Psalms 58:1-11

  • There is a God who judges the earth

    • Prayer to punish the wicked (6-8)

To the director; set to “Do Not Bring to Ruin.” Of David. Mikʹtam.* 58  Can you speak about righteousness when you are silent?+ Can you judge in uprightness, you sons of men?+   Instead, you devise unrighteousness in your heart,+And your hands dispense violence in the land.+   The wicked go astray* from birth;*They are wayward, liars from the time they are born.   Their venom is like the venom of serpents;+They are deaf like the cobra that stops up its ear.   It will not listen to the voice of charmers,No matter how skillful their spells.   O God, knock the teeth out of their mouth! Break the jaws of these lions,* O Jehovah!   May they disappear like waters that drain away. May He bend his bow and make them fall by his arrows.   May they be like a snail that melts away as it moves along;Like a woman’s stillborn child who never sees the sun.   Before your cooking pots feel the heat of the bramble,He will sweep away both the moist and the burning twig, as in a storm wind.+ 10  The righteous one will rejoice because he has seen the vengeance;+His feet will be drenched with the blood of the wicked.+ 11  Then men will say: “Surely there is a reward for the righteous.+ There is indeed a God who judges in the earth.”+

Footnotes

Or “are corrupt.”
Lit., “from the womb.”
Or “maned young lions.”