Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 17

17: 1 - 21 (Edgar Goodspeed translation)
For Your judgments are great and hard to set forth; therefore uninstructed souls went astray. For when lawless men thought they were oppressing a holy nation they lay shut up under their roofs, exiled from the eternal providence, prisoners of darkness and captives of the long night. For when they thought they were hidden in their secret sins by a dark veil of forgetfulness, they were scattered, terribly frightened, and appalled by specters. For even the inner chamber that held them did not protect them from fear, but appalling sounds rung around them, and somber ghosts appeared, with gloomy faces. And no fire was strong enough to succeed in giving them light, nor could the bright flames of the stars undertake to illumine that hateful night. Only there shone on them a fearful flame, of itself, and though dreadfully frightened at that sight when it could not be seen, they thought the things they beheld still worse. And the delusions of magic art were prostrate, and their boasted wisdom suffered a contemptuous rebuke, for those who claimed to drive away fears and troubles from sick souls were sick themselves with ridiculous fear. For if nothing alarming frightened them, yet scared by the creeping of vermin and the hissing of reptiles they died of fright, refusing to look even upon the air, which could not be escaped on any side. For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by a witness of its own, and being distressed by conscience, has always exaggerated (uncertain word translated) hardships; for fear is nothing but the giving up of the reinforcements that come of reason, and as the expectation of them from within is deficient, it reckons its ignorance worse than the cause of the torment. But they, all through the night, which was really powerless, and came upon them from the recesses of a powerless Hades, sleeping the same sleep, were now driven by monstrous phantoms, and now paralyzed by their soul's surrender; for they were drenched in sudden, unlooked-for fear. Then whoever was there fell down and so was shut up and guarded in a prison not made of iron; for whether a man was a farmer or a shepherd, or a laborer whose work was in a wilderness, he was overtaken and suffered the unavoidable fate, for they were all bound with one chain of darkness. Whether there was a whistling wind, or a melodious sound of birds in spreading branches, or the regular noise of rushing water, or a harsh crashing of rocks thrown down, or the unseen running of bounding animals, or the sound of the most savage wild beasts roaring, or an echo thrown back from a hollow in the mountains, it paralyzed them with terror. for the whole world was bathed in bright light, and occupied in unhindered work; only over them was spread a heavy night, a picture of the darkness that was to receive them. But heavier than the darkness were they to themselves.