For we will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him.

I said, “I will not see the Lord,
The Lord

in the land of the living;

I will look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world.

The land

“Let darkness and black gloom claim it;
Let a cloud settle on it;
Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

You have put me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the depths.

The shadow

“Let darkness and black gloom claim it;
Let a cloud settle on it;
Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

“They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord
Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt,
Who led us through the wilderness,
Through a land of deserts and of pits,
Through a land of drought and of deep darkness,
Through a land that no one crossed
And where no man dwelt?’