Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me?
How can I bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife?
Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me?
And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?
Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, “A son is born to you,” making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities that the Lord overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great. Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?
O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail?
Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.
Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.
If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.”
So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
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