For when the terrible rage of wild beasts came upon thy people and they were being destroyed by the bites of writhing serpents: Since this verse begins a new section, the connector For may be omitted. The wild beasts are the serpents the two lines are similar in meaning, and can be combined. Good News Translation renders rage … came upon thy people with “attacked your people.” It translates destroyed by the bites as “killing them with their poison,” because in English we speak of large animals like lions and bears killing with their bites, but snakes and such creatures killing with their venom or poison. This is an idiomatic matter, and translators should of course say what is natural in their own language. Rather than speak of the terrible rage of wild beasts, Good News Translation shifts to the easier “terrible, fierce snakes.” Good News Translation, however, does leave out writhing. To “writhe” is to make the twisting, turning, coiling motion that a group of snakes caught in a sack might make. Good News Translation probably omits it because it could not find a good word at an appropriate level. But translators in languages other than English may not have such a problem. At any rate, the purpose of the word is not to describe the movement of the snakes, but to convey horror, and any word that does this would be appropriate here. An alternative model for these two lines is “When horrible bunches of fierce, repulsive [or, slithering/writhing] snakes were attacking your people and killing them with their poison.”

Thy wrath did not continue to the end: This means that God did not keep punishing the people with these snakes until the people were all dead. A possible rendering for this line is “you were not angry enough to destroy your people completely.”

It is possible to restructure the verse as follows:

• When you were angry with your people and sent horrible bunches of writhing snakes to attack and kill them with their poison, you stopped being angry before you completely destroyed your people.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Wisdom of Solomon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2004. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.