The Refuge & The Judge

1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;

save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,

2lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,

rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

3O Lord my God, if I have done this,

if there is wrong in my hands,

4if I have repaid my friend with evil

or plundered my enemy without cause,

5let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,

and let him trample my life to the ground

and lay my glory in the dust.

Selah

6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;

lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;

awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.

7Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;

over it return on high.

8The Lord judges the peoples;

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness

and according to the integrity that is in me.

9Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,

and may you establish the righteous—

you who test the minds and hearts,

O righteous God!

10My shield is with God,

who saves the upright in heart.

11God is a righteous judge,

and a God who feels indignation every day.

12If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;

he has bent and readied his bow;

13he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,

making his arrows fiery shafts.

14Behold, the wicked man conceives evil

and is pregnant with mischief

and gives birth to lies.

15He makes a pit, digging it out,

and falls into the hole that he has made.

16His mischief returns upon his own head,

and on his own skull his violence descends.

17I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,

and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.