The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Book of Wisdom
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Chapter 4
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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How fair a thing is the unwedded life that is nobly lived! Think not the memory of it can fade; God and man alike preserve the record;
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in life how eagerly imitated, in death how long regretted, in eternity how crowned with triumph, the conquest gained in fields of honourable striving!
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Let the wicked gender as they will, it shall nothing avail them; what, should those bastard slips ever strike their roots deep, base the tree firm?
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Burgeon they may for a little, but the wind will shake their frail hold; root and all, the storm will carry them away.
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Half-formed, the boughs will be snapped off, and their fruit go to waste, unripe, unprofitable.
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And indeed, when the day of reckoning comes, needs must they should be cited as witnesses against their own parents, these, the children of their shame, by unlawful dalliance begotten.

7
Not so the innocent; though he should die before his time, rest shall be his.
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A seniority there is that claims reverence, owing nothing to time, not measured by the lapse of years; count a man grey-haired when he is wise,
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ripe of age when his life is stainless.
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Divine favour, divine love banished him from a life he shared with sinners;
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caught him away, before wickedness could pervert his thoughts, before wrong-doing could allure his heart;
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such witchery evil has, to tarnish honour, such alchemy do the roving passions exercise even on minds that are true metal.
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With him, early achievement counted for long apprenticeship;
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so well the Lord loved him, from a corrupt world he would grant him swift release.

The world looks on, uncomprehending; a hard lesson it is to learn,
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that God does reward, does pity his chosen friends, does grant his faithful servants deliverance.
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Did they know it, the death of the just man, with its promise early achieved, is a reproach to the wicked that live yet in late old age.
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But what see they? Here is a man dead, and all his wisdom could not save him. That the Lord planned all this, and for the saving of him, does not enter their minds.
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What wonder if the sight fills them with contempt? And they themselves, all the while, are earning the Lord’s contempt;
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they themselves, doomed to lie there dishonoured among the dead, eternally a laughing-stock! How they will stand aghast, when he pricks the bubble of their pride! Ruins they shall be, overthrown from the foundation, land for ever parched dry; bitter torment shall be theirs, and their name shall perish irrecoverably.
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Alas, the long tally of their sins! Trembling they shall come forward, and the record of their misdeeds shall rise up to confront them.