1 If only you would rip open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would shake before you,
2 as when fire sets brushwood ablaze and fire makes water boil, to make your name known to your foes, so that the nations would quake before you!
3 When you did fearsome deeds we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains shook before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has caught, no eye has seen any God but you, who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him.
5 You come to meet the one who gladly does what is right, those who remember you in your ways. See, you were angry, and we sinned; we have been in them a long time, and will we be saved?
6 We have all become like someone unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a stained garment. We all wither like a leaf, and our iniquities sweep us away like the wind.
7 No one calls on your name or stirs himself to hold on to you, for you have hidden your face from us and let us melt away in the grip of our iniquities.
8 Yet, LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the one who shapes us; all of us are the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Please look on us: we are all your people.
10 Your holy cities have turned into wilderness; Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolate waste.
11 Our holy and splendid house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned with fire, and all the things we treasured lie in ruins.
12 After all this, LORD, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and afflict us beyond measure?