Study Desk

He has bent His bow like an enemy;He has set His right hand like an adversaryAnd killed all that were desirable to the eye;In the tent of the daughter of ZionHe has poured out His wrath like fire.

And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth;He has brought His appointed meeting place to ruin.Yahweh has caused to be forgottenThe appointed time and sabbath in Zion,And He has spurned king and priestIn the indignation of His anger.

The Lord has rejected His altar;He has abandoned His sanctuary;He has delivered into the hand of the enemyThe walls of her palaces.They have made a noise in the house of YahwehAs in the day of an appointed time.

Yahweh determined to bring to ruinThe wall of the daughter of Zion.He has stretched out a line;He has not turned His hand back from swallowing up,And He has caused rampart and wall to mourn;They have languished together.

Yahweh has done what He purposed;He has completed His wordWhich He commanded from days of old.He has pulled down without sparing,And He has caused the enemy to be glad over you;He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

I am the man who has seen afflictionBecause of the rod of His wrath.

Surely against me He has turned His handRepeatedly all the day.

He bent His bowAnd set me as a target for the arrow.

He made the arrows of His quiverTo enter into my inward parts.

The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh indeed never cease,For His compassions never fail.

It is good for a man that he should bearThe yoke in his youth.

Let him put his mouth in the dust;Perhaps there is hope.

Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him;Let him be saturated with reproach.

For if He causes grief,Then He will have compassionAccording to His abundant lovingkindness.

For He does not afflict from His heartOr grieve the sons of men.

To crush under His feetAll the prisoners of the land,

To defraud a man in his legal case—These things the Lord does not see with approval.

Why should any living person or any manComplain because of his sins?

Yahweh has spent His wrath;He has poured out His burning anger;And He has kindled a fire in ZionWhich has devoured its foundations.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh,Was captured in their pits,Of whom we had said, "Under his shadowWe shall live among the nations."