3-11 So don’t return us to mud, saying,
    “Back to where you came from!”
Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether
    a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you.
Are we no more to you than a wispy dream,
    no more than a blade of grass
That springs up gloriously with the rising sun
    and is cut down without a second thought?
Your anger is far and away too much for us;
    we’re at the end of our rope.
You keep track of all our sins; every misdeed
    since we were children is entered in your books.
All we can remember is that frown on your face.
    Is that all we’re ever going to get?
We live for seventy years or so
    (with luck we might make it to eighty),
And what do we have to show for it? Trouble.
    Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.
Who can make sense of such rage,
    such anger against the very ones who fear you?

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All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.(A)
10 Our days may come to seventy years,(B)
    or eighty,(C) if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,(D)
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.(E)
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
    Your wrath(F) is as great as the fear that is your due.(G)

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