Psalm 7

[Lament Of David Which he sang to Yahweh about Cush the Benjaminite] Yahweh my God, I take refuge in you, save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,

or he will savage me like a lion, carry me off with no one to rescue me.

Yahweh my God, if I have done this: if injustice has stained my hands,

if I have repaid my ally with treachery or spared one who attacked me unprovoked,

may an enemy hunt me down and catch me, may he trample my life into the ground and crush my vital parts into the dust. (Pause)

Arise, Yahweh, in your anger, rise up against the arrogance of my foes. Awake, my God, you demand judgement.

Let the assembly of nations gather round you; return above it on high!

(Yahweh judges the nations.) Judge me, Yahweh, as my uprightness and my integrity deserve.

Put an end to the malice of the wicked, make the upright stand firm, you who discern hearts and minds, God the upright.

God is a shield that protects me, saving the honest of heart.

God is an upright judge, slow to anger, but a God at all times threatening

for those who will not repent. Let the enemy whet his sword, draw his bow and make ready;

but he is making ready instruments of death for himself and tipping his arrows with fire;

look at him: pregnant with malice, conceiving spite, he gives birth to treachery.

He digs a trap, scoops it out, but he falls into the snare he made himself.

His spite recoils on his own head, his brutality falls back on his own skull.

I thank Yahweh for his saving justice. I sing to the name of the Most High.