1A David psalm God! God! I am running to you for dear life; the chase is wild.
2If they catch me, I'm finished: ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions, dragged into the forest and left unlooked for, unremembered.
3God, if I've done what they say—
4betrayed my friends, ripped off my enemies— If my hands are really that dirty,
5let them get me, walk all over me, leave me flat on my face in the dirt.
6Stand up, God; pit your holy fury against my furious enemies. Wake up, God.
7My accusers have packed the courtroom; it's judgment time.
8Take your place on the bench, reach for your gavel, throw out the false charges against me. I'm ready, confident in your verdict: "Innocent."
9Close the book on Evil, God, but publish your mandate for us. You get us ready for life: you probe for our soft spots, you knock off our rough edges.
10And I'm feeling so fit, so safe: made right, kept right.
11God in solemn honor does things right, but his nerves are sandpapered raw. Nobody gets by with anything.
12God is already in action— Sword honed on his whetstone, bow strung, arrow on the string,
13Lethal weapons in hand, each arrow a flaming missile.
14Look at that guy! He had sex with sin, he's pregnant with evil. Oh, look! He's having the baby—a Lie-Baby!
15See that man shoveling day after day, digging, then concealing, his man-trap down that lonely stretch of road? Go back and look again—you'll see him in it headfirst, legs waving in the breeze.
16That's what happens: mischief backfires; violence boomerangs.
17I'm thanking God, who makes things right. I'm singing the fame of heaven-high God.