1. HEAR MY prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come to You.
2. Hide not Your face from me in the day when I am in distress! Incline Your ear to me; in the day when I call, answer me speedily.
3. For my days consume away like smoke, and my bones burn like a firebrand or like a hearth.
4. My heart is smitten like grass and withered, so that [in absorption] I forget to eat my food.
5. By reason of my loud groaning [from suffering and trouble] my flesh cleaves to my bones.
6. I am like a melancholy pelican or vulture of the wilderness; I am like a [desolate] owl of the waste places.
7. I am sleepless and lie awake [mourning], like a bereaved sparrow alone on the housetop.
8. My adversaries taunt and reproach me all the day; and they who are angry with me use my name as a curse.
9. For I have eaten the ashes [in which I sat] as if they were bread and have mingled my drink with weeping