New Living Translation NLT
Common English Bible CEB
1 Justice—do you rulers know the meaning of the word? Do you judge the people fairly?
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Do you really speak what is right, you gods? Do you really judge humans fairly?
2 No! You plot injustice in your hearts. You spread violence throughout the land.
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No: in your hearts you plan injustice; your hands do violence on the earth.
3 These wicked people are born sinners; even from birth they have lied and gone their own way.
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The wicked backslide from the womb; liars go astray from birth.
4 They spit venom like deadly snakes; they are like cobras that refuse to listen,
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Their venom is like a snake's venom— like a deaf cobra's—one that shuts its ears
5 ignoring the tunes of the snake charmers, no matter how skillfully they play.
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so it can't hear the snake charmer's voice or the spells of a skillful enchanter.
6 Break off their fangs, O God! Smash the jaws of these lions, O LORD !
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God, break their teeth out of their mouths! Tear out the lions' jawbones, LORD!
7 May they disappear like water into thirsty ground. Make their weapons useless in their hands.
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Let them dissolve like water flowing away. When they bend the bow, let their arrows be like headless shafts.
8 May they be like snails that dissolve into slime, like a stillborn child who will never see the sun.
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Like the snail that dissolves into slime, like a woman's stillborn child, let them never see the sun.
9 God will sweep them away, both young and old, faster than a pot heats over burning thorns.
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Before your pots feel the thorns, whether green or burned up, God will sweep them away!
10 The godly will rejoice when they see injustice avenged. They will wash their feet in the blood of the wicked.
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But the righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done, when they wash their feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 Then at last everyone will say, “There truly is a reward for those who live for God; surely there is a God who judges justly here on earth.”
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Then it will be said: "Yes, there is a reward for the righteous! Yes, there is a God who judges people on the earth."
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by
Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Common English Bible