God, keep not silent at my praise-singing.
2For the mouths of the sinner and crafty have opened their chops against me and with crafty deceitful tongue have talked behind me.
3And they have surrounded me with words of hate and have fought against me without a cause.
4Instead of loving me they have slandered me. But I prayed.
5They showed evil against me for good and hate for my love.
6Set a sinner over him, and let the slanderer stand at his right hand.
7When sentence is passed upon him, may he go forth condemned and his prayer become sin.
8May his days be shortened and another receive his overseership.
9May his children become orphans and his wife a widow.
10May his children be carried away and be driven forth and beg; may they be thrown out of their houses.
11May the money-lender sift out all that he hath, and may strangers plunder all his best efforts.
12Let there be no man to back him, and no one to take pity on his orphans.
13May his children be exterminated and his name blotted out in a single generation.
14Let the sin of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and the sin of his mother be not blotted out.
15Let them be ever present to the Lord and his memory be rooted out from the earth;
16In that he hath not thought of using mercy and hath persecuted a poor and wretched man and hath persecuted a sorry creature to slay him.
17He loved cursing,--and it shall come unto him. He desired not blessing,--it shall stay far from him.
18He clothed himself with cursing as with a vesture, and it entered into his bowels as water, and it was as oil in his bones.
19May it be for him as a garment in which he shall be wrapped, and as a girdle with which he shall ever be girded.
20This is the work of them who slander me before the Lord, and speak unlawfully against my soul.
21For I am poor and I am wretched; my heart is tumult within me.
22I am carried away in the midst as a shadow which hath sunk down, and I am shaken out as grass-hoppers.
23My knees have become weak from fasting, and my flesh is altered from lack of oil.
24But I have become a mock unto them; they saw me and wagged their heads.
25Help, O Lord God, and save me according to thy grace.