Spiritual Quote of the Day (Psalm 73, on the Wicked)

 “They mock and speak with malice,
   from on high they speak out oppression.
They put their mouth up to the heavens,
   and their tongue goes over the earth.
 
“Thus the people turn back to them,
   and they lap up their words.
And they say, ‘How could God know, and is there knowledge with the most high?’
   Look, such are the wicked.”—American hebraist and critic Robert Alter, "Psalm 73," in The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (2009)

 
In the Bible, God’s ultimate response to wicked people might be the devastation wreaked on Sodom and Gomorrah. That scene is the subject of the image accompanying this post, the 1852 painting The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, by English artist John Martin (1789-1854).

Quote of the Day (Psalms, on a ‘Channel for Spring and Brook’)

“You split open a channel for spring and brook,

   You dried up the surging torrents.

Yours is the day, also Yours the night.

   It was You Who founded the light and the sun.

It was You Who laid down all the boundaries of earth,

   Summer and winter, you fashioned them.”—Psalms 74:15-17, from The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, by Robert Alter

(I took the image accompanying this post at Brandywine Creek in Chadds Ford, Penn., on my just-concluded vacation.)