1 Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O ye gods? In uprightness do ye judge the sons of men? 2 Yea, in heart ye work iniquity; In the earth ye weigh out the violence of your hands. 3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: Gone astray from birth are the speakers of lies. 4 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent, Like the deaf adder that stops its ear, 5 That will not hearken to the voice of the charmers, The skilled weaver of spells. 6 O God, break their teeth in their mouth: The grinders of the young lions wrench out, Jehovah. 7 Let them melt like waters [that] run themselves [dry]: [When] he shoots his arrows, let them be as if pointless. 8 [Let them be] as a slug that dissolves as it crawls: As the premature birth of a woman, [that] has not seen the sun. 9 Before your pots feel the thorns, Whether it be green or burning, He shall whirl it away. 10 The righteous shall rejoice that he has beheld [the] vengeance: His footsteps shall he bathe in the blood of the wicked. 11 And men shall say, Surely there is fruit for the righteous: Surely there is a God judging in the earth. This psalmist's fiery indignation against unjust judges and evil-doers generally is not kindled by personal wrongs. The psalm comes hot from a heart lacerated by the sight of widespread corruption, and constrained to seek for patience in the thought of the swift sweeping away of evil men before their plans are effected. Stern triumph in the punitive manifestations of God's rule, and keen sense of the need of such, are its keynotes. Vehement emotion stirs the poet's imagination to heap together strong and, in part, obscure metaphors. Here emphatically "Indignatio facit versus." The psalm is Dantesque in its wealth of sombre imagination, which produces the most solemn effects with the homeliest metaphors, and in its awed and yet satisfied contemplation of the fate of evil-doers. It parts itself into three portions,--a dark picture of abounding evil (vv. 1-5); it's punishment prayed for (vv. 6-9); and the consequent joy of the righteous and widespread recognition of the rule of a just God (vv. 10, 11).