GOD! GOD! I am running to you for dear life; the chase is wild.
If they catch me, I'm finished:
ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions,
dragged into the forest and left
unlooked for, unremembered.
GOD, if I've done what they say--
betrayed my friends,
ripped off my enemies--
If my hands are really that dirty,
let them get me, walk all over me,
leave me flat on my face in the dirt.
Stand up, GOD; pit your holy fury
against my furious enemies.
Wake up, God. 7My accusers have packed
the courtroom; it's judgment time.
Take your place on the bench, reach for your gavel,
throw out the false charges against me.
I'm ready, confident in your verdict:
"Innocent."
Close the book on Evil, GOD,
but publish your mandate for us.
You get us ready for life:
you probe for our soft spots,
you knock off our rough edges.
And I'm feeling so fit, so safe:
made right, kept right.
God in solemn honor does things right,
but his nerves are sandpapered raw.
Nobody gets by with anything.
God is already in action--
Sword honed on his whetstone,
bow strung, arrow on the string,
Lethal weapons in hand,
each arrow a flaming missile.
Look at that guy!
He had sex with sin,
he's pregnant with evil.
Oh, look! He's having
the baby--a Lie-Baby!
See that man shoveling day after day,
digging, then concealing, his man-trap
down that lonely stretch of road?
Go back and look again--you'll see him in it headfirst,
legs waving in the breeze.
That's what happens:
mischief backfires;
violence boomerangs.
I'm thanking God, who makes things right.
I'm singing the fame of heaven-high GOD.
