Psalms 109:1–31

^{To the director. Of David. A melody.}

¹O God of my praise, do not keep silent.

²For the mouth of the wicked one and the mouth of deception have opened against me.
They have spoken about me with the tongue of falsehood;
³And with words of hatred they have surrounded me,
And they keep fighting against me without cause.

⁴For my love they keep resisting me;
But on my part there is prayer.

⁵And they render to me bad for good
And hatred for my love.

⁶Appoint over him someone wicked,
And may a resister himself keep standing at his right hand.

⁷When he is judged, let him go forth as someone wicked;
And let his very prayer become a sin.

⁸Let his days prove to be few;
His office of oversight let someone else take.

⁹Let his sons become fatherless boys
And his wife be a widow.

¹⁰And without fail let his sons go wandering about;
And they must do begging,
And they must look for [food] from their desolate places.

¹¹Let the usurer lay out traps for all that he has,
And let strangers make plunder of his product of toil.

¹²May he come to have no one extending loving‐kindness,
And may there prove to be no one showing favor to his fatherless boys.

¹³Let his posterity be for cutting off.
In the following generation let their name be wiped out.

¹⁴Let the error of his forefathers be remembered to Jehovah,
And the sin of his mother—may it not be wiped out.

¹⁵Let them prove to be in front of Jehovah constantly;
And may he cut off the remembrance of them from the very earth;
¹⁶For the reason that he did not remember to exercise loving‐kindness,
But he kept pursuing the afflicted and poor man
And the one dejected at heart, to put [him] to death.

¹⁷And he kept loving the malediction, so that it came upon him;
And he did not take delight in the blessing,
So that it became far away from him;
¹⁸And he came to be clothed with malediction as his garment.
So it came like waters into the midst of him
And like oil into his bones.

¹⁹May it prove to be for him like a garment with which he enwraps himself
And as a girdle that he keeps girded about himself constantly.

²⁰This is the wages from Jehovah of the one resisting me
And of those speaking evil against my soul.

²¹But you are Jehovah the Sovereign Lord.
Deal with me for the sake of your name.
Because your loving‐kindness is good, deliver me.

²²For I am afflicted and poor,
And my heart itself has been pierced within me.

²³Like a shadow when it declines, I am obliged to go away;
I have been shaken off like a locust.

²⁴My knees themselves have swayed from fasting,
And my very flesh has grown lean, without any oil.

²⁵And to them I myself have become something reproachable.
They see me—they begin wagging their head.

²⁶Help me, O Jehovah my God;
Save me according to your loving‐kindness.

²⁷And may they know that this is your hand;
That you yourself, O Jehovah, have done it.

²⁸Let them, for their part, pronounce a malediction,
But may you, for your part, pronounce a blessing.
They have risen up, but let them be ashamed,
And let your own servant rejoice.

²⁹Let those resisting me be clothed with humiliation,
And let them enwrap themselves with their shame just as with a sleeveless coat.

³⁰I shall laud Jehovah very much with my mouth,
And in among many people I shall praise him.

³¹For he will stand at the right hand of the poor,
To save [him] from those judging his soul.