Lamentations 3 - Legacy Standard Bible

Lamentations 3

Jeremiah’s Heavy Chain

א Aleph

I am the man who has seen affliction

Because of the rod of His wrath.

He has driven me and made me walk

In darkness and not in light.

Surely against me He has turned His hand

Repeatedly all the day.

ב Beth

He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away;

He has broken my bones.

He has besieged and encompassed me with gall and hardship.

Dark places He has made me inhabit,

Like those who have long been dead.

ג Gimel

He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;

He has made my chain heavy.

Even when I cry out and call for help,

He shuts out my prayer.

He has blocked my ways with cut stone;

He has made my paths crooked.

ד Daleth

He is to me like a bear lying in wait,

Like a lion in secret places.

He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;

He has made me desolate.

He bent His bow

And set me as a target for the arrow.

ה He

He made the arrows of His quiver

To enter into my inward parts.

I have become a laughingstock to all my people,

Their music of mockery all the day.

He has saturated me with bitterness;

He has sated me with wormwood.

ו Vav

He has broken my teeth with gravel;

He has made me cower in the dust.

My soul has been rejected from peace;

I have forgotten goodness.

So I say, “My strength has perished,

As well as my hopeful waiting which comes from Yahweh.”

The Lord Will Not Reject Forever

ז Zayin

Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and gall.

Surely my soul remembers

And is bowed down within me.

This I will return to my heart;

Therefore I will wait in hope.

ח Heth

The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I wait for Him.”

ט Teth

Yahweh is good to those who hope in Him,

To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that he waits silently

For the salvation of Yahweh.

It is good for a man that he should bear

The yoke in his youth.

י Yodh

Let him sit alone and be silent

Since He has laid it on him.

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.

כ Kaph

For the Lord will not reject forever,

For if He causes grief,

Then He will have compassion

According to His abundant lovingkindness.

For He does not afflict from His heart

Or grieve the sons of men.

ל Lamedh

To crush under His feet

All the prisoners of the land,

To deprive a man of justice

In the presence of the Most High,

To defraud a man in his legal case—

These things the Lord does not see with approval.

מ Mem

Who is there who speaks and it happens,

Unless the Lord has commanded it?

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High

That both calamities and good go forth?

Why should any living person or any man

Complain because of his sins?

נ Nun

Let us search out and examine our ways,

And let us return to Yahweh.

We lift up our heart to our hands

Toward God in heaven;

We have transgressed and rebelled;

You have not pardoned.

ס Samekh

You have covered Yourself with anger

And pursued us;

You have killed and have not spared.

You have covered Yourself with a cloud

So that no prayer can pass through.

You have made us mere scum and refuse

In the midst of the peoples.

פ Pe

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

Panic and pitfall have befallen us,

Devastation and destruction;

My eyes run down with streams of water

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

ע Ayin

My eyes pour down unceasingly,

Without stopping,

Until Yahweh looks down

And sees from heaven.

My eyes deal severely with my soul

Because of all the daughters of my city.

צ Tsadhe

My enemies without cause

Hunted me down like a bird;

They have silenced my life in the pit

And have placed a stone on me.

Waters flowed over my head;

I said, “I am cut off!”

ק Qoph

I called on Your name, O Yahweh,

Out of the lowest pit.

You have heard my voice,

“Do not hide Your ear from my prayer for relief,

From my cry for help.”

You drew near when I called on You;

You said, “Do not fear!”

ר Resh

O Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s cause;

You have redeemed my life.

O Yahweh, You have seen my oppression;

Judge my case.

You have seen all their vengeance,

All their purposes against me.

שׂ Sin - שׁ Shin

You have heard their reproach, O Yahweh,

All their purposes against me.

The lips of those who rise against me and their whispering

Are against me all day long.

Look on their sitting and their rising;

I am their mocking song.

ת Tav

You will recompense them, O Yahweh,

According to the work of their hands.

You will give them dullness of heart;

Your curse will be on them.

You will pursue them in anger and destroy them

From under the heavens of Yahweh!

2 Corinthians 13

Examine Yourselves

This is the third time I am coming to you. By the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter shall be confirmed. 2 I have previously said when present the second time, and though now absent I say in advance to those who have sinned in the past and to all the rest as well, that if I come again I will not spare anyone, 3 since you are seeking proof that Christ speaks in me; He is not weak toward you, but mighty in you. 4 For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God toward you. 5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test? 6 But I hope that you will realize that we ourselves do not fail the test. 7 Now we pray to God that you do no wrong, not that we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, even though we may appear unapproved. 8 For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. 9 For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak but you are strong. This we also pray for, that you be restored. 10 For this reason I am writing these things while absent, so that when present I need not use severity, in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for tearing down. 11 Finally, brothers, rejoice, be restored, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints greet you. 14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

Psalm 129 - 131

Yahweh Has Cut the Cords of the Wicked

A Song of Ascents.

“Many times they have assailed me from my youth up,”

Let Israel now say,

“Many times they have assailed me from my youth up;

Yet they have not prevailed against me.

The plowers plowed upon my back;

They lengthened their furrows.”

Yahweh is righteous;

He has cut up the cords of the wicked.

Let all who hate Zion

Be put to shame and turned backward;

Let them be like grass upon the rooftops,

Which dries up before it grows up;

With which the reaper does not fill his hand,

Nor the binder of sheaves the fold of his garment;

And those who pass by will not say,

“The blessing of Yahweh be upon you;

We bless you in the name of Yahweh.”

Yahweh Will Redeem Israel

A Song of Ascents.

Out of the depths I called to You, O Yahweh.

O Lord, hear my voice!

Let Your ears be attentive

To the voice of my supplications.

If You should keep iniquities, O Yah,

O Lord, who could stand?

But with You there is forgiveness,

That You may be feared.

I hope for Yahweh, my soul does hope,

And for His word do I wait.

My soul waits for the Lord

More than the watchmen for the morning,

The watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, wait for Yahweh;

For with Yahweh there is lovingkindness,

And with Him is abundant redemption.

And it is He who will redeem Israel

From all his iniquities.

I Have Quieted My Soul

A Song of Ascents. Of David.

O Yahweh, my heart is not exalted, and my eyes are not raised high;

And I do not involve myself in great matters,

Or in matters too marvelous for me.

Surely I have soothed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with his mother,

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, wait for Yahweh

From now until forever.