¹ If only you would tear open the heavens and come down! Mountains would quake before you

² like fire igniting brushwood or making water boil. If you would make your name known to your enemies, the nations would tremble in your presence.

³ When you accomplished wonders beyond all our expectations; when you came down, mountains quaked before you.

⁴ From ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any god but you who acts on behalf of those who wait for him!

⁵ You look after those who gladly do right; they will praise you for your ways. But you were angry when we sinned; you hid yourself when we did wrong.

⁶ We have all become like the unclean; all our righteous deeds are like a menstrual rag. All of us wither like a leaf; our sins, like the wind, carry us away.

⁷ No one calls on your name; no one bothers to hold on to you, for you have hidden yourself from us, and have handed us over to our sin.

⁸ But now, LORD, you are our father. We are the clay, and you are our potter. All of us are the work of your hand.

⁹ Don’t rage so fiercely, LORD; don’t hold our sins against us forever, but gaze now on your people, all of us:

¹⁰ Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a wasteland.

¹¹ Our holy, glorious house, where our ancestors praised you, has gone up in flames; all that we treasured has become a ruin.

¹² After all this, will you hold back, LORD? Will you keep silent and torment us so terribly?