[1] “My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; The grave is ready for me. [2] “Surely mockers are with me, And my eye gazes on their provocation. [3] “Establish, now, a pledge for me with Yourself; Who is there that will clap my hand in pledge? [4] “For You have hidden their heart from insight, Therefore You will not exalt them. [5] “He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil, The eyes of his children also will come to an end. [6] “But He has made me a byword of the people, And I am one at whom men spit. [7] “My eye has also grown dim because of grief, And all my members are as a shadow. [8] “The upright will be appalled at this, And the innocent will stir up himself against the godless. [9] “Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his way, And he who has clean hands will grow mightier and mightier. [10] “But come again all of you now, For I do not find a wise man among you. [11] “My days are past; my plans are torn apart, Even the wishes of my heart. [12] “They make night into day, saying, ‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness. [13] “If I hope for Sheol as my home, I make my bed in the darkness; [14] If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’; To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’; [15] Where now is my hope? And who beholds my hope? [16] “Will it go down with me to Sheol? Shall we together go down into the dust?”
