¹MY SPIRIT is broken, my days are spent (snuffed out); the grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers and mockery around me, and my eye dwells on their obstinacy, insults, and resistance.

³Give me a pledge with Yourself [acknowledge my innocence before my death]; who is there that will give security for me?

⁴But their hearts [Lord] You have closed to understanding; therefore You will not let them triumph [by giving them a verdict against me].

⁵He who denounces his friends [in order to make them] a prey and get a share, the eyes of his children shall fail [to find food].

⁶But He has made me a byword among the people, and they spit before my face.

⁷My eye has grown dim because of grief, and all my members are [wasted away] like a shadow.

⁸Upright men shall be astonished and appalled at this, and the innocent shall stir himself up against the godless and polluted.

⁹Yet shall the righteous (those upright and in right standing with God) hold to their ways, and he who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger. [Ps. 24:4.]

¹⁰But as for you, come on again, all of you, though I find not a wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past, my purposes and plans are frustrated; even the thoughts (desires and possessions) of my heart [are broken off].

¹²These [thoughts] extend from the night into the day, [so that] the light is short because of darkness.

¹³But if I look to Sheol (the unseen state) as my abode, if I spread my couch in the darkness,

¹⁴If I say to the grave and corruption, You are my father, and to the worm [that feeds on decay], You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],

¹⁵Where then is my hope? And if I have hope, who will see [its fulfillment]?

¹⁶[My hope] shall go down to the bars of Sheol (the unseen state) when once there is rest in the dust.