- Hold not your peace, O God of my praise, for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me. They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They encompassed me about. They spoke against me also with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. And notwithstanding my love, they are my adversaries, yet I will continue in prayer for them. And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
- Set a wicked man over them, and let Satan stand at his right hand. When they shall be judged, let them be condemned, and let their prayer become sin. Let their days be few. Let another take their office. Let their children be fatherless and their wives widows. Let their children be continually vagabonds and beg. Let them seek also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that they have, and let the stranger spoil their labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto them, neither let there be any to favor their fatherless children. Let their posterity be cut off. In the generation following, let their names be blotted out. Let the iniquity of their fathers be remembered before the Lord, and let not the sin of their mothers be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth, because they remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that they might even slay the broken in heart. As they loved cursing, so let it come upon them. As they did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from them. As they clothed themselves with cursing as with their garments, so let it come into their inward parts like water, and like oil into their bones. Let it be unto them as a garment covers them, and for a belt with which they are girded continually. This shall be the reward of my adversaries from the Lord and of them who speak evil against my soul.
- But do deliver me, O Lord my God, for your name's sake, because your mercy is good; therefore, deliver me. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow when it declines. I am tossed up and down as the locust. My knees are weak through fasting, and my flesh fails of fatness. I became also a reproach unto them. When they looked upon me, they shook their heads. Help me, O Lord my God. O save me according to your mercy, that they may know that this is your hand, that you, Lord, have done it. Let them curse, but you bless. When they arise, let them be ashamed, but let your servant rejoice. Let my adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion as with a mantle. I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth, yea, I will praise him among the multitude. For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor to save him from those that condemn his soul.
Psalm 109
To the chief musician, a psalm of David.