But the ungodly were assailed to the end by pitiless anger is literally “Pitiless anger rested on the ungodly to the end.” Compare 16.5. For ungodly see 1.16. For anger we feel that “your … anger” (Good News Translation Contemporary English Version “You remained angry”) will be appropriate here, whereas in the previous verses we did not (see the comments on 18.20). The connection with God in the second line is clear. Then too, while our author hesitated to speak of God’s anger slaughtering the Israelites (preferring to speak of “the destroyer”), he probably would not object to speaking of God directly pursuing the Egyptians. So this line may be rendered “But your merciless anger followed the ungodly people until the very end” or “But you continued to be very [or, terribly] angry with those wicked people and mercilessly punished them until the very end.”

For God knew in advance even their future actions: As the Revised Standard Version footnote indicates, the Greek says simply “he” rather than God, but the real problem is that elsewhere in this portion of the book God is addressed, not spoken of. The Handbook suggests that translators follow Good News Translation in shifting the subject of the sentence to the second person to be consistent with other references. A closer rendering to the Greek than Good News Translation would be “because you knew in advance what was going to happen.”

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.