when you deliver my life from death. You keep my feet from stumbling, so that I might serve God as I enjoy life.

Sound your battle cry against the wild beast of the reeds, and the nations that assemble like a herd of calves led by bulls! They humble themselves and offer gold and silver as tribute. God scatters the nations that like to do battle.

I desperately want to be in the courts of the Lord’s temple. My heart and my entire being shout for joy to the living God.

Over here is the deep, wide sea, which teems with innumerable swimming creatures, living things both small and large.

It is like the dew of Hermon, which flows down upon the hills of Zion. Indeed that is where the Lord has decreed a blessing will be available – eternal life.

So I loathed life because what happens on earth seems awful to me; for all the benefits of wisdom are futile – like chasing the wind.

I considered all the living who walk on earth, as well as the successor who would arise in his place.

For he does not think much about the fleeting days of his life because God keeps him preoccupied with the joy he derives from his activity.

It is better to go to a funeral than a feast. For death is the destiny of every person, and the living should take this to heart.

For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything; they have no further reward – and even the memory of them disappears.

No lions will be there, no ferocious wild animals will be on it – they will not be found there. Those delivered from bondage will travel on it,

Pay attention, Lord, and hear! Open your eyes, Lord, and observe! Listen to this entire message Sennacherib sent and how he taunts the living God!

“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.

My dwelling place is removed and taken away from me like a shepherd’s tent. I rolled up my life like a weaver rolls cloth; from the loom he cuts me off. You turn day into night and end my life.

The wild animals of the desert honor me, the jackals and ostriches, because I put water in the desert and streams in the wilderness, to quench the thirst of my chosen people,

Look all around you! All of them gather to you. As surely as I live,” says the Lord, “you will certainly wear all of them like jewelry; you will put them on as if you were a bride.

He was led away after an unjust trial – but who even cared? Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the rebellion of his own people he was wounded.

Because of the long distance you must travel, you get tired, but you do not say, ‘I give up.’ You get renewed energy, so you don’t collapse.

The Lord is the only true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. When he shows his anger the earth shakes. None of the nations can stand up to his fury.

The people I call my own attack me like birds of prey or like hyenas. But other birds of prey are all around them. Let all the nations gather together like wild beasts. Let them come and destroy these people I call my own.