Though thou wast not unable to give the ungodly into the hands of the righteous in battle: This was what God was perfectly capable of doing if he had chosen. It could be expressed as “You could have allowed the righteous [or, your own people] to destroy those ungodly [or, wicked] people in battle” or “… fight against those ungodly people and destroy them.” For ungodly refer to 1.16.

Or to destroy them at one blow by dread wild beasts or thy stern word: But God didn’t even need the Israelite army. He could have wiped out the Canaanites with a horde of savage animals (dread wild beasts). He didn’t even need that. He could have simply spoken (thy stern word), and they would have been destroyed. Good News Translation “one harsh command” does not quite succeed in expressing the meaning. Whom would God have been commanding? What would have been the command? “Die!”? Would they have obeyed the command? This stern word is not a command; it is a word such as spoken at creation, when God spoke and the parts of creation came into existence. Here the author says that all God had to do was speak the ungodly out of existence. The adjective translated stern means “abrupt” or “sudden.” Perhaps a better model than Good News Translation is “You could have wiped them out immediately with wild [or, fierce/savage] animals; you could have destroyed them suddenly with a sharp word.”

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.