³ “Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
    all the remnant of the house of Israel,
^(A)who have been borne by me from before your birth,
    carried from the womb;
^4 (B)even to your old age I am he,
    and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
    I will carry and will save.

³ Yet it was ^(A)I who taught Ephraim to walk;
    I took them up by their arms,
    but they did not know that ^(B)I healed them.
^4 (C)I led them with cords of kindness,^[a]
    with the bands of love,
and ^(D)I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,
    and ^(E)I bent down to them and fed them.

¹⁰ “He found him ^(A)in a desert land,
    and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he ^(B)encircled him, he cared for him,
    he ^(C)kept him as the apple of his eye.
^11 (D)Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
    that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
    bearing them on its pinions,
^12 (E)the Lord alone guided him,
    ^(F)no foreign god was with him.