New English [1970], THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE) [word count] [B16000].
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73
1 How good God is to the upright! note
How good to those who are pure in heart!
2 My feet had almost slipped,
my foothold had all but given way,
3 because the boasts of sinners roused my envy
when I saw how they prosper.
4 No pain, no suffering is theirs;
they are sleek and sound in limb;
5 they are not plunged in trouble as other men are,
nor do they suffer the torments of mortal men.
6 Therefore pride is their collar of jewels
and violence the robe that wraps them round.
7 Their eyes gleam through folds of fat;
while vain fancies pass through their minds.
8 Their talk is all sneers and malice;
scornfully they spread their calumnies.
9 Their slanders reach up to heaven,
while their tongues ply to and fro on earth.
10 And so my note people follow their lead note
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Book 3
and find nothing to blame in them, note
11 even though they say, ‘What does God know?
The Most High neither knows nor cares.’
12 So wicked men talk, yet still they prosper,
and rogues note amass great wealth.
13 So it was all in vain that I kept my heart pure
and washed my hands in innocence.
14 For all day long I suffer torment
and am punished every morning.
15 Yet had I let myself talk on in this fashion,
I should have betrayed the family of God. note
16 So I set myself to think this out
but I found it too hard for me,
17 until I went into God's sacred courts;
there I saw clearly what their end would be.
18 How often thou dost set them on slippery ground
and drive them headlong into ruin!
19 Then in a moment how dreadful their end,
cut off root and branch by death with all its terrors,
20 like a dream when a man rouses himself, O Lord,
like images in sleep which are dismissed on waking!
21 When my heart was embittered
I felt the pangs of envy,
22 I would not understand, so brutish was I,
I was a mere beast in thy sight, O God.
23 Yet I am always with thee,
thou holdest my right hand;
24 thou dost guide me by thy counsel
and afterwards wilt receive me with glory. note
25 Whom have I in heaven but thee note?
And having thee, note I desire nothing else on earth.
26 Though heart and body fail, note
yet God is my possession for ever.
27 They who are far from thee are lost;
thou dost destroy all who wantonly forsake thee.
28 But my chief good is to be near thee, O God;
I have chosen thee, Lord God, to be my refuge. note
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Book 3
New English [1970], THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE) [word count] [B16000].
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