Old/New Testament
3 I am the man who has seen the afflictions that come from the rod of God’s wrath. 2 He has brought me into deepest darkness, shutting out all light. 3 He has turned against me. Day and night his hand is heavy on me. 4 He has made me old and has broken my bones.
5 He has built forts against me and surrounded me with anguish and distress. 6 He buried me in dark places, like those long dead. 7 He has walled me in; I cannot escape; he has fastened me with heavy chains. 8 And though I cry and shout, he will not hear my prayers! 9 He has shut me into a place of high, smooth walls;[a] he has filled my path with detours.
10 He lurks like a bear, like a lion, waiting to attack me. 11 He has dragged me into the underbrush and torn me with his claws, leaving me bleeding and desolate.
12 He has bent his bow and aimed it squarely at me, 13 and sent his arrows deep within my heart.
14 My own people laugh at me; all day long they sing their ribald songs.
15 He has filled me with bitterness and given me a cup of deepest sorrows to drink. 16 He has made me eat gravel and broken my teeth; he has rolled me in ashes and dirt. 17 O Lord, all peace and all prosperity have long since gone, for you have taken them away. I have forgotten what enjoyment is. 18 All hope is gone; my strength has turned to water, for the Lord has left me. 19 Oh, remember the bitterness and suffering you have dealt to me! 20 For I can never forget these awful years; always my soul will live in utter shame.
21 Yet there is one ray of hope: 22 his compassion never ends. It is only the Lord’s mercies that have kept us from complete destruction. 23 Great is his faithfulness; his loving-kindness begins afresh each day. 24 My soul claims the Lord as my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him. 25 The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him, to those who seek for him. 26 It is good both to hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a young man to be under discipline, 28 for it causes him to sit apart in silence beneath the Lord’s demands, 29 to lie face downward in the dust; then at last there is hope for him. 30 Let him turn the other cheek to those who strike him and accept their awful insults, 31 for the Lord will not abandon him forever. 32 Although God gives him grief, yet he will show compassion too, according to the greatness of his loving-kindness. 33 For he does not enjoy afflicting men and causing sorrow.
34-36 But you have trampled and crushed beneath your feet the lowly of the world, and deprived men of their God-given rights, and refused them justice. No wonder the Lord has had to deal with you! 37 For who can act against you without the Lord’s permission? 38 It is the Lord who helps one and harms another.
39 Why then should we, mere humans as we are, murmur and complain when punished for our sins? 40 Let us examine ourselves instead, and let us repent and turn again to the Lord. 41 Let us lift our hearts and hands to him in heaven, 42 for we have sinned; we have rebelled against the Lord, and he has not forgotten it.
43 You have engulfed us by your anger, Lord, and slain us without mercy. 44 You have veiled yourself as with a cloud so that our prayers do not reach through. 45 You have made us as refuse and garbage among the nations. 46 All our enemies have spoken out against us. 47 We are filled with fear, for we are trapped and desolate, destroyed.
48-49 My eyes flow day and night with never-ending streams of tears because of the destruction of my people. 50 Oh, that the Lord might look down from heaven and respond to my cry! 51 My heart is breaking over what is happening to the young girls of Jerusalem.
52 My enemies, whom I have never harmed, chased me as though I were a bird. 53 They threw me in a well and capped it with a rock. 54 The water flowed above my head. I thought, This is the end! 55 But I called upon your name, O Lord, from deep within the well, 56 and you heard me! You listened to my pleading; you heard my weeping! 57 Yes, you came at my despairing cry and told me not to fear.
58 O Lord, you are my lawyer! Plead my case! For you have redeemed my life. 59 You have seen the wrong they did to me; be my Judge, to prove me right. 60 You have seen the plots my foes have laid against me. 61 You have heard the vile names they have called me, 62 and all they say about me and their whispered plans. 63 See how they laugh and sing with glee, preparing my doom.
64 O Lord, repay them well for all the evil they have done. 65 Harden their hearts and curse them, Lord. 66 Go after them in fierce pursuit and wipe them off the earth, beneath the heavens of the Lord.
4 How the finest gold has lost its luster! For the inlaid[b] Temple walls are scattered in the streets! 2 The cream of our youth—the finest of the gold—are treated as earthenware pots. 3-4 Even the jackals feed their young, but not my people, Israel. They are like cruel desert ostriches, heedless of their babies’ cries. The children’s tongues stick to the roofs of their mouths for thirst, for there is not a drop of water left. Babies cry for bread, but no one can give them any. 5 Those who used to eat fastidiously are begging in the streets for anything at all. Those brought up in palaces now scratch in garbage pits for food. 6 For the sin of my people is greater than that of Sodom, where utter disaster struck in a moment without the hand of man.
7 Our princes were lean and tanned,[c] the finest specimens of men; 8 but now their faces are as black as soot. No one can recognize them. Their skin sticks to their bones; it is dry and hard and withered. 9 Those killed by the sword are far better off than those who die of slow starvation. 10 Tenderhearted women have cooked and eaten their own children; thus they survived the siege.
11 But now at last the anger of the Lord is satisfied; his fiercest anger has been poured out. He started a fire in Jerusalem that burned it down to its foundations. 12 Not a king in all the earth—no one in all the world—would have believed an enemy could enter through Jerusalem’s gates! 13 Yet God permitted it because of the sins of her prophets and priests, who defiled the city by shedding innocent blood. 14 Now these same men are blindly staggering through the streets, covered with blood, defiling everything they touch.
15 “Get away!” the people shout at them. “You are defiled!” They flee to distant lands and wander there among the foreigners; but none will let them stay. 16 The Lord himself has dealt with them; he no longer helps them, for they persecuted the priests and elders who stayed true to God.
17 We look for our allies[d] to come and save us, but we look in vain. The nation we expected most to help us makes no move at all.
18 We can’t go into the streets without danger to our lives. Our end is near—our days are numbered. We are doomed. 19 Our enemies are swifter than the eagles; if we flee to the mountains, they find us. If we hide in the wilderness, they are waiting for us there. 20 Our king—the life of our life, the Lord’s anointed—was captured in their snares. Yes, even our mighty king, about whom we had boasted that under his protection we could hold our own against any nation on earth!
21 Do you rejoice, O people of Edom, in the land of Uz? But you, too, will feel the awful anger of the Lord. 22 Israel’s exile for her sins will end at last, but Edom’s never.
5 O Lord, remember all that has befallen us; see what sorrows we must bear! 2 Our homes, our nation, now are filled with foreigners. 3 We are orphans—our fathers dead, our mothers widowed. 4 We must even pay for water to drink; our fuel is sold to us at the highest of prices. 5 We bow our necks beneath the victors’ feet; unending work is now our lot. 6 We beg for bread from Egypt, and Assyria too.
7 Our fathers sinned but died before the hand of judgment fell. We have borne the blow that they deserved!
8 Our former servants have become our masters; there is no one left to save us. 9 We went into the wilderness to hunt for food, risking death from enemies. 10 Our skin was black from famine. 11 They rape the women of Jerusalem and the girls in Judah’s cities. 12 Our princes are hanged by their thumbs. Even aged men are treated with contempt. 13 They take away the young men to grind their grain, and the little children stagger beneath their heavy loads.
14 The old men sit no longer in the city gates; the young no longer dance and sing. 15 The joy of our hearts has ended; our dance has turned to death.[e] 16 Our glory is gone. The crown is fallen from our head. Woe upon us for our sins. 17 Our hearts are faint and weary; our eyes grow dim. 18 Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord are desolate, deserted by all but wild animals lurking in the ruins.
19 O Lord, forever you remain the same! Your throne continues from generation to generation. 20 Why do you forget us forever? Why do you forsake us for so long? 21 Turn us around and bring us back to you again! That is our only hope! Give us back the joys we used to have! 22 Or have you utterly rejected us? Are you angry with us still?
19 And so, dear brothers, now we may walk right into the very Holy of Holies, where God is, because of the blood of Jesus. 20 This is the fresh, new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us by tearing the curtain—his human body—to let us into the holy presence of God.
21 And since this great High Priest of ours rules over God’s household, 22 let us go right in to God himself, with true hearts fully trusting him to receive us because we have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean and because our bodies have been washed with pure water.
23 Now we can look forward to the salvation God has promised us. There is no longer any room for doubt, and we can tell others that salvation is ours, for there is no question that he will do what he says.
24 In response to all he has done for us, let us outdo each other in being helpful and kind to each other and in doing good.
25 Let us not neglect our church meetings, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near.
26 If anyone sins deliberately by rejecting the Savior after knowing the truth of forgiveness, this sin is not covered by Christ’s death; there is no way to get rid of it. 27 There will be nothing to look forward to but the terrible punishment of God’s awful anger, which will consume all his enemies. 28 A man who refused to obey the laws given by Moses was killed without mercy if there were two or three witnesses to his sin. 29 Think how much more terrible the punishment will be for those who have trampled underfoot the Son of God and treated his cleansing blood as though it were common and unhallowed, and insulted and outraged the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to his people.
30 For we know him who said, “Justice belongs to me; I will repay them”; who also said, “The Lord himself will handle these cases.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
32 Don’t ever forget those wonderful days when you first learned about Christ. Remember how you kept right on with the Lord even though it meant terrible suffering. 33 Sometimes you were laughed at and beaten, and sometimes you watched and sympathized with others suffering the same things. 34 You suffered with those thrown into jail, and you were actually joyful when all you owned was taken from you, knowing that better things were awaiting you in heaven, things that would be yours forever.
35 Do not let this happy trust in the Lord die away, no matter what happens. Remember your reward! 36 You need to keep on patiently doing God’s will if you want him to do for you all that he has promised. 37 His coming will not be delayed much longer. 38 And those whose faith has made them good in God’s sight must live by faith, trusting him in everything. Otherwise, if they shrink back, God will have no pleasure in them.
39 But we have never turned our backs on God and sealed our fate. No, our faith in him assures our souls’ salvation.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.