⁷ Your anger weighs me down;
    with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude

¹⁵ I have been sick and close to death since my youth.
    I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors.
¹⁶ Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.
    Your terrors have paralyzed me.

²¹ “Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,
    for the hand of God has struck me.

¹² “Does it mean nothing to you, all you who pass by?
    Look around and see if there is any suffering like mine,
which the Lord brought on me
    when he erupted in fierce anger.

¹³ “He has sent fire from heaven that burns in my bones.
    He has placed a trap in my path and turned me back.
He has left me devastated,
    racked with sickness all day long.

¹⁴ “He wove my sins into ropes
    to hitch me to a yoke of captivity.
The Lord sapped my strength and turned me over to my enemies;
    I am helpless in their hands.

¹⁴ Yet I curse the day I was born!
    May no one celebrate the day of my birth.
¹⁵ I curse the messenger who told my father,
    “Good news—you have a son!”
¹⁶ Let him be destroyed like the cities of old
    that the Lord overthrew without mercy.
Terrify him all day long with battle shouts,
¹⁷     because he did not kill me at birth.
Oh, that I had died in my mother’s womb,
    that her body had been my grave!
¹⁸ Why was I ever born?
    My entire life has been filled
    with trouble, sorrow, and shame.

¹⁷ I never joined the people in their merry feasts.
    I sat alone because your hand was on me.
    I was filled with indignation at their sins.
¹⁸ Why then does my suffering continue?
    Why is my wound so incurable?
Your help seems as uncertain as a seasonal brook,
    like a spring that has gone dry.”

²⁰ You have allowed me to suffer much hardship,
    but you will restore me to life again
    and lift me up from the depths of the earth.