Chapter 102

  A Prayer of the man who is in trouble, when he is overcome, and puts his grief before the Lord.
Give ear to my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come to you.  

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  Let not your face be veiled from me in the day of my trouble; give ear to me, and let my cry be answered quickly.  

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  My days are wasted like smoke, and my bones are burned up as in a fire.  

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  My heart is broken; it has become dry and dead like grass, so that I give no thought to food.  

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  Because of the voice of my sorrow, my flesh is wasted to the bone.  

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  I am like a bird living by itself in the waste places; like the night-bird in a waste of sand.  

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  I keep watch like a bird by itself on the house-top.  

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  My haters say evil of me all day; those who are violent against me make use of my name as a curse.  

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  I have had dust for bread and my drink has been mixed with weeping:  

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  Because of your passion and your wrath, for I have been lifted up and then made low by you.  

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  My days are like a shade which is stretched out; I am dry like the grass.  

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  But you, O Lord, are eternal; and your name will never come to an end.  

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  You will again get up and have mercy on Zion: for the time has come for her to be comforted.  

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  For your servants take pleasure in her stones, looking with love on her dust.  

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  So the nations will give honour to the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will be in fear of his glory:  

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  When the Lord has put up the walls of Zion, and has been been in his glory;  

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  When he has given ear to the prayer of the poor, and has not put his request on one side.  

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  This will be put in writing for the coming generation, and the people of the future will give praise to the Lord.  

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  For from his holy place the Lord has seen, looking down on the earth from heaven;  

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  Hearing the cry of the prisoner, making free those for whom death is ordered;  

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  So that they may give out the name of the Lord in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem;  

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  When the peoples are come together, and the kingdoms, to give worship to the Lord.  

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  He has taken my strength from me in the way; he has made short my days.  

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  I will say, O my God, take me not away before my time; your years go on through all generations:  

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  In the past you put the earth on its base, and the heavens are the work of your hands.  

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  They will come to an end, but you will still go on; they all will become old like a coat, and like a robe they will be changed:  

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  But you are the unchanging One, and your years will have no end.  

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  The children of your servants will have a safe resting-place, and their seed will be ever before you.  

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