¹“My spirit is broken,

My days are extinguished;

The graves await me.

²There are certainly mockers all around me,

And my eye has to endure their provocation.

³Arrange an agreement, I pray;

Pledge yourself on my behalf.

Who else is there

Who will shake hands with me?

⁴For you have hidden understanding from their heart;

It being so, you will not exalt them.”

⁵“When a person betrays his friends for a share of spoils,

Even his sons' eyes fail in astonishment.

⁶But he has made me a byword of various nations,

And I have become one who is spat on.

⁷And my eye has grown dim with grief,

And all my limbs are as a shadow.

⁸The upright will be astonished at this,

And the innocent man will be stirred up against the profane.

⁹But the righteous will hold to his way,

And he who is of clean hands will increase in strength.

¹⁰But to all of them I say,

‘Return, and come, I pray,

For I do not find a single wise man among you.’

¹¹My days are passing;

My plans are dashed,

As are the thoughts of my heart.

¹²They appoint me night for day;

The light is short-lived because of darkness.

¹³If I have a hope,

The underworld is my home.

In darkness I will spread my bed.

¹⁴I call out to bodily decay,

‘You are my father’,

And to the worm,

‘You are my mother and my sister.’

¹⁵So where then is my hope?

And as for my hope, who will see it?

¹⁶You will descend by the litter-poles of the underworld

When with you I find rest in the dust.”