Psalm 40

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry.

² He drew me up out of a horrible pit [a pit of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and set my feet upon a rock, steadying my steps and establishing my goings.

³ And He has put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many shall see and fear (revere and worship) and put their trust and confident reliance in the Lord.^(A)

⁴ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man who makes the Lord his refuge and trust, and turns not to the proud or to followers of false gods.

⁵ Many, O Lord my God, are the wonderful works which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; no one can compare with You! If I should declare and speak of them, they are too many to be numbered.

⁶ Sacrifice and offering You do not desire, nor have You delight in them; You have given me the capacity to hear and obey [Your law, a more valuable service than] burnt offerings and sin offerings [which] You do not require.

⁷ Then said I, Behold, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me;

⁸ I delight to do Your will, O my God; yes, Your law is within my heart.^(B)

⁹ I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great assembly [tidings of uprightness and right standing with God]. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as You know, O Lord.

¹⁰ I have not concealed Your righteousness within my heart; I have proclaimed Your faithfulness and Your salvation. I have not hid away Your steadfast love and Your truth from the great assembly.^(C)

¹¹ Withhold not Your tender mercy from me, O Lord; let Your loving-kindness and Your truth continually preserve me!

¹² For innumerable evils have compassed me about; my iniquities have taken such hold on me that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart has failed me and forsaken me.

¹³ Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me!

¹⁴ Let them be put to shame and confounded together who seek and require my life to destroy it; let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor who wish me evil and delight in my hurt!

¹⁵ Let them be desolate by reason of their shame who say to me, Aha, aha!

¹⁶ Let all those that seek and require You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified!

¹⁷ [As for me] I am poor and needy, yet the Lord takes thought and plans for me. You are my Help and my Deliverer. O my God, do not tarry!^(D)

Psalm 58

To the Chief Musician; [set to the tune of] “Do Not Destroy.” A record of memorable thoughts of David.

¹ Do you indeed in silence speak righteousness, O you mighty ones? [Or is the righteousness, rightness, and justice you should speak quite dumb?] Do you judge fairly and uprightly, O you sons of men?

² No, in your heart you devise wickedness; you deal out in the land the violence of your hands.

³ The ungodly are perverse and estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.

⁴ Their poison is like the venom of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder or asp that stops its ear,

⁵ Which listens not to the voice of charmers or of the enchanter never casting spells so cunningly.

⁶ Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord.

⁷ Let them melt away as water which runs on apace; when he aims his arrows, let them be as if they were headless or split apart.

⁸ Let them be as a snail dissolving slime as it passes on or as a festering sore which wastes away, like [the child to which] a woman gives untimely birth that has not seen the sun.

⁹ Before your pots can feel the thorns [that are placed under them for fuel], He will take them away as with a whirlwind, the green and the burning ones alike.

¹⁰ The [unyieldingly] righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.

¹¹ Men will say, Surely there is a reward for the [uncompromisingly] righteous; surely there is a God Who judges on the earth.

²³ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you give a tenth of your mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected and omitted the weightier (more important) matters of the Law—right and justice and mercy and fidelity. These you ought [particularly] to have done, without neglecting the others.

²⁴ You blind guides, filtering out a gnat and gulping down a ^[a]camel!^(A)

²⁵ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but within they are full of extortion (prey, spoil, plunder) and grasping self-indulgence.

²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside may be clean also.

²⁷ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything impure.

²⁸ Just so, you also outwardly seem to people to be just and upright but inside you are full of pretense and lawlessness and iniquity.^(B)

²⁹ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,

³⁰ Saying, If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have aided them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

³¹ Thus you are testifying against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ sins to the brim [so ^[b]that nothing may be wanting to a full measure].

³³ You serpents! You spawn of vipers! How can you escape the ^[c]penalty to be suffered in hell (Gehenna)?

³⁴ Because of this, take notice: I am sending you prophets and wise men (interpreters and teachers) and scribes (men learned in the Mosaic Law and the Prophets); some of them you will kill, even crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue and persecute from town to town,

³⁵ So that upon your heads may come all the blood of the righteous (^[d]those who correspond to the divine standard of right) shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [of burnt offering].^(C)

³⁶ Truly I declare to you, all these [^[e]evil, calamitous times] will come upon this generation.^(D)

³⁷ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, murdering the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a mother fowl gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!

³⁸ Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate (abandoned and left destitute of God’s help).^(E)

³⁹ For I declare to you, you will not see Me again until you say, Blessed (magnified in worship, adored, and exalted) is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!^(F)