Read the Bible

¹ With our own ears we have heard it, O God—
    our ancestors have told us about it,
about the great things you did in their time,
    in the days of long ago:
² how you yourself drove out the heathen
    and established your people in their land;
how you punished the other nations
    and caused your own to prosper.
³ Your people did not conquer the land with their swords;
    they did not win it by their own power;
it was by your power and your strength,
    by the assurance of your presence,
    which showed that you loved them.

⁴ You are my king and my God;
    you give^[b] victory to your people,
⁵     and by your power we defeat our enemies.
⁶ I do not trust in my bow
    or in my sword to save me;
⁷ but you have saved us from our enemies
    and defeated those who hate us.
⁸ We will always praise you
    and give thanks to you forever.

⁹ But now you have rejected us and let us be defeated;
    you no longer march out with our armies.
¹⁰ You made us run from our enemies,
    and they took for themselves what was ours.
¹¹ You allowed us to be slaughtered like sheep;
    you scattered us in foreign countries.
¹² You sold your own people for a small price
    as though they had little value.^[c]

¹³ Our neighbors see what you did to us,
    and they mock us and laugh at us.
¹⁴ You have made us a joke among the nations;
    they shake their heads at us in scorn.
¹⁵ I am always in disgrace;
    I am covered with shame
¹⁶     from hearing the sneers and insults
    of my enemies and those who hate me.

¹⁷ All this has happened to us,
    even though we have not forgotten you
    or broken the covenant you made with us.
¹⁸ We have not been disloyal to you;
    we have not disobeyed your commands.
¹⁹ Yet you left us helpless among wild animals;
    you abandoned us in deepest darkness.

²⁰ If we had stopped worshiping our God
    and prayed to a foreign god,
²¹ you would surely have discovered it,
    because you know our secret thoughts.
^22 (a)But it is on your account that we are being killed all the time,
    that we are treated like sheep to be slaughtered.

²³ Wake up, Lord! Why are you asleep?
    Rouse yourself Don't reject us forever!
²⁴ Why are you hiding from us?
    Don't forget our suffering and trouble!

²⁵ We fall crushed to the ground;
    we lie defeated in the dust.
²⁶ Come to our aid!
    Because of your constant love save us!