Great Is Your Faithfulness

¹I am the man who has seen affliction

under the rod of his wrath;

²he has driven and brought me

into darkness without any light;

³surely against me he turns his hand

again and again the whole day long.

⁴He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;

he has broken my bones;

⁵he has besieged and enveloped me

with bitterness and tribulation;

⁶he has made me dwell in darkness

like the dead of long ago.

⁷He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;

he has made my chains heavy;

⁸though I call and cry for help,

he shuts out my prayer;

⁹he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;

he has made my paths crooked.

¹⁰He is a bear lying in wait for me,

a lion in hiding;

¹¹he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;

he has made me desolate;

¹²he bent his bow and set me

as a target for his arrow.

¹³He drove into my kidneys

the arrows of his quiver;

¹⁴I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,

the object of their taunts all day long.

¹⁵He has filled me with bitterness;

he has sated me with wormwood.

¹⁶He has made my teeth grind on gravel,

and made me cower in ashes;

¹⁷my soul is bereft of peace;

I have forgotten what happiness1 is;

¹⁸so I say, “My endurance has perished;

so has my hope from the Lord.”

¹⁹Remember my affliction and my wanderings,

the wormwood and the gall!

²⁰My soul continually remembers it

and is bowed down within me.

²¹But this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

²²The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;2

his mercies never come to an end;

²³they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

²⁴“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

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