If a ruler listens to lies, all his ministers will be wicked.

When the wicked increase, transgression increases, but the righteous will see their downfall.

An unjust person is an abomination to the righteous, and the one who lives an upright life is an abomination to the wicked.

Too bad for the wicked sinners! For they will get exactly what they deserve.

They pronounce the guilty innocent for a payoff, they ignore the just cause of the innocent.

I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it.

“You must not give a false report. Do not make common cause with the wicked to be a malicious witness.

Keep your distance from a false charge – do not kill the innocent and the righteous, for I will not justify the wicked.

Moreover, you must not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death; he must surely be put to death.

Then, if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves.

He watches over his holy ones, but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness, for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.

“It is all one! That is why I say, ‘He destroys the blameless and the guilty.’

If a land has been given into the hand of a wicked man, he covers the faces of its judges; if it is not he, then who is it?

Is it good for you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?

But the eyes of the wicked fail, and escape eludes them; their one hope is to breathe their last.”

All his days the wicked man suffers torment, throughout the number of the years that are stored up for the tyrant.

“How often is the lamp of the wicked extinguished? How often does their misfortune come upon them? How often does God apportion pain to them in his anger?

For you say, ‘Where now is the nobleman’s house, and where are the tents in which the wicked lived?’

This is the portion of the wicked man allotted by God, the inheritance that evildoers receive from the Almighty.

Not so with the wicked! Instead they are like wind-driven chaff.