| 1 | Do you indeed in silence speak righteousness, O you mighty ones? [Or is the righteousness, rightness, and justice you should speak quite dumb?] Do you judge fairly
and
uprightly, O you sons of men? |
| 2 | No, in your heart you devise wickedness; you deal out in the land the violence of your hands. |
| 3 | The ungodly are perverse
and
estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. |
| 4 | Their poison is like the venom of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder
or
asp that stops its ear, |
| 5 | Which listens not to the voice of charmers
or
of the enchanter never casting spells so cunningly. |
| 6 | Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord. |
| 7 | Let them melt away as water which runs on apace; when he aims his arrows, let them be as if they were headless
or
split apart. |
| 8 | Let them be as a snail dissolving slime as it passes on
or
as a festering sore which wastes away, like [the child to which] a woman gives untimely birth that has not seen the sun. |
| 9 | Before your pots can feel the thorns [that are placed under them for fuel], He will take them away as with a whirlwind, the green and the burning ones alike. |
| 10 | The [unyieldingly] righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. |
| 11 | Men will say, Surely there is a reward for the [uncompromisingly] righteous; surely there is a God Who judges on the earth. |