Good News Translation
Wickedness is cowardly in itself and stands self-condemned. Someone with a guilty conscience will always imagine things to be worse than they really are.

New Revised Standard Version
For fear is nothing but a giving up of the helps that come from reason;

Contemporary English Version
because evil people are cowards condemned by their own consciences, and whatever they fear becomes even more frightening.

New American Bible
For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason;

Douay-Rheims Bible
For fear is nothing else but a yielding up of the succours from thought.

For fear is nothing else but a yielding up of the succours from thought.

Wisdom 17:9
For though no terrible thing disturbed them: yet being scared with the passing by of beasts, and hissing of serpents, they died for fear and denying that they saw the air, which could by no means be avoided.

Wisdom 17:10
For whereas wickedness is fearful, it beareth witness of its condemnation: for a troubled conscience always forecasteth grievous things.

Wisdom 17:12
And while there is less expectation from within, the greater doth it count the ignorance of that cause which bringeth the torment.

Wisdom 17:13
But they that during that night, in which nothing could be done, and which came upon them from the lowest and deepest hell, slept the same sleep,