¹ Moreover Ahithophel said to Absalom, Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night:

³ But you, Yahweh, are a shield around me, My glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

⁴ I cry to Yahweh with my voice, And he answers me out of his holy hill. Selah.

⁵ I laid myself down and slept. I awakened; for Yahweh sustains me.

⁸ In peace I will both lay myself down and sleep, For you, Yahweh alone, make me live in safety.

² For they have opened the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit against me. They have spoken to me with a lying tongue.

³ They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, And fought against me without a cause.

⁴ In return for my love, they are my adversaries; But I am in prayer.

¹⁶ For they don't sleep, unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall.

⁷ Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their paths.

⁸ The way of peace they don't know; and there is no justice in their goings: they have made them crooked paths; whoever goes therein does not know peace.

¹⁶ For their feet run to evil. They hurry to shed blood.