Remember that my life is but a breath, that my eyes will never again see happiness.

“Therefore, I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

I loathe it; I do not want to live forever; leave me alone, for my days are a vapor!

“Surely, God does not reject a blameless man, nor does he grasp the hand of the evildoers.

If someone wishes to contend with him, he cannot answer him one time in a thousand.

If a land has been given into the hand of a wicked man, he covers the faces of its judges; if it is not he, then who is it?

If I am guilty, woe to me, and if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head; I am full of shame, and satiated with my affliction.

Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this,

He deprives the leaders of the earth of their understanding; he makes them wander in a trackless desert waste.

Even if he slays me, I will hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face!

Moreover, this will become my deliverance, for no godless person would come before him.

Only in two things spare me, O God, and then I will not hide from your face:

“But there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.

so man lies down and does not rise; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake nor arise from their sleep.

He does not expect to escape from darkness; he is marked for the sword;

he lived in ruined towns and in houses where no one lives, where they are ready to crumble into heaps.

He will not grow rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the land.

He will not escape the darkness; a flame will wither his shoots and he will depart by the breath of God’s mouth.

“But if I speak, my pain is not relieved, and if I refrain from speaking – how much of it goes away?

He has neither children nor descendants among his people, no survivor in those places he once stayed.