Study Desk

He has cut off in fierce anger Every horn of Israel; He has drawn back His right hand From before the enemy. He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire Devouring all around.

Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow; With His right hand, like an adversary, He has slain all who were pleasing to His eye; On the tent of the daughter of Zion, He has poured out His fury like fire.

He has done violence to His tabernacle, As if it were a garden; He has destroyed His place of assembly; The LORD has caused The appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion. In His burning indignation He has spurned the king and the priest.

The Lord has spurned His altar, He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces Into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the house of the LORD As on the day of a set feast.

The LORD has purposed to destroy The wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying; Therefore He has caused the rampart and wall to lament; They languished together.

The LORD has done what He purposed; He has fulfilled His word Which He commanded in days of old. He has thrown down and has not pitied, And He has caused an enemy to rejoice over you; He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.

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

Surely He has turned His hand against me Time and time again throughout the day.

He has bent His bow And set me up as a target for the arrow.

He has caused the arrows of His quiverTo pierce my loins. [fn]

Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.

It is good for a man to bear The yoke in his youth.

Let him put his mouth in the dust-- There may yet be hope.

Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him, And be full of reproach.

Though He causes grief, Yet He will show compassion According to the multitude of His mercies.

Or subvert a man in his cause-- The Lord does not approve.

Why should a living man complain, A man for the punishment of his sins?

The LORD has fulfilled His fury, He has poured out His fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion, And it has devoured its foundations.

The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, Was caught in their pits, Of whom we said, "Under his shadow We shall live among the nations."

Also from the appearance of His waist and upward I saw, as it were, the color of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it; and from the appearance of His waist and downward I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around.