16. Hear and answer me, O Lord, for Your loving-kindness is sweet and comforting; according to Your plenteous tender mercy and steadfast love turn to me.
17. Hide not Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress; O answer me speedily!
18. Draw close to me and redeem me; ransom and set me free because of my enemies [lest they glory in my prolonged distress]!
19. You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor; my adversaries are all before You [fully known to You].
20. Insults and reproach have broken my heart; I am full of heaviness and I am distressingly sick. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.
21. They gave me also gall [poisonous and bitter] for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar (a soured wine) to drink. [Matt. 27:34, 48.]
22. Let their own table [with all its abundance and luxury] become a snare to them; and when they are secure in peace [or at their sacrificial feasts, let it become] a trap to them.
23. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually [from terror, dismay, and feebleness].
24. Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let the fierceness of Your burning anger catch up with them.
25. Let their habitation and their encampment be a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents. [Matt. 23:38; Acts 1:20.]
26. For they pursue and persecute him whom You have smitten, and they gossip about those whom You have wounded, [adding] to their grief and pain.
27. Let one [unforgiven] perverseness and iniquity accumulate upon another for them [in Your book], and let them not come into Your righteousness or be justified and acquitted by You.