Psalms 10 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Traditionally the reign of David, roughly 1010 to 970 BC, with the song preserved in Israel's temple collection
Location
Jerusalem and the surrounding Judean countryside, where village life left widows, orphans, and debtors exposed to powerful neighbours
Audience
Worshipping Israelites at the sanctuary, and later readers of the assembled book of Psalms
Situation
A complaint that God seems far off while arrogant and violent men prey on the helpless without consequence. The prayer ends by insisting that God does see, and calling on him to act as the defender of the fatherless and the crushed.
Key Background
This psalm continues the alphabet acrostic begun in Psalm 9 and carries no heading of its own, which is why many manuscripts and translations treat the two as one composition. In ancient Israel a person without a male protector, meaning a widow, an orphan, or a resident foreigner, had almost no standing in local disputes, so the king and the courts were expected to speak for them. The picture of the predator lying in wait comes from hunting language, where nets and pits were the ordinary tools for trapping animals, applied here to men who trap their neighbours.
why do you so away? Why do you when everything falls apart?
The hunt down the in their arrogance — let them be by the very
The ruthless boast about their cravings; the and in
The ruthless, in the for God. In all their scheming, there is no for
Their to out — every time. Your is so high above, it's out of their sight; they at anyone who stands against them.
They tell themselves, can me. I'll sail through life by
Their mouth is full of lies, and threats; under their and
They sit in near the villages, in hidden places they murder the innocent. Their eyes are always for the
They crouch in hiding like a in the brush, they crouch to drag away the vulnerable. They drag them off, caught in their
The helpless are brought low; they the of the ruthless.
They tell themselves, has forgotten. He's He'll never see this."
up, Yahweh! God, hand! Do not forget the who have no
Why should the ruthless get to in face? Why should they tell themselves, "He'll never me
But you do — you've always seen. You note of and to it own hands. The helpless leave everything to you; you have always been the of the
the of the ruthless and corrupt; hunt down their of it
Yahweh is — without end. The have from
Yahweh, you have heard the of the humble. You their your ear is turned toward them —
to bring to the and the oppressed, so that on can never again.