Pay attention and listen to my message! Be attentive and listen to what I have to say!

You complacent women, get up and listen to me! You carefree daughters, pay attention to what I say!

“I thought, ‘In the middle of my life I must walk through the gates of Sheol, I am deprived of the rest of my years.’

So I say: “Don’t look at me! I am weeping bitterly. Don’t try to console me concerning the destruction of my defenseless people.”

Your claim to have a strategy and military strength is just empty talk. In whom are you trusting, that you would dare to rebel against me?

“I thought, ‘I will no longer see the Lord in the land of the living, I will no longer look on humankind with the inhabitants of the world.

I have not spoken in secret, in some hidden place. I did not tell Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain!’ I am the Lord, the one who speaks honestly, who makes reliable announcements.

But I thought, “I have worked in vain; I have expended my energy for absolutely nothing.” But the Lord will vindicate me; my God will reward me.

“I made myself available to those who did not ask for me; I appeared to those who did not look for me. I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ to a nation that did not invoke my name.