1. Then sad at heart, I groaned and wept aloud. With sobs I began to pray:
2. “You are righteous, Lord,and all your deeds are just;All your ways are mercy and fidelity;you are judge of the world.
3. And now, Lord, be mindful of meand look with favor upon me.Do not punish me for my sins,or for my inadvertent offenses,or for those of my ancestors.“They sinned against you,
4. and disobeyed your commandments.So you handed us over to plunder, captivity, and death,to become an object lesson, a byword, and a reproachin all the nations among whom you scattered us.
5. “Yes, your many judgments are rightin dealing with me as my sins,and those of my ancestors, deserve.For we have neither kept your commandments,nor walked in fidelity before you.
6. “So now, deal with me as you please;command my life breath to be taken from me,that I may depart from the face of the earth and become dust.It is better for me to die than to live,because I have listened to undeserved reproaches,and great is the grief within me.“Lord, command that I be released from such anguish;let me go to my everlasting abode;Do not turn your face away from me, Lord.For it is better for me to diethan to endure so much misery in life,and to listen to such reproaches!”
7. On that very day, at Ecbatana in Media, it so happened that Raguel’s daughter Sarah also had to listen to reproaches from one of her father’s maids.