Lamentations Chapter 3
1 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 He has led me and made me go in darkness and not into light.
3 Surely He turned against me. He turns His hand all the day.
4 He has wasted my flesh and my skin. He has broken my bones.
5 He built against me and has circled me with bitterness and hardship.
6 He has made me live in dark places, like the dead of old.
7 He has set a fence around me and I cannot go out. He has made my bronze chain heavy.
8 Also when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.
9 He walled up my ways with cut stone. My paths are crooked.
10 He was a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in secret places.
11 He has turned my ways aside and torn me in pieces. He made me desolate.
12 He has bent His bow and set me as a mark for the arrow.
13 He has caused the arrows of His quiver to enter into my inward parts.
14 I was a mockery to all my people, their song all the day.
15 He has filled me with bitterness and made me drunk with wormwood.
16 He also broke my teeth with gravel. He has covered me in the ashes.
17 You cast off my soul from peace; I have forgotten blessedness.
18 I said, my strength and my hope from the Lord are gone.
19 Remember my affliction and my wandering, as wormwood and bitterness.
20 My soul vividly remembers and bows down on me.
21 I recall this to my mind. Therefore I hope.
22 It is by the Lord's kindnesses that we are not destroyed, because His mercies never 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 that one should hope for the salvation of the Lord, even in silence.
27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28 He sits alone and keeps silence because He laid it on him.
29 He puts his mouth in the dust, if perhaps there may be hope.
30 He gives his cheek to Him who strikes him. He is filled with reproach.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever;
32 for though He causes grief, yet He will have pity according to the multitude of His kindnesses.
33 For He does not afflict from His heart, nor does He grieve the sons of men;
34 to crush all the prisoners of the earth under his feet;
35 to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most high;
36 to pervert a man in his cause, this the Lord does not see.
37 Who is this who speaks and it comes to pass when the Lord does not command it?
38 From the mouth of the most high does not go out the evil and the good.
39 What? Should mankind complain, a living man, because of his sins?
40 Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.
41 Let us lift up our heart and hands to God in Heaven.
42 We have sinned and have rebelled. You have not forgiven.
43 you have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us. You have slain. You have not pitied.
44 you have wrapped yourself with a cloud from any prayer passing through.
45 you have made us as the sweepings and garbage in the midst of the people.
46 All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47 Fear and a pit have come to us, shame and ruin.
48 Streams of water run down my eye for the ruin of the daughter of my people.
49 My eye flows out and does not cease, from there being no intermission,
50 until the Lord shall look down and behold from Heaven.
51 My eye pains my soul because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My haters have hunted me, like a bird, without cause.
53 They have cut off my life in the pit, and cast a stone at 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 lowest pit.
56 you have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear at my relief, at my cry for help.
57 you drew near in the day that I called on you. You said, Do not be afraid.
58 O Lord, you pleaded for the causes of my soul. You redeemed my life.
59 O Lord, you have seen my wrong. Judge my cause.
60 you have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me.
61 you have heard their reproach, O Lord, all their plots against me;
62 the lips of those who rose against me, and their scheming against me all the day.
63 Behold their sitting down and their rising up; I am their song.
64 you will return to them a recompense, O Lord, according to the work of their hands.
65 you will give them dullness of heart, your curse on them.
66 Pursue and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord.