Nothing was shining through to them except a dreadful, self-kindled fire: Them refers to the people cowering in terror. There are two problems here. How do we reconcile the presence of fire with the insistence on darkness in the previous verses? And what is the meaning of the phrase translated self-kindled fire? New Jerusalem Bible translates it “a great, spontaneous blaze.” New English Bible has “a blaze, of no man’s making,” Revised English Bible “a terrifying blaze of no human making,” Traduction œcuménique de la Bible “a fire that lit itself,” and New American Bible “intermittent … fires.” One suggestion (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) is that the author thinks of God doing the kind of thing done by magicians of the day: making something catch fire by itself, but with the purpose of driving people mad by a constant going off and on. Another suggestion is made by Goodrick: “Every now and then an electric flash (like lightning) lit up the darkness and showed the Egyptians the spectral forms of objects (possibly the ghosts) for a moment; when the flash ceased … they exaggerated in the darkness the things they had for an instant beheld.” No one can be dogmatic about this, but the last explanation appeals. For these lines we might, however timidly, suggest “The only light they had came in fiery flashes that only filled them full of fear.”

And in terror they deemed the things which they saw to be worse than that unseen appearance: Good News Translation has the right understanding here. It follows New English Bible: “and in their panic they thought the real world even worse than that imaginary sight.” Either may be used as a model.

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.