1. ¶ Do not hold thy peace, O God of my praise;
2. for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me; they have spoken of me with a lying tongue.
3. They compassed me about with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause.
4. They have responded to my love by becoming my adversaries, but I give myself unto prayer.
5. And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6. ¶ Set thou the wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand.
7. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin.
8. Let his days be few, and let another take his office.
9. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
10. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread out of their desolate places.
11. Let the extortioner catch all that he has, and let the strangers spoil his labour.
12. Let there be no one to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
13. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15. Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
16. Because he did not remember to show mercy but persecuted the man who is poor in spirit and destitute and broken in heart, that he might slay him.
17. As he loved the curse, so let it come unto him; as he delighted not in the blessing, so let it be far from him.
18. As he clothed himself with the curse like as with his garment, and it entered into his bowels like water and like oil into his bones.
19. Let it be unto him as the garment which covers him and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20. Let this be the reward from the Lord of those who spoke falsely against me and of those that speak evil against my soul.
21. ¶ And thou, O GOD the Lord, do unto me for thy name’s sake; because thy mercy is good, deliver me.
22. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23. I am gone like the shadow when it declines; I am tossed up and down by the wind as the locust.
24. My knees are weak through fasting, and my flesh fails for lack of fatness.
25. I have become a reproach unto them; when they looked upon me they shook their heads.
26. Help me, O Lord my God; O save me according to thy mercy,
27. that they may know that this is thy hand, that thou, O Lord, hast done it.
28. Let them curse, but bless thou; when they arise, let them be ashamed, but let thy slave rejoice.
29. Let those who speak evil against me falsely be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion as with a mantle.
30. I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31. For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor in spirit to save his soul from those that judge him.