Psalms 83

A Request to Act against Israel’s Neighbors

¹O God, do not rest silently.

Do not keep silent or be still, O God.

²For look, your enemies roar,

and those who hate you have lifted their head.

³They devise cunning schemes against your people,[#Hebrew “scheme”]

and consult together against your protected ones.

⁴They say, “Come, let us annihilate them from being a nation,

so that the name of Israel will be remembered no more.”

⁵For they have consulted together with a unified purpose.[#Literally “with a heart together”]

They have made a covenant against you:

⁶the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,

Moab and the Hagrites,

⁷Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,

Philistia, with the inhabitants of Tyre.

⁸Assyria also has joined with them.

They provide help to the children of Lot. Selah

⁹Do to them as you did with Midian,

as with Sisera, as with Jabin at the wadi of Kishon.

¹⁰They were destroyed at En-dor;

they became dung for the ground.

¹¹Make their leaders like Oreb and Zeeb,

and all their chiefs like Zebah and Zalmunna,

¹²who said, “Let us take as our possession

the pastures of God.”

¹³O my God, make them like the tumbleweed,

like the chaff before wind.

¹⁴As fire burns a forest,

and as a flame sets afire mountains,

¹⁵so pursue them with your tempest

and terrify them with your storm.

¹⁶Fill their faces with shame,

that they may seek your name, O Yahweh.

¹⁷Let them be ashamed and terrified forever,

and let them be humiliated and perish

¹⁸that they may know that you,

whose name is Yahweh, you alone,

are the Most High over the whole earth.