For you have said, ‘My teaching ¹  is flawless, and I am pure in your sight.’

I was eyes for the blind and feet for the lame;

“And now I have become their taunt song; I have become a byword ¹  among them.

I have become a brother to jackals and a companion of ostriches. ¹ 

Many are appalled when they see me, ¹  but you are my secure shelter.

I should have been as though I had never existed; ¹  I should have been carried right from the womb to the grave!

My guests ¹  and my servant girls consider ²  me a stranger; I am a foreigner ³  in their eyes.

just as I was in my most productive time, ¹  when God’s intimate friendship ²  was experienced in my tent,

I am forgotten, like a dead man no one thinks about; ¹  I am regarded as worthless, like a broken jar. ² 

My own brothers treat me like a stranger; they act as if I were a foreigner. ¹ 

I was ignorant ¹  and lacked insight; ²  I was as senseless as an animal before you. ³ 

I am like an owl ¹  in the wilderness; I am like a screech owl ²  among the ruins. ³ 

I am disdained by them. ¹  When they see me, they shake their heads. ² 

For ¹  I am like a wineskin ²  dried up in smoke. ³  I do not forget your statutes.

When I was a son to my father, ¹  a tender only child ²  before my mother,

I almost ¹  came to complete ruin ²  in the midst of the whole congregation!” ³ 

I, the Teacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹ 

I have become the laughingstock of all people, ¹  their mocking song ²  all day long. ³ 

I was consumed by scorching heat ¹  during the day and by piercing cold ²  at night, and I went without sleep. ³ 

When she bore ¹  a son, Moses ²  named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.” ³