A Prayer for God’s Power

1If only You would rend the heavens and come down;

at Your presence the mountains would shake,

2like the kindling of brushwood by the fire—

the fire boils the waters—

to make known Your name to Your adversaries,

that before Your face the nations will tremble,

3at Your doing fearsome things we could not have expected!

You come down, before Your face the mountains shake.

4And from age past they have not heard,

and they have not given ear;

no eye has seen any God besides You,

who acts for the one waiting for Him.†

5You meet the one rejoicing and doing righteousness;

in Your ways they remember You.

Behold, You were angry, and we had sinned;

in them is continuance, then will we be saved?

6And all of us have become like an unclean one,

all our righteous acts are as a filthy rag;†

and all of us wither like the leaf,

and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

7And no one is calling on Your name,

stirring himself up to take hold of You;

for You have hidden Your face from us,

and delivered us into the hand† of our iniquities.

8And now, O YHWH You are our Father;

we are the clay, and You the One forming us,

and we are all the work of Your hand.

9Do not be angry, O YHWH, beyond measure,

and do not remember our iniquity forever!

Behold, please, look;

we are all Your people!

10Your holy Cities have become a wilderness;

Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

11And our holy and our beautiful house,

where our fathers praised You,

has been burned with fire;

and all our desirable things are laid waste.

12At these will You restrain Yourself,

O YHWH?

Will You keep silent,

and afflict us beyond measure?