¹For the leader. By the descendants of Korach. A maskil :

²God, we heard it with our ears;

our fathers told us about it —

a deed which you did in their days,

back in days of old.

³With your hand you drove out nations

to plant them in [the land],

you crushed peoples

to make room for them.

⁴For not by their own swords

did they conquer the land,

nor did their own arm

give them victory;

rather, it was your right hand,

your arm and the light of your face;

because you favored them.

⁵God, you are my king;

command complete victory for Ya‘akov.

⁶Through you we pushed away our foes,

through your name we trampled down our assailants.

⁷For I don’t rely on my bow,

nor can my sword give me victory.

⁸No, you saved us from our adversaries;

you put to shame those who hate us.

⁹We will boast in our God all day

and give thanks to your name forever. (Selah)

¹⁰Yet now you have thrust us aside and disgraced us;

you don’t march out with our armies.

¹¹You make us retreat from the adversary,

and those who hate us plunder us at will.

¹²You have handed us over like sheep to be eaten

and scattered us among the nations.

¹³You sell your people for a pittance,

you don’t even profit on the sale.

¹⁴You make us an object for our neighbors to mock,

one of scorn and derision to those around us.

¹⁵You make us a byword among the nations;

the peoples jeer at us, shaking their heads.

¹⁶All day long my disgrace is on my mind,

and shame has covered my face

¹⁷at the sound of those who revile and insult,

at the sight of the enemy bent on revenge.

¹⁸Though all this came on us, we did not forget you;

we have not been false to your covenant;

¹⁹Our hearts have not turned back,

and our steps did not turn away from your path,

²⁰though you pressed us into a lair of jackals

and covered us with death-dark gloom.

²¹If we had forgotten the name of our God

or spread out our hands to a foreign god,

²²wouldn’t God have discovered this,

since he knows the secrets of the heart?

²³For your sake we are put to death all day long,

we are considered sheep to be slaughtered.

²⁴Wake up, Adonai ! Why are you asleep?

Rouse yourself! Don’t thrust us off forever.

²⁵Why are you turning your face away,

forgetting our pain and misery?

²⁶For we are lying flat in the dust,

our bodies cling to the ground.

²⁷Get up, and come to help us!

For the sake of your grace, redeem us!