Even in heart ye work iniquities, In the land the violence of your hands ye ponder.
For they stretched out against Thee evil, They devised a wicked device, they prevail not,
--A Psalm of Asaph. God hath stood in the company of God, In the midst God doth judge.
Is a throne of mischief joined with Thee? A framer of perverseness by statute?
And again, I have seen under the sun the place of judgment--there is the wicked; and the place of righteousness--there is the wicked.
Woe to those decreeing decrees of iniquity, And writers who have prescribed perverseness.
The path for the righteous is uprightness, O upright One, The path of the righteous Thou dost ponder.
A bribe they have taken in thee to shed blood, Usury and increase thou hast taken, And cuttest off thy neighbour by oppression, And Me thou hast forgotten, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah!
Its princes in its midst are as wolves, Tearing prey, to shed blood, to destroy souls, For the sake of gaining dishonest gain.
And now, we are declaring the proud happy, Yea, built up have been those doing wickedness, Yea they have tempted God, and escape.'