Key Verse Spotlight
Wisdom 16:23 - Meaning and Application
Understand how this verse speaks to what you're facing and how to apply it today
Translation: World English Bible — Catholic Edition
" and that this fire, again, in order that righteous people may be nourished, has even forgotten its own power. "
Wisdom 16:23
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
21 For your nature showed your sweetness toward your children, while that bread, serving the desire of the eater, changed itself according to every man’s choice.
22 But snow and ice endured fire, and didn’t melt, that people might know that fire was destroying the fruits of the enemies, burning in the hail and flashing in the rains;
23 and that this fire, again, in order that righteous people may be nourished, has even forgotten its own power.
24 For the creation, ministering to you, its maker, strains its force against the unrighteous for punishment and in kindness, slackens it on behalf of those who trust in you.
25 Therefore at that time also, converting itself into all forms, it ministered to your all-nourishing bounty, according to the desire of those who had need,
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Wisdom 16:1
"For this cause, they were deservedly punished through creatures like those which they worship, and tormented through a multitude of vermin."
Wisdom 16:2
"Instead of this punishment, you, giving benefits to your people, prepared quails for food, a delicacy to satisfy the desire of their appetite,"
Wisdom 16:3
"to the end that your enemies, desiring food, might for the hideousness of the creatures sent among them, loathe even the necessary appetite; but these, your people, having for a short time suffered lack, might even partake of delicacies."
Wisdom 16:4
"For it was necessary that inescapable lack should come upon those oppressors, but that to these it should only be showed how their enemies were tormented."
Wisdom 16:5
"For even when terrible raging of wild beasts came upon your people, and they were perishing by the bites of crooked serpents, your wrath didn’t continue to the uttermost;"
Wisdom 16:6
"but for admonition were they troubled for a short time, having a token of salvation to put them in remembrance of the commandment of your law;"
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