UST PSA Chapter 58

58 Here is a note to the worship leader: tune is “Do wrote song.

1 You judges should not think that you can ensure justice if you do not speak out to condemn wickedness.

You are not judging cases fairly, and that shows that you are acting only as humans, not as God’s representatives.

2 In fact, you keep thinking about doing things that are wrong.

The decisions that you make encourage people to commit violent crimes.

3 Wicked people do wrong things and tell lies

from the time when they are born.

4 Wicked people harm other people just as poisonous snakes harm people.

They do not pay attention to God’s commandments, as if they were cobras that refused to listen

5 and so did not respond to the music that snake charmers were playing.

Even the most skillful charmer could not get them to respond to music.

6 Yahweh my God, wicked people are as dangerous as young lions,

but destroy them as if you were breaking the large teeth of such lions.

7 Make them disappear like water that flows away.

When they try to harm people as if they were shooting arrows at them,

keep them from hurting those people, as if those arrows had no heads!

8 May they be like a snail that dissolves as it moves along.

May they be like a baby that never lives on earth because it dies before its mother gives birth to it.

9 God will punish and destroy them as powerfully as if a whirlwind were carrying them away.

He will do that more quickly than thorns can catch fire and heat a pot, even if the thorns are dry, not fresh.

10 Righteous people will celebrate when they see God punish wicked people.

It will be as if wicked people were an army that God destroyed

and righteous people were walking triumphantly through the battlefield afterwards.

11 Then people will say, “It is true that there is a reward for righteous people!

It is true that God judges fairly the people who live on the earth!”