1 DO YOU indeed in silence speak righteousness, O you mighty ones? [Or is the righteousness, rightness, and justice you should speak quite dumb?] Do you judge fairly and uprightly, O you sons of men? 2 No, in your heart you devise wickedness; you deal out in the land the violence of your hands.
3 The ungodly are perverse and estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. 4 Their poison is like the venom of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder or asp that stops its ear, 5 Which listens not to the voice of charmers or of the enchanter never casting spells so cunningly.
6 Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord. 7 Let them melt away as water which runs on apace; when he aims his arrows, let them be as if they were headless or split apart. 8 Let them be as a snail dissolving slime as it passes on or as a festering sore which wastes away, like [the child to which] a woman gives untimely birth that has not seen the sun. 9 Before your pots can feel the thorns [that are placed under them for fuel], He will take them away as with a whirlwind, the green and the burning ones alike.
10 The [unyieldingly] righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. 11 Men will say, Surely there is a reward for the [uncompromisingly] righteous; surely there is a God Who judges on the earth.