Wisdom 2: 1, 12 - 22
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| 1
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For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, "Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end, and no one has been known to return from Hades.
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| 12
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"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.
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| 13
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He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord.
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| 14
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He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
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| 15
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the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange.
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| 16
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We 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.
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| 17
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Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
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| 18
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for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
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| 19
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Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance.
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| 20
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Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected."
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| 21
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Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them,
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| 22
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and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness, nor discern the prize for blameless souls;
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