¹ [Lament Of David Which he sang to Yahweh about Cush the Benjaminite] Yahweh my God, I take refuge in you, save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,

² or he will savage me like a lion, carry me off with no one to rescue me.

³ Yahweh my God, if I have done this: if injustice has stained my hands,

⁴ if I have repaid my ally with treachery or spared one who attacked me unprovoked,

⁵ may an enemy hunt me down and catch me, may he trample my life into the ground and crush my vital parts into the dust.Pause

⁶ Arise, Yahweh, in your anger, rise up against the arrogance of my foes. Awake, my God, you demand judgement.

⁷ Let the assembly of nations gather round you; return above it on high!

⁸ (Yahweh judges the nations.) Judge me, Yahweh, as my uprightness and my integrity deserve.

⁹ Put an end to the malice of the wicked, make the upright stand firm, you who discern hearts and minds, God the upright.

¹⁰ God is a shield that protects me, saving the honest of heart.

¹¹ God is an upright judge, slow to anger, but a God at all times threatening

¹² for those who will not repent. Let the enemy whet his sword, draw his bow and make ready;

¹³ but he is making ready instruments of death for himself and tipping his arrows with fire;

¹⁴ look at him: pregnant with malice, conceiving spite, he gives birth to treachery.

¹⁵ He digs a trap, scoops it out, but he falls into the snare he made himself.

¹⁶ His spite recoils on his own head, his brutality falls back on his own skull.

¹⁷ I thank Yahweh for his saving justice. I sing to the name of the Most High.