1 For the end. Destroy not: by David, for a memorial.
2 If ye do indeed speak righteousness, then do ye judge rightly, ye sons of men. 3 For ye work iniquities in your hearts in the earth: your hands plot unrighteousness. 4 Sinners have gone astray from the womb: they go astray from the belly: they speak lies. 5 Their venom is like that of a serpent; as that of a deaf asp, and that stops her ears; 6 which will not hear the voice of charmers, nor heed the 1charm prepared skilfully by the wise.
7 God has crushed their teeth in their mouth: God has broken the cheek-teeth of the lions. 8 They shall utterly pass away like water running through: he shall bend his bow till they shall fail. 9 They shall be destroyed as melted wax: the fire has fallen and they have not seen the sun. 10 Before your thorns feel the white thorn, he shall swallow you up as living, as in his wrath.
11 The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance of the ungodly: he shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner. 12 And a man shall say, Verily then there is 2a reward for the righteous: verily there is a God that judges them in the earth.
About this text. This is Sir Lancelot Brenton’s 1851 translation of the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament the Orthodox Church reads, rather than the Hebrew text behind most English Bibles. It is in the public domain. Words in italics are ones Brenton supplied that the Greek does not have; he marked them so that a reader could tell the difference, and they are kept that way here. The numbered notes are his own. Its English is Victorian, and does not match the modern English of the New Testament pages on this site.
On the numbering. The Psalms are numbered here as the Septuagint numbers them, which is how Orthodox service books cite them. From Psalm 10 onward that is one behind a Hebrew-numbered Bible: Psalm 50 here is the Psalm 51 of most English Bibles. The Septuagint also carries a hundred and fifty-first Psalm, which those Bibles do not.