A Plea for Deliverance from Persecution

• 69 Save me, O God, because waters have come up to my neck.[fn]
• 2 I sink in the mud of the deep, and there is no foothold. I have come to watery depths,
• and the torrent floods over me.
• 3 I am weary with my calling out; my throat is parched. My eyes are exhausted in my waiting for my God.
• 4 More numerous than the hairs of my head are those hating me without a cause.
• Those who are destroying me—my enemies wrongfully[fn]— are mighty.
• What I did not steal, I then must restore.
• 5 O God, you yourself know[fn] my foolishness, and my guilty deeds are not hidden from you.
• 6 Let those who wait for you not be put to shame because of me, O Lord Yahweh of hosts.
• Let those who seek you not be disgraced because of me,
• O God of Israel.
• 7 Because on account of you I have borne reproach; disgrace has covered my face.
• 8 I have become a stranger to my brothers and a foreigner to my mother’s sons,
• 9 because the zeal for your house[fn] has consumed me, and the reproaches of those reproaching you have fallen on me.
• 10 When I wept in the fasting of my soul, it became reproaches for me.
• 11 When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became for them a byword.
• 12 Those sitting at the gate talk about me as also[fn] the songs of the drunkards.
• 13 But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Yahweh, for a favorable time, O God, according to the abundance of your loyal love.
• Answer me with the faithfulness of your salvation.
• 14 Deliver me from the mud and do not let me sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me
• and from the watery depths.
• 15 Do not let the torrent of waters flood over me, or the deep swallow me,
• or the pit close its mouth over me.
• 16 Answer me, O Yahweh, because your loyal love is good; according to your abundant mercies, turn to me,
• 17 and do not hide your face from your servant. Because I am in trouble, answer me quickly.
• 18 Draw near to my soul; redeem it. Because of my enemies, ransom me.
• 19 You know my reproach, my shame and my disgrace. Fully known[fn] to you are all my adversaries.
• 20 Reproach has broken my heart and I am sick. And I hoped for sympathy, but there was none,
• and for comforters, but I found none.
• 21 They also gave me gall for food,[fn] and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
• 22 Let their table before them be a trap, and their times of peace a snare.
• 23 Let their eyes be dark so they cannot see, and make their loins continually tremble.
• 24 Pour out your indignation on them, and let your burning anger overtake them.
• 25 Let their camp be desolate. Let none dwell in their tents,
• 26 because they persecute those whom you, yourself, have struck, and they tell of the pain of those you have wounded.
• 27 Add guilt on top of their guilt ,[fn] and do not let them be acquitted .[fn]
• 28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and let them not be recorded with the righteous.
• 29 But as for me, though I am afflicted and pained, your salvation will protect[fn] me, O God.
• 30 I will praise the name of God in song, and magnify him with thanksgiving.
• 31 For Yahweh it will be better than an ox or bull, horned and hoofed.[fn]
• 32 The afflicted will see and rejoice. O God seekers, let your heart revive,[fn]
• 33 because Yahweh hears the needy and does not despise his own who are prisoners.
• 34 Let heavens and earth praise him, the seas and all that moves in them,
• 35 because God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah,
• that they may dwell there and possess it.
• 36 And the offspring of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will abide in it.