1 "My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished; the graves are waiting for me.
2 Are there not mockers all around me? My eye must linger on their provocation.
3 Set down a pledge, I beg you; stand surety for me with yourself. Who else will clasp hands with me?
4 For you have hidden their hearts from insight; so you will not let them be exalted.
5 Whoever informs on friends for a share of the spoil, his children's eyes will waste away.
6 He has set me up as a byword among the peoples, a man in whose face they spit.
7 My eye has dimmed with sorrow, and all my members are like a shadow.
8 At this the upright are aghast, and the innocent rouses himself against the godless.
9 Yet the righteous keeps hold of his way, and the one with clean hands gains strength upon strength.
10 But all of you, turn and come again, please; I will not find a wise man among you.
11 My days have gone by; my plans are torn apart, the very wishes of my heart.
12 They make night into day; 'Light is close,' they say, before the face of darkness.
13 If I look to Sheol as my home, if in the dark I spread out my bed,
14 if I call to the pit, 'You are my father,' and to the maggot, 'My mother,' and, 'My sister,'
15 where then is my hope? My hope, who can see it?
16 Will they go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we sink together into the dust?"