We urge translators to follow Good News Translation (and New English Bible) in placing this verse in parentheses, if that can be done in their language. It is something the author wishes to express at this point, but he breaks into his train of thought to do it.

For the fascination of wickedness obscures what is good, and roving desire perverts the innocent mind: The connector For may be omitted. The fascination of wickedness may be translated literally as “the witchcraft of evil”; New English Bible translates the verse “(because evil is like witchcraft: it dims the radiance of good, and the waywardness of desire unsettles an innocent mind).” This is better than Good News Translation we will work with it to build a model below. The word translated obscures was used by the Greek philosophers to describe the dulling of the conscience, “the darkening of the moral sense” (Reider). Roving desire is literally “roving of desire.” The noun translated roving is probably the author’s own invention. This precise form is found nowhere else, but the readers would have understood it. It describes going round about in circles so as to become dizzy and disoriented.

By working from New English Bible, we construct this model for translators:

• (Evil is like witchcraft [or, magic]. It keeps us from recognizing what is good. Wild desire [or, Greed] can corrupt the mind of even the most innocent person, and make us lose all sense of direction [or, make us lose touch with reality/stray from the real path]).

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.