God

Their hearts cried out to Adonai, "Wall of the daughter of Tziyon! Let your tears stream down like a torrent, day and night! Give yourself no respite, give your eyes no rest!

"Get up! Cry out in the night, at the beginning of every watch! Pour your heart out like water before the face of Adonai! Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your babies, who are fainting away from hunger at every streetcorner."

ADONAI, look and see who it is you have thus tormented! Should women eat the fruit of their wombs, the children they have held in their hands? Should cohanim and prophets be slaughtered in the sanctuary of Adonai?

Youths and old men are lying on the ground in the streets, my unmarried women and young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger, you slaughtered them without pity.

You have summoned my terrors from every direction, as on a festival day. On the day of ADONAI's anger, not one escaped; not one survived -the children I held in my arms and raised, my enemy has destroyed.

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his fury,

Against me alone he turns his hand again and again, all day.

He has worn away my skin and flesh, he has broken my bones.

He has walled me in, so I can't escape; he has weighed me down with chains.

Even when I cry out, pleading for help, he shuts out my prayer.

He has barred my way with blocks of stone, he has made my paths crooked.

He has forced me aside and torn me to pieces, leaving me stunned.

He has bent his bow and used me as a target for his arrows.

He has pierced my vital organs with shafts from his quiver.

He has filled me with bitterness, sated me with wormwood.

He has broken my teeth with gravel and pressed me down into ashes.

that I think, "My strength is gone, and so is my hope in ADONAI."

that the grace of ADONAI is not exhausted, that his compassion has not ended.

[On the contrary,] they are new every morning! How great your faithfulness!

"ADONAI is all I have," I say; "therefore I will put my hope in him.

ADONAI is good to those waiting for him, to those who are seeking him out.

It is good to wait patiently for the saving help of ADONAI.

Let him offer his cheek to the one who strikes it, and receive his fill of insults.

For rejection by Adonai does not last forever.

He may cause grief, but he will take pity, in keeping with the greatness of his grace.