71 God! God! I am running to you for dear life; the chase is wild. 2 If they catch me, I'm finished: ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions, dragged into the forest and left unlooked for, unremembered. 3 God, if I've done what they say - 4 betrayed my friends, ripped off my enemies - If my hands are really that dirty, 5 let them get me, walk all over me, leave me flat on my face in the dirt. 6 Stand up, God; pit your holy fury against my furious enemies. 7 My accusers have packed the courtroom; it's judgment time. 8 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." 9 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.
10 And I'm feeling so fit, so safe: made right, kept right. 11 God in solemn honor does things right, but his nerves are sandpapered raw. Nobody gets by with anything. 12 God is already in action - Sword honed on his whetstone, bow strung, arrow on the string, 13 Lethal weapons in hand, each arrow a flaming missile. 14 Look at that guy! He had sex with sin, he's pregnant with evil. Oh, look! He's having the baby - a Lie-Baby! 15 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. 16 That's what happens: mischief backfires; violence boomerangs. 17 I'm thanking God, who makes things right. I'm singing the fame of heaven-high God.
