1God! God! I am running to you for dear life; the chase is wild.
2If they catch me, I'm finished: ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions, dragged into the forest and left unlooked for, unremembered.
3God, if I've done what they say -
4betrayed my friends, ripped off my enemies - If my hands are really that dirty,
5let them get me, walk all over me, leave me flat on my face in the dirt.
6Stand up, God; pit your holy fury against my furious enemies.
7My accusers have packed the courtroom; it's judgment time.
8Take your place on the bench, reach for your gavel, throw out the false charges against me. I'm ready, confident in your verdict: "Innocent."
9Close the book on Evil, God, but publish your mandate for us. You get us ready for life: you probe for our soft spots, you knock off our rough edges.
10And I'm feeling so fit, so safe: made right, kept right.
11God in solemn honor does things right, but his nerves are sandpapered raw. Nobody gets by with anything.
12God is already in action - Sword honed on his whetstone, bow strung, arrow on the string,
13Lethal weapons in hand, each arrow a flaming missile.
14Look at that guy! He had sex with sin, he's pregnant with evil. Oh, look! He's having the baby - a Lie-Baby!
15See that man shoveling day after day, digging, then concealing, his man-trap down that lonely stretch of road? Go back and look again - you'll see him in it headfirst, legs waving in the breeze.
16That's what happens: mischief backfires; violence boomerangs.
17I'm thanking God, who makes things right. I'm singing the fame of heaven-high God.