⁵ The people who once ate the richest foods
    now beg in the streets for anything they can get.
Those who once wore the finest clothes
    now search the garbage dumps for food.

²⁰ The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.
    He trusts something that can’t help him at all.
Yet he cannot bring himself to ask,
    “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”

⁴ I look for someone to come and help me,
    but no one gives me a passing thought!
No one will help me;
    no one cares a bit what happens to me.

“I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble,
    and he answered me.
I called to you from the land of the dead,^[a]
    and Lord, you heard me!
³ You threw me into the ocean depths,
    and I sank down to the heart of the sea.
The mighty waters engulfed me;
    I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.
⁴ Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have driven me from your presence.
    Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’

⁵ “I sank beneath the waves,
    and the waters closed over me.
    Seaweed wrapped itself around my head.
⁶ I sank down to the very roots of the mountains.
    I was imprisoned in the earth,
    whose gates lock shut forever.
But you, O Lord my God,
    snatched me from the jaws of death!
⁷ As my life was slipping away,
    I remembered the Lord.
And my earnest prayer went out to you
    in your holy Temple.
⁸ Those who worship false gods
    turn their backs on all God’s mercies.