This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:

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Psalm 76

Israel’s God—Judge of All the Earth

To the leader: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.
¹ In Judah God is known,    his name is great in Israel.
² His abode has been established in Salem,    his dwelling-place in Zion.
³ There he broke the flashing arrows,    the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war.           Selah
⁴ Glorious are you, more majestic    than the everlasting mountains.^*
5 The stout-hearted were stripped of their spoil;    they sank into sleep;
none of the troops    was able to lift a hand.
⁶ At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,    both rider and horse lay stunned.
⁷ But you indeed are awesome!    Who can stand before you    when once your anger is roused?
⁸ From the heavens you uttered judgement;    the earth feared and was still
⁹ when God rose up to establish judgement,    to save all the oppressed of the earth.           Selah
¹⁰ Human wrath serves only to praise you,    when you bind the last bit of wrath around you.
¹¹ Make vows to the Lord your God, and perform them;    let all who are around him bring gifts    to the one who is awesome,
¹² who cuts off the spirit of princes,    who inspires fear in the kings of the earth.

At first it looks as if this is going to be just another song about how Israel’s God thumped the Egyptians and helped his people establish a kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem: a belief that can be the basis -even today- of Jewish refusal to consider the indigenous people of their land as equals. In this psalm however the poet works in the opposite diection: if God can save an oppressed people like Israel, he can do this for all oppressed peoples; if He can put down Egypt he will also put down all oppressors. Human wrath-the violence of nations-serves God’s justice: he “binds their wrath around himself”. This is a profound insight that the endemic violence of human politics is its own punishment as one oppressor after another gets to the top and is then destroyed. Those who take a short view may see the success of oppression; those who take the longer view will see how it gets its due reward. The wisdom that is profoundly expressed in the karma philosophy of Indian religion and trivially in the contemporary expression, “what goes round, comes round”, is present also in Judaism: God has established this justice in the order of his creation. When we praise the God who puts fear into the rulers of the earth, we gain the courage to oppose thier evils. If all those people who today are planning oppressive actions could see their ultimate outcome, how many would continue with them? Those who have learned humility on the other hand, “make vows to the Lord and perform them” that is, they plan small good things and do them.