God, refuge of the oppressed
Recalling the examples of the past, the psalmist affirms: “The hope of the poor will not be destroyed.”
2 Let my heart give thanks to the Lord, I yearn to proclaim your marvelous deeds, 3 and rejoice and exult in you, and sing praise to your name, O Most High.
4 For my enemies fell back in re treat, they stumbled and perished before you. 5 You have upheld my right and my cause, you have sentenced from your throne, O just judge.
6 You have turned back the nations; you have destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their names forever.
7 Your enemies lay in endless ruin, their cities trampled, their memory perished.
8 But the Lord reigns forever, having set up his throne for judgment.
9 He will judge the nations with justice and govern the peoples in right eousness.
10 The Lord is a rampart for the oppressed, a refuge in times of distress.
11 Those who cherish your name, O Lord, can rely on you, for you have never forsaken those who look to you.
12 Sing praises to the Lord en throned in Zion, proclaim his deeds among the nations.
13 For he who avenges blood re members, he does not ignore the cry of the lowly.
14 Have mercy on me, O Lord. See how they afflict me. Oh, lift me up from the gates of death, 15 that I may declare your praise, that I may rejoice in your salvation in the gates of Zion.
16 The pagans have sunk into the pit they have dug, their own feet ensnared by the trap they laid.
17 The Lord has shown his presence, he has judged and the wicked plotters have been trapped by the work of their hands.
18 To the netherworld the wicked will depart, all the nations that have no thought of God.
19 For the needy will not always be for gotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever.
20 Rise, O Lord! Do not let mortals pre vail; let the nations stand on trial be fore you.
21 Bring 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.
