coming is found therein:

So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be;

And of virtue we had no sign to show,

But in our wickedness we were utterly consumed.

Because the hope of the ungodly man is as chaff carried by the wind,

And passeth by as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.

‘But the righteous live for ever,

And in the Lord is their reward,

And the care for them with the Most High.’

WISDOM OF SOLOMON 5. 3, 6–11, 13–15.