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For the choir director, to yedyothun
A worship song of David.
I said, “I will guard my choices
from going astray at my tongue.
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle
while yet the wicked are in my sight”.
I bound myself up in resignation, abstaining from goodness,
so my pain was stirred up.
Hot was my heart in my inner self, in my musing burned fire:
I put words to my tongue,
“Make me know, Yahweh, my ending,
and the extent of my days - what is that?
I would know how fleeting am I”.
See now, hand-breadths you gave as my days
and my world is as nothing in your sight -
surely all inconsequential, all of Adam's monuments. · Çelah
Surely mere semblance, the affairs of man,
surely inconsequential flustering:
one heaps together, but does not know who will gather.
Yet now, what do I long for, Adonay?
my hope for you exists.
From all my rebellion, tear me away,
the reproach of a fool do not set against me.
I bound myself up, never opening my mouth
since you, it is you who devised this.
“Lift away from upon me your affliction:
from hostility at your hand I am spent”.
With reproofs against straying you discipline man -
disintegrating like the moth his fancy -
surely inconsequential, all of Adam. · Çelah
“Hear my prayer, Yahweh
and to my plea give ear.
As for my tears, do not be aloof,
for a stranger am I with you,
a migrant like all my fathers.
Direct your gaze away from me, and I can rekindle
before I go and am no more”.
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