Recalling the examples of the past, the psalmist affirms: “The hope of the poor will not be destroyed.”
1* ① 2Let my heart give thanks to the Lord, I yearn to proclaim your marvelous deeds, 3and rejoice and exult in you, and sing praise to your name, O Most High.
4For my enemies fell back in retreat, they stumbled and perished before you. 5You have upheld my right and my cause, you have sentenced from your throne, O just judge.
6You have turned back the nations; you have destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their names forever.
7Your enemies lay in endless ruin, their cities trampled, their memory perished.
8But the Lord reigns forever, having set up his throne for judgment.
9He will judge the nations with justice and govern the peoples in righteousness.
10The Lord is a rampart for the oppressed, a refuge in times of distress.
11Those who cherish your name, O Lord, can rely on you, for you have never forsaken those who look to you.
12Sing praises to the Lord enthroned in Zion, proclaim his deeds among the nations.
13For he who avenges blood remembers, he does not ignore the cry of the lowly.
14Have mercy on me, O Lord. See how they afflict me. Oh, lift me up from the gates of death, 15that I may declare your praise, that I may rejoice in your salvation in the gates of Zion.
16The pagans have sunk into the pit they have dug, their own feet ensnared by the trap they laid.
17The Lord has shown his presence, he has judged and the wicked plotters have been trapped by the work of their hands.
18To the netherworld the wicked will depart, all the nations that have no thought of God.
19For the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever.
20Rise, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations stand on trial before you.
21Bring terror, O Lord, strike at them; let these pagans realize that they are but humans.
- Psalms 9 and 10 of the Hebrew text are only the two halves of the Greek or Latin Bible text. This causes the disarrangement in the numbering of the psalms which begins here. Psalm 9 denounces the enemies of Israel. Psalm 10 denounces the wicked within the community. Those who exploit the widow and the orphan, the foreigner and the traveler, are in fact the enemies of God.
