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Psalm 22

1  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, ♦︎
   and are so far from my salvation,
      from the words of my distress?
2  O my God, I cry in the daytime,
      but you do not answer; ♦︎
   and by night also, but I find no rest.
3  Yet you are the Holy One, ♦︎
   enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
4  Our forebears trusted in you; ♦︎
   they trusted, and you delivered them.
5  They cried out to you and were delivered; ♦︎
   they put their trust in you and were not confounded.
6  But as for me, I am a worm and no man, ♦︎
   scorned by all and despised by the people.
7  All who see me laugh me to scorn; ♦︎
   they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,
8  ‘He trusted in the Lord; let him deliver him; ♦︎
   let him deliver him, if he delights in him.’
9  But it is you that took me out of the womb ♦︎
   and laid me safe upon my mother’s breast.
10  On you was I cast ever since I was born; ♦︎
   you are my God even from my mother’s womb.
11  Be not far from me, for trouble is near at hand ♦︎
   and there is none to help.
12  Mighty oxen come around me; ♦︎
   fat bulls of Bashan close me in on every side.
13  They gape upon me with their mouths, ♦︎
   as it were a ramping and a roaring lion.
14  I am poured out like water;
      all my bones are out of joint; ♦︎
   my heart has become like wax
      melting in the depths of my body.
15  My mouth is dried up like a potsherd;
      my tongue cleaves to my gums; ♦︎
   you have laid me in the dust of death.

Job Prays for Relief

17My spirit is broken, my days are extinct,
   the grave is ready for me.
² Surely there are mockers around me,
   and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³ ‘Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
   who is there that will give surety for me?
⁴ Since you have closed their minds to understanding,
   therefore you will not let them triumph.
⁵ Those who denounce friends for reward—
   the eyes of their children will fail.

⁶ ‘He has made me a byword of the peoples,
   and I am one before whom people spit.
⁷ My eye has grown dim from grief,
   and all my members are like a shadow.
⁸ The upright are appalled at this,
   and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.
⁹ Yet the righteous hold to their way,
   and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.
¹⁰ But you, come back now, all of you,
   and I shall not find a sensible person among you.
¹¹ My days are past, my plans are broken off,
   the desires of my heart.
¹² They make night into day;
   “The light”, they say, “is near to the darkness.”^*
13 If I look for Sheol as my house,
   if I spread my couch in darkness,
¹⁴ if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”,
   and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”,
¹⁵ where then is my hope?
   Who will see my hope?
¹⁶ Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
   Shall we descend together into the dust?’

Warning against Unbelief

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸ do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
   as on the day of testing in the wilderness,
⁹ where your ancestors put me to the test,
   though they had seen my works ¹⁰for forty years.
Therefore I was angry with that generation,
and I said, “They always go astray in their hearts,
   and they have not known my ways.”
¹¹ As in my anger I swore,
   “They will not enter my rest.” ’
¹²Take care, brothers and sisters,^* that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. ¹³But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. ¹⁵As it is said,
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’
¹⁶Now who were they who heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? ¹⁷But with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient? ¹⁹So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.