Lamentations 3

I am the man who has seen affliction

He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness,

Surely he turns his hand against me

He has made my flesh and my skin old.

He has built against me,

He has made me dwell in dark places,

He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out.

Yes, when I cry, and call for help,

He has walled up my ways with cut stone.

He is to me as a bear lying in wait,

He has turned away my path,

He has bent his bow,

He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.

I have become a derision to all my people,

He has filled me with bitterness.

He has also broken my teeth with gravel.

You have removed my soul far away from peace.

I said, “My strength has perished,

Remember my affliction and my misery,

My soul still remembers them,

This I recall to my mind;

It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,

They are new every morning.

“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul.

Yahweh is good to those who wait for him,

It is good that a man should hope

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

Let him sit alone and keep silence,

Let him put his mouth in the dust,

Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him.

For the Lord will not cast off forever.

For though he causes grief,

For he does not afflict willingly,

To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,

to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,

to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn’t approve.

Who is he who says, and it comes to pass,

Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?

Why should a living man complain,

Let us search and try our ways,

Let’s lift up our heart with our hands to God3:41 The Hebrew word rendered “God” is “אֱלֹהִ֑ים” (Elohim). in the heavens.

“We have transgressed and have rebelled.

“You have covered us with anger and pursued us.

You have covered yourself with a cloud,

You have made us an off-scouring and refuse

“All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.

Terror and the pit have come on us,

My eye runs down with streams of water,

My eye pours down

until Yahweh looks down,

My eye affects my soul,

They have chased me relentlessly like a bird,

They have cut off my life in the dungeon,

Waters flowed over my head.

I called on your name, Yahweh,

You heard my voice:

You came near in the day that I called on you.

Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul.

Yahweh, you have seen my wrong.

You have seen all their vengeance

You have heard their reproach, Yahweh,

the lips of those that rose up against me,

You see their sitting down and their rising up.

You will pay them back, Yahweh,

You will give them hardness of heart,

You will pursue them in anger,