Psalms

¹ God! God! I am running to you for dear life; the chase is wild.

² ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions, dragged into the forest and left unlooked for, unremembered.

³ God, if I've done what they say—

⁴ ripped off my enemies— If my hands are really that dirty,

⁵ leave me flat on my face in the dirt.

⁶ against my furious enemies. Wake up, God.

⁷ the courtroom; it's judgment time.

⁸ throw out the false charges against me. I'm ready, confident in your verdict: "Innocent."

⁹ but publish your mandate for us. You get us ready for life: you probe for our soft spots, you knock off our rough edges.

¹⁰ made right, kept right.

¹¹ but his nerves are sandpapered raw. Nobody gets by with anything.

¹² Sword honed on his whetstone, bow strung, arrow on the string,

¹³ each arrow a flaming missile.

¹⁴ He had sex with sin, he's pregnant with evil. Oh, look! He's having the baby—a Lie-Baby!

¹⁵ digging, then concealing, his man-trap down that lonely stretch of road? Go back and look again—you'll see him in it headfirst, legs waving in the breeze.

¹⁶ mischief backfires; violence boomerangs.

¹⁷ I'm singing the fame of heaven-high God.