1. How great is God, who ruleth men below! In awful terrors now arrayed, His dealings seem a recklessness to show, From which we shuddering shrink, dismayed. But men at first from Heaven their being drew, With nature liable to change. All hearts in infancy are good and true, But time and things those hearts derange.

2. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! O king of Yin, To you the proud oppressors give their aid, And 'gainst you fierce exactors sin! Why call such men your offices to hold? O'er your affairs why such men set? 'Heaven made them thus, so insolent and bold!' But 'tis from you their strength they get."

3. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! Yin's king so great, You honor not the good, but in their stead Oppressors whom the people hate. To you with baseless stories they reply, And thieves and robbers by them stand. Their oaths and maledictions fiercely fly, Ceaseless and deep, throughout the land."

4. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! O king of Yin, Fierce is your will, here in the court displayed, And only hatred thus you win. Your proper virtue you have never sought, And thus none good surround your throne. Of what true virtue is you take no thought, Hence are your nobles worthless known."

5. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! Yin's king so great, Not Heaven, but spirits, flush your face with red, That evil thus you imitate. You do in all your conduct what is wrong. Darkness to you the same as light, Your noisy feasts and revels you prolong; And day through you is black as night."

6. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! O king of Yin, Round you it is as if cicadas made, And bubbling soup, their ceaseless din. Things, great and small, fast to perdition go, While you pursue your reckless game. Our middle states with indignation glow; The demon lands as loudly blame."

7. Thus to the tyrant Ju our King Wen said:— "Alas! alas! O Yin's great king, 'Tis Yin, not God, has caused this time of dread, Yin that old ways away would fling. Old men and wise may not give you their trust, But statutes and old laws remain. Now is Yin's fortune crumbling to the dust, Because obedience you disdain."

8. Thus to the tyrant Ju King Wen did speak:— "Alas! alas! O king of Yin, For Yin its beacon was not far to seek;— In Hsia's last king its light was seen. True is the lesson in the saying taught: 'While leaf and branch still vigorous grow, A tree may fall. And what that fall has wrought? Its roots uptorn the cause will show.'"

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.