Psalms 10:2

The wicked arrogantly chase the oppressed; ¹  the oppressed are trapped ²  by the schemes the wicked have dreamed up. ³ 

In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.

In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted; Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised.

Proud and wicked people viciously oppress the poor. Let them be caught in the evil they plan for others.

Full of hot air, the wicked are hot on the trail of the poor. Trip them up, tangle them up in their fine-tuned plots.

The evil-doer in his pride is cruel to the poor; let him be taken by the tricks of his invention.

In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.

The wicked in his pride persecutes the poor; Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised.

The wicked arrogantly chase the oppressed; ¹  the oppressed are trapped ²  by the schemes the wicked have dreamed up. ³ 

¹ tn Heb “because of the pride of [the] wicked he burns [i.e. hotly pursues] [the] oppressed.” The singular forms רָשָׁע (rasha’, “wicked”) and עָנִי (’aniy, “oppressed”) are collective and representative, as indicated in the next line, which uses plural verb forms to describe the actions of both.

² tn The two imperfect verbal forms in v. 2 describe either what typically happens (from the psalmist’s perspective) or what the psalmist was experiencing at the time he offered this prayer.

³ tn Heb “they are trapped in the schemes which they have thought up.” The referents of the two pronominal suffixes on the verbs have been specified in the translation for clarity. The referent of the first suffix (“they”) is taken as the oppressed, while the referent of the second (“they”) is taken to be the wicked (cf. NIV, which renders “wicked” in the previous line as a collective singular). Others take the referent of both occurrences of “they” in the line to be the wicked (cf. NRSV, “let them be caught in the schemes they have devised”).