Rulers have been cruel to me without cause; but I have the fear of your word in my heart.

Lord, my hope has been in your salvation; and I have kept your teachings.

I have been ruled by your orders; for all my ways are before you.

All my desire has been for your salvation, O Lord; and your law is my delight.

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side (let Israel now say);

Great have been my troubles from the time when I was young (let Israel now say);

O Lord God, the strength of my salvation, you have been a cover over my head in the day of the fight.

When my spirit is overcome, your eyes are on my goings; nets have been secretly placed in the way in which I go.

When your fear comes on you like a storm, and your trouble like a rushing wind; when pain and sorrow come on you.

For to those who are dear to him the Lord says sharp words, and makes the son in whom he has delight undergo pain.

For they take no rest till they have done evil; their sleep is taken away if they have not been the cause of someone's fall.

I have a feast of peace-offerings, for today my oaths have been effected.

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if your heart is full of pride, you only will have the pain of it.

It is better to come face to face with a bear whose young ones have been taken away than with a foolish man acting foolishly.

A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitter pain to her who gave him birth.

They have overcome me, you will say, and I have no pain; they gave me blows without my feeling them: when will I be awake from my wine? I will go after it again.

A judge is moved by one who for a long time undergoes wrongs without protest, and by a soft tongue even bone is broken.

He whose spirit is uncontrolled is like an unwalled town which has been broken into.

Like a dog going back to the food which he has not been able to keep down, is the foolish man doing his foolish acts over again.

One who has been the cause of a man's death will go in flight to the underworld: let no man give him help.

Who has gone up to heaven and come down? who has taken the winds in his hands, prisoning the waters in his robe? by whom have all the ends of the earth been fixed? what is his name, and what is his son's name, if you are able to say?

That which has been, is that which is to be, and that which has been done, is that which will be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there anything of which men say, See, this is new? It has been in the old time which was before us.

And I became great; increasing more than all who had been before me in Jerusalem, and my wisdom was still with me.

Then I saw all the works which my hands had made, and everything I had been working to do; and I saw that all was to no purpose and desire for wind, and there was no profit under the sun.

Then said I in my heart: As it comes to the foolish man, so will it come to me; so why have I been wise overmuch? Then I said in my heart: This again is to no purpose.

And who is to say if that man will be wise or foolish? But he will have power over all my work which I have done and in which I have been wise under the sun. This again is to no purpose.

Because there is a man whose work has been done with wisdom, with knowledge, and with an expert hand; but one who has done nothing for it will have it for his heritage. This again is to no purpose and a great evil.

Whatever is has been before, and what is to be is now; because God makes search for the things which are past.

I said in my heart, God will be judge of the good and of the bad; because a time for every purpose and for every work has been fixed by him.

Yes, happier than the dead or the living seemed he who has not ever been, who has not seen the evil which is done under the sun.

All his days are in the dark, and he has much sorrow, pain, disease, and trouble.

That which is, has been named before, and of what man is there is knowledge. He has no power against one stronger than he.

Your heart has knowledge how frequently others have been cursed by you.

This only have I seen, that God made men upright, but they have been searching out all sorts of inventions.

This is the last word. All has been said. Have fear of God and keep his laws; because this is right for every man.

Who is this, who comes up from the waste places, resting on her loved one? It was I who made you awake under the apple-tree, where your mother gave you birth; there she was in pain at your birth.

Give ear, O heavens, and you, O earth, to the word which the Lord has said: I have taken care of my children till they became men, but their hearts have been turned away from me.

The body, from head to foot, is all diseased; it is a mass of open wounds, marks of blows, and broken flesh: the flow of blood has not been stopped, and no oil has been put on the wounds.

If the Lord of armies had not kept some at least of us safe, we would have been like Sodom, and the fate of Gomorrah would have been ours.

And it will come about that the rest of the living in Zion, and of those who have been kept from destruction in Jerusalem, will be named holy, even everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem:

When Zion has been washed from her sin by the Lord, and Jerusalem made clean from her blood by a judging and a burning wind.

Is there anything which might have been done for my vine-garden which I have not done? why then, when I was hoping for the best grapes did it give me common grapes?

For this reason the wrath of the Lord has been burning against his people, and his hand has been stretched out against them in punishment, and the hills were shaking, and their dead bodies were like waste in the open places of the town.

And after touching my mouth with it, he said, See, your lips have been touched with this; and your evil is taken away, and you are made clean from sin.

And even if there is still a tenth part in it, it will again be burned, like a tree of the woods whose broken end is still in the earth after the tree has been cut down (the holy seed is the broken end).

The Lord is about to send on you, and on your people, and on your father's house, such a time of trouble as there has not been from the days of the separating of Ephraim from Judah; even the coming of the king of Assyria.

For by your hand the yoke on his neck and the rod on his back, even the rod of his cruel master, have been broken, as in the day of Midian.

For to us a child has come, to us a son is given; and the government has been placed in his hands; and he has been named Wise Guide, Strong God, Father for ever, Prince of Peace.

He has gone up from Pene-Rimmon, he has come to Aiath; he has gone past Migron, at Michmash he puts his forces in order.

There will be no cause of pain or destruction in all my holy mountain: for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is covered by the waters.

And he will put up a flag as a sign to the nations, and he will get together those of Israel who had been sent away, and the wandering ones of Judah, from the four ends of the earth.

Their hearts will be full of fear; pains and sorrows will overcome them; they will be in pain like a woman in childbirth; they will be shocked at one another; their faces will be like flames.

They all make answer and say to you, Have you become feeble like us? have you been made even as we are?

But you, like a birth before its time, are stretched out with no resting-place in the earth; clothed with the bodies of the dead who have been put to the sword, who go down to the lowest parts of the underworld; a dead body, crushed under foot.

As for your fathers, you will not be united with them in their resting-place, because you have been the cause of destruction to your land, and of death to your people; the seed of the evil-doer will have no place in the memory of man.

Let those who have been forced out of Moab have a resting-place with you; be a cover to them from him who is making waste their land: till the cruel ones are cut off, and wasting has come to an end, and those who take pleasure in crushing the poor are gone from the land.

And all joy is gone; no longer are they glad for the fertile field; and in the vine-gardens there are no songs or sounds of joy: the crushing of grapes has come to an end, and its glad cry has been stopped.

My mind is wandering, fear has overcome me: the evening of my desire has been turned into shaking for me.

You, who are full of loud voices, a town of outcries, given up to joy; your dead men have not been put to the sword, or come to their death in war.

And you made a place between the two walls for storing the waters of the old pool: but you gave no thought to him who had done this, and were not looking to him by whom it had been purposed long before.

Be shamed, O Zidon: for the sea, the strong place of the sea has said, I have not been with child, or given birth; I have not taken care of young men, or kept watch over the growth of virgins

The earth has been made unclean by those living in it; because the laws have not been kept by them, the orders have been changed, and the eternal agreement has been broken.

O Lord, you are my God; I will give praise to you, I will give honour to your name; for you have done great acts of power; your purposes in the past have been made true and certain in effect.

For you have been a strong place for the poor and the crushed in their trouble, a safe place from the storm, a shade from the heat, when the wrath of the cruel ones is like a winter storm.

As heat by the shade of a cloud, the noise of the men of pride has been made quiet by you; as heat by the shade of a cloud, the song of the cruel ones has been stopped.

And in that day it will be said, See, this is our God; we have been waiting for him, and he will be our saviour: this is the Lord in whom is our hope; we will be glad and have delight in his salvation.

And the strong tower of your walls has been broken by him, made low, and crushed even to the dust.

We have been waiting for you, O Lord; the desire of our soul is for the memory of your name.

In the night the desire of my soul has been for you; early will my spirit be searching for you; for when your punishments come on the earth, the people of the world will get the knowledge of righteousness.

Lord, in trouble our eyes have been turned to you, we sent up a prayer when your punishment was on us.

As a woman with child, whose time is near, is troubled, crying out in her pain; so have we been before you, O Lord.

We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have given birth to wind; no salvation has come to the earth through us, and no children have come into the world.

Your anger against her has been made clear by driving her away; he has taken her away with his storm-wind in the day of his east wind.

And it will be in that day that a great horn will be sounded; and those who were wandering in the land of Assyria, and those who had been sent away into the land of Egypt, will come; and they will give worship to the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.

To whom will he give knowledge? and to whom will he make clear the word? Will it be to those who have newly given up milk, and who have only now been taken from the breast?

When the face of the earth has been levelled, does he not put in the different sorts of seed, and the grain in lines, and the barley in its place, and the spelt at the edge?

And the oxen and the young asses which are used for ploughing, will have salted grain which has been made free from the waste with fork and basket.

For a place of fire has long been ready; yes, it has been made ready for the king; he has made it deep and wide: it is massed with fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of fire, puts a light to it.

Come back to him who has been so deeply sinned against by the children of Israel.

O Lord, have mercy on us; for we have been waiting for your help: be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of trouble.

And he has given them their heritage, and by his hand it has been measured out to them: it will be theirs for ever, their resting-place from generation to generation.

Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? and against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel.

For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done.

O Lord, keep in mind how I have been true to you with all my heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah gave way to bitter weeping.

The writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, after he had been ill, and had got better from his disease.

My resting-place is pulled up and taken away from me like a herdsman's tent: my life is rolled up like a linen-worker's thread; I am cut off from the cloth on the frame: from day even to night you give me up to pain.

I am crying out with pain till the morning; it is as if a lion was crushing all my bones.

At that time Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters with an offering to Hezekiah, because he had news that Hezekiah had been ill, and was well again.

Say kind words to the heart of Jerusalem, crying out to her that her time of trouble is ended, that her punishment is complete; that she has been rewarded by the Lord's hand twice over for all her sins.

In the hollow of whose hand have the waters been measured? and who is able to take the heavens in his stretched-out fingers? who has got together the dust of the earth in a measure? who has taken the weight of the mountains, or put the hills into the scales?

By whom has the spirit of the Lord been guided, or who has been his teacher?

Have you no knowledge of it? has it not come to your ears? has not news of it been given to you from the first? has it not been clear to you from the time when the earth was placed on its base?

They have only now been planted, and their seed put into the earth, and they have only now taken root, when he sends out his breath over them and they become dry, and the storm-wind takes them away like dry grass.

I have long been quiet, I have kept myself in and done nothing: now I will make sounds of pain like a woman in childbirth, breathing hard and quickly.

But this is a people whose property has been taken away from them by force; they are all taken in holes, and shut up in prisons: they are made prisoners, and no one makes them free; they are taken by force and no one says, Give them back.

Because of your value in my eyes, you have been honoured, and loved by me; so I will give men for you, and peoples for your life.

Every one who is named by my name, and whom I have made for my glory, who has been formed and designed by me.

As for him whose food is the dust of a dead fire, he has been turned from the way by a twisted mind, so that he is unable to keep himself safe by saying, What I have here in my hand is false.

I have made the earth, forming man on it: by my hands the heavens have been stretched out, and all the stars put in their ordered places.