In You Do I Take Refuge
A Shiggaion1 of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
dsave me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest elike a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 fif I have repaid my friend2 with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory gin the dust. Selah
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
hlift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
iawake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord jjudges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, kaccording to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who ltest the minds and hearts,3
O righteous God!
10 My mshield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 nGod is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man4 does not repent, God5 will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man oconceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and pfalls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
17 qI will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
1 q“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. 2 You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, 3 rnor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
4 s“If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. 5 tIf you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.
6 u“You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. 7 Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the vinnocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. 8 And you shall wtake no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.
9 x“You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for yyou were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
Laws About the Sabbath and Festivals
10 z“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, 11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.
12 a“Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed.
13 “Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and bmake no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.
14 c“Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. 15 You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. dAs I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. 16 You shall keep the eFeast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the fFeast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. 17 gThree times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God.
18 h“You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning.
19 i“The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.
j“You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Conquest of Canaan Promised
20 k“Behold, I send an langel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. 21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not mrebel against him, for nhe will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then oI will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
23 p“When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, 24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, qnor do as they do, but ryou shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. 25 You shall sserve the Lord your God, and the1 will bless your bread and your water, and uI will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry vor be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. 27 I will send my wterror before you and will xthrow into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 And I will send yhornets2 before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. 29 zI will not drive them out from before you ain one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. 30 Little by little bI will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. 31 And cI will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates,3 for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and dyou shall drive them out before you. 32 eYou shall make no covenant with them and their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a fsnare to you.”
