Psalm 58

Israel had no courthouse and no professional judges. Cases were heard at the city gate, where the elders sat in the chambers built into the gateway and the whole town could listen. Excavated gate complexes at Dan, Gezer, and Beersheba have exactly these stone benches. Public hearing was the safeguard; when the elders were corrupt, there was no appeal above them.

The opening line is genuinely hard in Hebrew. It addresses either the human judges who bore God's authority in court, or a company of spiritual rulers of the kind Psalm 82 puts on trial. Both readings are ancient and neither is decided here; the charges that follow are courtroom charges either way.

Snake charming was a working trade across Egypt and the Levant, done with a pipe and a swaying motion. The psalm says these judges are like a cobra that has stopped its ears — an animal the charmer cannot reach, no matter how skilled the music.

The curses in the middle of the psalm are blunt: break their teeth, let them melt away like a snail's trail, let them be like a stillborn child that never sees the sun. Israel had no police force and no higher court. Handing the sentence to God was not bloodthirstiness; it was the only lawful alternative to taking a knife to the man yourself.