1 Are ye in earnest*, O faction, when ye talk of righteousness, Do ye give-sentence uprightly, O ye sons of men? 2 Nay, but in heart your the earth, you work wickedness upon You concert your schemes of violence. † [A] 3 The impious are alienated, from the womb; From the very-birth, they go astray ‡, speakers of falsehood. 4 Their malignant temper [B] is like the serpent; Like the deaf adder that stoppeth his ear, * The insinuation of a hypocritical pretence to righteousness, strongly points at the Scribes and Pharisees of our Lord's times. +Schemes of violence," literally, "the violence of your "hands." i. e. You lay out, in your imaginations, the schemes which your hands are to execute. "They wander," i. e. they are unprincipled ;-they wander over the field of life, not determined to any certain path. 5 Which will not hearken to the sound of muttered charms, [To the voice] of the skilful enchanter. [C] 6 God is breaking their teeth in their mouths The grinders of the young-lions Jehovah is breaking out. [D] 7 They shall [E] melt away like water which is in continual flow, He shall level his arrows against them, 8 Thou shalt dissolve them like wax, Like as a woman's untimely birth is gone, [G] Never seen of the sun *. 9 Before your pots feel the bramble, In whirlwind and hurricane he shall sweep them away. [H] *Or, "not having seen the sun." 10 The JUST ONE shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance, He shall wash his feet in the blood of the impious one: 11 So that mankind * shall say, Truly there is a reward for the JUST ONE; Truly there is a God who executeth-judgement in the earth. |