Psalms

The Psalter is Israel’s hymnbook: lament, praise, thanksgiving, royal psalms, and wisdom. It trains the heart to speak to God in trouble and in joy, and it points ahead to the Messiah.

Author: David and others
Date: c. 1400–400 BC
Theme: Prayers and songs for every season of the life of faith.
Key verses: Psalm 23; Psalm 51; Psalm 119:105
English Revised Version

Psalms 58

1Do ye indeed in silence speak righteousness? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? 2Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh out the violence of your hands in the earth. 3The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. 4Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; 5Which hearkeneth not to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. 6Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD. 7Let them melt away as water that runneth apace: when he aimeth his arrows, let them be as though they were cut off. 8Let them be as a snail which melteth and passeth away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that hath not seen the sun. 9Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike. 10The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. 11So that men shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth.

English Revised Version (1885). Public domain. The 1881/1885 British revision of the King James Version; parent of the ASV.