1. For the music director: “Do Not Destroy,” a Michtam of David.
2. Do you really speak of justice, O “gods”? Do you judge with fairness, sons of man?
3. No, in heart you devise injustice. Your hands weigh out violence on earth.
4. The wicked are strangers from the womb. Speaking lies, they go astray from birth.
5. Their venom is like a serpent’s venom, like a deaf cobra shutting its ear—
6. not hearing the voice of charmers, or a cunning spell binder.
7. O God, break their teeth in their mouths. Tear out the fangs of young lions, Adonai.
8. Let them flow away like water that runs off. When he bends his bow, let the arrows be cut off.
9. Like a slug melting away as it slithers, like a woman’s miscarriage, may they never see the sun.
10. Even before your pots can feel a thorn —whether alive or ablaze— He will sweep the wicked away.
11. The righteous one will rejoice when he beholds vengeance, when he washes his feet in the blood of the wicked.
12. Then men will say: “There really is a reward for the righteous. There really is a God who judges on earth!”