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- <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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