1For the leader: set to “Destroy not”: for David: a miktam YOU RULERS, are your decisions really just? Do you judge your people with equity?
2No! Your hearts devise wickedness and your hands mete out violence in the land.
3The wicked go astray from birth: liars, no sooner born than they take to wrong ways.
4Venomous with the venom of serpents, they are like the deaf asp which stops its ears
5and will not listen to the sound of the charmer, however skilfully he may play.
6God, break the teeth in their mouths; LORD, shatter the fangs of the oppressors.
7May they vanish like water that runs away; may he aim his arrows, may they perish by them;
8may they be like an abortive birth which melts away or a stillborn child which never sees the sun!
9Before they know it, may they be rooted up like a thorn bush, like weeds which a man angrily clears away!
10The righteous will rejoice at the sight of vengeance done; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
11It will be said, “There is after all reward for the righteous; there is after all a God who dispenses justice on earth.”