Psalm 82-83

GOD’S WORD Translation

³ Defend weak people and orphans.
Protect the rights of the oppressed and the poor.
⁴ Rescue weak and needy people.
Help them escape the power of wicked people.

⁵ Wicked people do not know or understand anything.
As they walk around in the dark,
all the foundations of the earth shake.
⁶ I said, “You are gods.
You are all sons of the Most High.
⁷ You will certainly die like humans
and fall like any prince.”

⁸ Arise, O God!
Judge the earth, because all the nations belong to you.

² Look, your enemies are in an uproar.
Those who hate you hold their heads high.
³ They make plans in secret against your people
and plot together against those you treasure.
⁴ They say, “Let’s wipe out their nation
so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.”
⁵ They agree completely on their plan.
They form an alliance against you:
⁶ the tents from Edom and Ishmael,
Moab and Hagar,
⁷ Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek,
Philistia, along with those who live in Tyre.
⁸ Even Assyria has joined them.
They helped the descendants of Lot. Selah
⁹ Do to them what you did to Midian,
to Sisera and Jabin at the Kishon River.
¹⁰ They were destroyed at Endor.
They became manure to fertilize the ground.
¹¹ Treat their influential people as you treated Oreb and Zeeb.
Treat all their leaders like Zebah and Zalmunna.
¹² They said, “Let’s take God’s pasturelands for ourselves.”
¹³ O my God, blow them away like tumbleweeds,^[a]
like husks in the wind.
¹⁴ Pursue them with your storms,
and terrify them with your windstorms
¹⁵ the way fire burns a forest
and flames set mountains on fire.^[b]
16 Let their faces blush with shame, O Lord,
so that they must look to you for help.
¹⁷ Let them be put to shame and terrified forever.
Let them die in disgrace
¹⁸ so that they must acknowledge you.
Your name is the Lord.
You alone are the Most High God of the whole earth.