Great Is Your Faithfulness
I am the man that has seen affliction because of the rod of God’s wrath.
He has driven me and made me walk in darkness and not in light.
Surely he turns his hand against me again and again all day long.
He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away; he has broken my bones.
He has built against me and surrounded me with gall and tribulation.
He has made me to live in dark places like those that have been long dead.
He has walled me in so that I cannot go out; he has made my prison chain heavy.
Even when I cry out and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.
He has walled up my ways with cut stone; he has made my paths twisted.
To me, he is a bear lying in wait, a lion in secret places.
He has turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces; he has made me desolate.
He has bent his bow and set me as a target for the arrows.
He has shot the shafts of his quiver into my kidneys.
I have become a laughingstock to all my people, and their song of ridicule all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness, he has satiated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel, he has made me cower in ashes.
My soul has been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what good is.
I said, “My future has perished, and also what I hoped for from Yahweh.”
Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and gall.
My soul remembers, yes, remembers them and is bent over within me.
This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope:
because of Yahweh’s covenant faithfulness we have not ceased to be, because his mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good to hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh.
It is good for a man that he carry the yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone and be silent because he has laid it on him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there is still hope.
Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him; let him be filled with shame.
For the Lord will not abandon forever.
For though he cause grief, yet he will have mercy according to the vastness of his covenant faithfulness.
For it is not God’s heart to afflict people, or grieve the children of men.
To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the land,
to deny a man justice before the face of the Most High,
to subvert a man in his lawsuit, does not the Lord see it?
Who can speak and have it come to pass if the Lord has not commanded it?
Does not bad and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
Why should a living man complain— any man—because of the consequences of his sins?
Let us search out and examine our ways, and return to Yahweh.
Let us lift up our hearts in addition to our hands to God in the heavens.
We have transgressed and have rebelled; you have not forgiven.
You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us; you have killed without mercy.
You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through.
You have made us offscouring and garbage in the midst of the peoples.
All our enemies have opened their mouths wide against us.
Panic and the pit have come on us, devastation and destruction.
My eye runs down with streams of water because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
My eyes flow down unceasingly, without stopping,
until Yahweh looks down and sees from heaven.
What my eyes see hurts my soul— all that has come upon the daughters of my city.
For no reason, my enemies have hunted, yes, hunted me like a bird.
They have confined me alive in the cistern and have thrown a stone over me.
Water flowed upon my head; I said, “I am cut off.”
I called on your name, O Yahweh, out of the depths of the cistern.
You heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my cry for relief.
You drew near on the day that I called to you; you said, “Do not be afraid.”
Lord, you have taken up my cause; you have redeemed my life.
Yahweh, you have seen the wrong done to me. Judge my case.
You have seen all their vengeance, all their plans against me.
You have heard their reproach, Yahweh; all their plans against me,
the lips of those that rose up against me and their plotting against me all day long.
You see their sitting down and their rising up; I am the object of their mocking song.
Give them back what they deserve, Yahweh, according to the work of their hands.
Give them a tortured mind, as your curse to them.
Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under Yahweh’s heaven.