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Psalm 26

1  Give judgement for me, O Lord,
      for I have walked with integrity; ♦︎
   I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.
2  Test me, O Lord, and try me; ♦︎
   examine my heart and my mind.
3  For your love is before my eyes; ♦︎
   I have walked in your truth.
4  I have not joined the company of the false, ♦︎
   nor consorted with the deceitful.
5  I hate the gathering of evildoers ♦︎
   and I will not sit down with the wicked.
6  I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, ♦︎
   that I may go about your altar,
7  To make heard the voice of thanksgiving ♦︎
   and tell of all your wonderful deeds.
8  Lord, I love the house of your habitation ♦︎
   and the place where your glory abides.

Punishment Is Inevitable

15Then the Lord said to me: Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn towards this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! ²And when they say to you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord:
Those destined for pestilence, to pestilence,
   and those destined for the sword, to the sword;
those destined for famine, to famine,
   and those destined for captivity, to captivity.
³And I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth to devour and destroy. ⁴I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what King Manasseh son of Hezekiah of Judah did in Jerusalem.

⁵ Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem,
   or who will bemoan you?
Who will turn aside
   to ask about your welfare?
⁶ You have rejected me, says the Lord,
   you are going backwards;
so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you—
   I am weary of relenting.
⁷ I have winnowed them with a winnowing-fork
   in the gates of the land;
I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people;
   they did not turn from their ways.
⁸ Their widows became more numerous
   than the sand of the seas;
I have brought against the mothers of youths
   a destroyer at noonday;
I have made anguish and terror
   fall upon her suddenly.
⁹ She who bore seven has languished;
   she has swooned away;
her sun went down while it was yet day;
   she has been shamed and disgraced.
And the rest of them I will give to the sword
   before their enemies,

says the Lord.

⁷For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed. ⁸And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus^* will destroy^* with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. ⁹The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, ¹⁰and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. ¹¹For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, ¹²so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.