For the music director; by David. In the Lord I have taken shelter. How can you say to me, “Flee to a mountain like a bird!

Do not let arrogant men overtake me, or let evil men make me homeless!

Their insults are painful and make me lose heart; I look for sympathy, but receive none, for comforters, but find none.

Like a fluttering bird or like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause does not come to rest.

These double disasters confronted you. But who feels sorry for you? Destruction and devastation, famine and sword. But who consoles you?

So their land will become an object of horror. People will forever hiss out their scorn over it. All who pass that way will be filled with horror and will shake their heads in derision.

“People of Judah, get out of Babylon quickly! Leave the land of Babylonia! Be the first to depart! Be like the male goats that lead the herd.

When you try to cultivate the ground it will no longer yield its best for you. You will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”

Look! You are driving me off the land today, and I must hide from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth; whoever finds me will kill me.”

The earth will stagger around like a drunk; it will sway back and forth like a hut in a windstorm. Its sin will weigh it down, and it will fall and never get up again.

“If you, Israel, want to come back,” says the Lord, “if you want to come back to me you must get those disgusting idols out of my sight and must no longer go astray.

The Lord cried out, “Who in the world will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Who will grieve over you? Who will stop long enough to inquire about how you are doing?

“‘Do not weep for the king who was killed. Do not grieve for him. But weep mournfully for the king who has gone into exile. For he will never return to see his native land again.

I have indeed heard the people of Israel say mournfully, ‘We were like a calf untrained to the yoke. You disciplined us and we learned from it. Let us come back to you and we will do so, for you are the Lord our God.

Mourn for that nation, all you nations living around it, all of you nations that know of its fame. Mourn and say, ‘Alas, its powerful influence has been broken! Its glory and power have been done away!’

For did not you people of Moab laugh at the people of Israel? Did you think that they were nothing but thieves, that you shook your head in contempt every time you talked about them?

Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust; they will say, ‘Nineveh has been devastated! Who will lament for her?’ There will be no one to comfort you!”

The Lord will attack Israel, making it like a reed that sways in the water. He will remove Israel from this good land he gave to their ancestors and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they angered the Lord by making Asherah poles.

I will not make Israel again leave the land I gave to their ancestors, provided that they carefully obey all I commanded them, the whole law my servant Moses ordered them to obey.”

When Job’s three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to come to show sympathy for him and to console him.