2For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,
‘Short and sorrowful is our life,
and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end,
and no one has been known to return from Hades.
¹²‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
¹³He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child^* of the Lord.
¹⁴He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
¹⁵the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
¹⁶We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
¹⁷Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
¹⁸for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
¹⁹Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
²⁰Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.’

Error of the Wicked

²¹Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,
for their wickedness blinded them,
²²and they did not know the secret purposes of God,
nor hoped for the wages of holiness,
nor discerned the prize for blameless souls;
²³for God created us for incorruption,
and made us in the image of his own eternity,^*
24but through the devil’s envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his company experience it.