⁴ Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.
    My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Interlude

² Your arrows have struck deep,
    and your blows are crushing me.
³ Because of your anger, my whole body is sick;
    my health is broken because of my sins.
⁴ My guilt overwhelms me—
    it is a burden too heavy to bear.
⁵ My wounds fester and stink
    because of my foolish sins.
⁶ I am bent over and racked with pain.
    All day long I walk around filled with grief.
⁷ A raging fever burns within me,
    and my health is broken.
⁸ I am exhausted and completely crushed.
    My groans come from an anguished heart.

¹⁰ But please stop striking me!
    I am exhausted by the blows from your hand.
¹¹ When you discipline us for our sins,
    you consume like a moth what is precious to us.
    Each of us is but a breath. Interlude

¹⁵ My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.
    My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
    You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.

³ For my days disappear like smoke,
    and my bones burn like red-hot coals.
⁴ My heart is sick, withered like grass,
    and I have lost my appetite.

⁶ In the morning it blooms and flourishes,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.
⁷ We wither beneath your anger;
    we are overwhelmed by your fury.

¹⁰ The famine has blackened our skin
    as though baked in an oven.

⁸ But now their faces are blacker than soot.
    No one recognizes them in the streets.
Their skin sticks to their bones;
    it is as dry and hard as wood.