1 A good lesson, composed by Asaph. Why, O God, have you moved far off forever? [Why] will your anger be fierce against the flock of your pasture? 2 Remember your congregation that you acquired of old; you redeemed from Egypt the tribes of your inheritance, this same Mount Zion on which you made your presence to abide. 3 Lift up your footsteps to dissolve the nations forever, for the enemy with all his strength has done harm in the holy place. 4 Your oppressors cry out in the midst of your assemblies; they have set up their standards as signs. 5 He will strike with a hammer like a man who lifts up his hand against a wood thicket to cut it with axes. 6 But now they pull down its carvings together; they pound with the hatchet and the two-edged chisel as if with mallets. 7 They have burned the sanctuary to the ground with fire; they have defiled the tabernacle in which your name is uttered. 8 Their children spoke in their hearts together; their fathers burned all the assemblies of God in the land. 9 We have not seen our signs that the prophets gave us; there are no longer any prophets and we have none with us who knows how long. 10 How long, O God, will the oppressor show disdain? Will the enemy reject your name forever? 11 Why will you withdraw your hand, even your right hand, from redeeming? Take it out of your bosom and do away with oppression. 12 But God is the king, whose holy presence is from of old, one who carries out redemption in the midst of the land. 13 You cut off the waters of the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the sea serpents, and drowned the Egyptians at the sea.⁠a 14 You shattered the heads of Pharaoh’s warriors; you handed them over for destruction to the people of the house of Israel, and their corpses to jackals. 15 You split the spring from the rock and it became a stream; you dried up the ford of the streams of the Arnon and the ford of the Jabbok and the Jordan, which were so powerful. 16 Yours is the day-time, yours, too, is the night; you have made firm the moon and sun. 17 You set up all the boundaries of the earth; summer and winter, you created them. 18 Remember this, the enemy, slanderer of the Lord, and the foolish people who have rejected your name. 19 Do not deliver the souls of those who teach your Torah to the Gentiles, who are likened to beasts of the field; do not forget the lives of your poor forever. 20 Look at the covenant that you made with our fathers, for their children are finished off; darkness is spread over the land, and fraud, and violence. 21 The pauper will not return ashamed; the poor and lowly will praise your name. 22 Arise, O God; argue your case; call to mind the disgrace of your people because of foolish counsel all the day. 23 Do not forget the voice of your oppressors, the turmoil, always mounting, of those who stand against you.