¹ as fire sets brushwood alight, as fire makes water boil -- to make your name known to your foes; the nations would tremble at your presence,

² at the unexpected miracles you would do. (Oh, that you would come down, in your presence the mountains would quake!)

³ Never has anyone heard, no ear has heard, no eye has seen any god but you act like this for the sake of those who trust him.

⁴ You come to meet those who are happy to act uprightly; keeping your ways reminds them of you. Yes, you have been angry and we have been sinners; now we persist in your ways and we shall be saved.

⁵ We have all been like unclean things and our upright deeds like filthy rags. We wither, all of us, like leaves, and all our misdeeds carry us off like the wind.

⁶ There is no one to invoke your name, to rouse himself to hold fast to you, for you have hidden your face from us and given us up to the power of our misdeeds.

⁷ And yet, Yahweh, you are our Father; we the clay and you our potter, all of us are the work of your hands.

⁸ Yahweh, do not let your anger go too far and do not remember guilt for ever. Look, please, we are all your people;

⁹ your holy cities have become a desert, Zion has become a desert, Jerusalem a wasteland.

¹⁰ Our holy and glorious Temple, in which our ancestors used to praise you, has been burnt to the ground; all our delight lies in ruins.

¹¹ Yahweh, can you restrain yourself at all this? Will you stay silent and afflict us beyond endurance?