The prophet continues to lament
3
📚✭I am the man who has seenaffliction by the rod of his wrath✭.
2 📚He has led me and brought me
into darkness,
but not into light.
3 📚Surely he has turned against me;
he turns his hand against me
all day long.
4 📚He has made my flesh and
my skin grow old.
He has broken my bones.
5 📚✭He has built siege works
against me,
and surrounded me with bitterness
and hardship.
6 📚He has set me in dark places,
like the dead of long ago.
7 📚He has hedged me in,
so that I cannot get out.
He has made my chain heavy.
8 📚✭Also when I cry and shout,
he shuts out my prayer.
9 📚✭He has blocked up my ways with cut stones.
He has made my paths crooked.
10 📚✭He was like a bear lying
in wait for me,
and like a lion in secret places.
11 📚He has turned aside my ways,
and pulled me in pieces.
He has made me desolate.
12 📚He has bent his bow,
and set me as a target for the arrow.
13 📚He has caused the arrows of his quiver
to enter my inner being.
14 📚I was an object of derision
to all my people,
and their mocking
song all day long.
15 📚✭He has filled me with bitterness.
He has made me drunk with wormwood.
16 📚✭He has also broken my teeth
with gravel.
He has covered me with ashes.
17 📚And you have moved my soul
far from peace.
I have forgotten prosperity✭.
18 📚✭And I said, “My strength,
and my hope from the LORD have perished.
19 📚✭I remember✭ my affliction and my misery,
the wormwood and the bitterness,
20 📚My soul still remembers them, and sinks down within me.
Bright beams of hope
21 📚This I recall to my mind,
therefore I have hope:
22 📚✭Because of the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
for his compassions do not fail.
23 📚They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.
24 📚✭The LORD is my portion,
says my soul,
therefore I will hope in him.
25 📚✭The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26 📚It is good to hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
27 📚It is good for a man to bear the yoke✭ in his youth.
28 📚✭Let him sit alone and keep silent,
because he has laid it on him.
29 📚Let him put his mouth in the dust✭;
perhaps there is hope.
30 📚✭Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him.
Let him be filled with disgrace.
31 📚✭For the Lord will not reject forever.
32 📚For though he causes grief,
he will have compassion in accordance with the abundance of his mercies.
33 📚✭For he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.
34 📚✭To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth,
35 To turn aside a man’s rights before the face of the Most High,
36 📚To defraud a man in his case,
the Lord does not approve of such things.
37 📚✭Who is he who speaks,
and it comes to pass,
when the Lord has not commanded it?
38 📚Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that disaster and good things come?
39 📚Why should a living man complain✭,
a man undergoing punishment for his sins?
40 📚✭Let us search and examine our ways,
and turn back to the LORD.
41 📚✭Let us lift up our heart together with our hands to God in the heavens.
42 📚We have transgressed and have rebelled;
you have not pardoned.
But grief remains
43 📚✭You have covered us with anger,
and pursued us.
You have slain us;
you have not shown pity.
44 📚You have covered yourself
with a cloud,
so that our prayer
cannot pass through.
45 📚You have made us like scrapings
and trash in the midst of the people.
46 📚All our enemies have opened
their mouths against us.
47 📚Fear and a snare have come upon us,
desolation and destruction.
48 📚✭My eye runs down with rivers of water
for the destruction of the daughter
of my people.
49 📚My eye will flow without
interruption,
and will not stop,
50 📚Until the LORD looks down,
and sees from heaven.
51 📚My eye affects my heart because
of all the daughters of my city.
52 📚✭My enemies hunted me down
like a bird, without cause.
53 📚They cut off my life in the dungeon,
and hurled a stone on me;
54 📚Waters flowed over my head.
Then I said,
“I am cut off”.
55 📚I called on your name,
O LORD,
out of the deep dungeon.
56 📚You heard my voice:
“Do not hide your ear at my breathing,
at my cry”.
57 📚You drew near in the day that
I called to you. You said,
“Do not fear”.
58 📚O Lord,
you have pleaded the case for my soul.
You have redeemed my life.
59 📚O LORD,
you have seen the wrong done to me.
Judge my case.
60 📚You have seen all their vengeance and
all their plots against me.
61 📚You have heard their insults,
O LORD, and all their plots
against me,
62 📚The words✭ of those who rose up
against me,
and their whispering against me
all day long.
63 📚Look at their sitting down,
and their rising up.
I am their mocking song.
64 📚✭Repay them, O LORD,
in accordance with the work
of their hands.
65 📚✭Give them sorrow of heart.
Your curse be on them!
66 📚In anger pursue and destroy them✭
from under the LORD’s heavens!