Psalm 58

Psalms 58:1

“Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation?.... Of the mighty, as in Psa 82:1; the judges of the land, who were many, and therefore called a congregation, as it is necessary they should; for, being many, they are not so easily bribed; and besides, one may see that in a cause which another does not.”

Psalms 58:1

“Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? The enemies of David were a numerous and united band, and because they so unanimously condemned the persecuted one, they were apt to take it for granted that their verdict was a right one. "What everybody says must be true, "is a lying proverb based upon the presumption which comes of large combinations. Have we not all agreed to hound the man to the death, and who dare hint that so many great ones can be mistaken?”

Psalms 58:1

“O congregation--literally, "Oh, dumb"; the word used is never translated "congregation." "Are ye dumb? ye should speak righteousness," may be the translation.”

Psalms 58:2

“Yea, in heart ye work wickedness. Down deep in your very souls ye hold a rehearsal of the injustice ye intend to practise, and when your opportunity arrives, ye wreak vengeance with a gusto; your hearts are in your wicked work, and your hands are therefore ready enough. Those very men who sat as judges, and pretended to so much indignation at the faults imputed to their victim, were in their hearts perpetrating all manner of evil. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. They were deliberate sinners, cold, calculating villains.”

Psalms 58:2

“This they did not design; but weigh . . . violence--or give decisions of violence. Weigh is a figure to express the acts of judges. in the earth--publicly.”

Psalms 58:2

“Hands - He intimates that they did great wrong under the pretense of justice, and while they seemed exactly to weigh the true proportion between the actions and the recompenses allotted to them, they turned the scale; and pronounced an unjust sentence. Land - Or, in this land, where God is present, and where you have righteous laws to govern you.”

Psalms 58:2

“And what was their wickedness? It follows, " You weigh the violence of your hands in the earth " (or in the land ), "the peace of which you are appointed to be the conservators of." They did all the violence and injury they could, either to enrich or avenge themselves, and they weighed it; that is, 1.”

Psalms 58:3

“The wicked are estranged from the womb. It is small wonder that some men persecute the righteous seed of the woman, since all of them are of the serpent's brood, and enmity is set between them. No sooner born than alienated from God—what a condition to be found in! Do we so early leave the right track? Do we at the same moment begin to be men and commence to be sinners? They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Every observer may see how very soon infants act lies.”

Psalms 58:3

“Estranged - From God, and from all goodness. Their very natures are corrupt, even from their birth: they are the wicked offspring of sinful parents. Astray - By actual sins, from their childhood, as soon as ever they were capable of the exercise of reason.”

Psalms 58:3

“No sooner can they speak than they speak to God's dishonour; tongue-sins are some of the first of our actual transgressions. Their poison (that is, their ill-will, and the spite they bore to goodness and all good men, particularly to David) was like the poison of a serpent, innate, venomous, and very mischievous, and that which they can never be cured of.”

Psalms 58:4-5

“We hide away our sin, cloaking it over in the depth of our soul, like some festering and malignant disease, as if by escaping human notice we could escape the mighty eye of God and justice. Or else we make excuses for our sins by devising pleas in defense of our falls or by tightly closing our ears. Like the snake that stops its ears, we are obstinate in refusing to hear the voice of the charmer and be treated with the medicines of wisdom, by which spiritual sickness is healed.”

Psalms 58:4

“Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Is man also a poisonous reptile? Yes, and his venom is even as that of a serpent. The viper has but death for the body in his fangs; but unregenerate man carries poison under his tongue, destructive to the nobler nature. They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear.”

Psalms 58:5

“Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers,.... Or "that use enchantments", to enchant serpents, by muttering certain words, or by magical songs; by which means it is said that they have been drawn out of their holes, or caused to fly, or have become stupefied, and have lost their poison, and even burst asunder; as Bochart (b) relates from Pliny, Aelianus, Lucan, Isidore, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and others: but an "asp" is unmoved by enchantments, and they are of no avail against its bites and poison (c).”

Psalms 58:5

“Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. Ungodly men are not to be won to right by arguments the most logical, or appeals the most pathetic. Try all your arts, ye preachers of the word! Lay yourselves out to meet the prejudices and tastes of sinners, and ye shall yet have to cry, "Who hath believed our report?" It is not in your music, but in the sinner's ear that the cause of failure lies, and it is only the power of God that can remove it.”

Psalms 58:6

“Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth. If they have no capacity for good, at least deprive them of their ability for evil. Treat them as the snake charmers do their serpents, extract their fangs, break their teeth. The Lord can do this, and he will. He will not suffer the malice of the wicked to triumph, he will deal them such a blow as shall disable them from mischief. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord.”

Psalms 58:7

“The term for preparing a bow applied to arrows (Ps 64:3). let them . . . pieces--literally, "as if they cut themselves off"--that is, become blunted and of no avail. Other figures of this utter ruin; the last denoting rapidity.”

Psalms 58:7

“Such shall the floods of ungodly men be, which sometimes make us afraid ( Ps. xviii. 4 ); so shall the proud waters be reduced, which threaten to go over our soul, Ps. cxxiv. Let us by faith then see what they shall be and then we shall not fear what they are.”

Psalms 58:8

“As a snail which melteth, let everyone of them pass away,.... As a snail when it comes out of its shell liquefies, drops its moisture, and with it makes a "path", from whence it has its name שבלול, in the Hebrew language; and so the Targum here, "as the snail moistens its way;'' which moistness it gradually exhausts, and melts away, and dies: so the psalmist prays that everyone of his enemies might die in like manner.”

Psalms 58:8

“As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away. As the snail makes its own way by its slime, and so dissolves as it goes, or as its shell is often found empty, as though the inhabitant had melted away, so shall the malicious eat out their own strength while they proceed upon their malevolent designs, and shall themselves disappear. To destroy himself by envy and chagrin is the portion of the ill disposed. Like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.”

Psalms 58:8

“We may, in faith, pray against the designs of the church's enemies, as the prophet does ( Hos. ix. 14 , Give them, O Lord! what wilt thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts ), which explains this prayer of the psalmist.”

Psalms 58:9

“Before your pots can feel the thorns,.... Which is soon done; for as dry thorns make a great blaze, so they give a quick heat; the pots soon feel them, or the water in them soon receives heat from them. From imprecations the psalmist proceeds to prophesy, and foretells the sudden destruction of wicked men, which would be before a pot could be heated with a blaze of thorns.”

Psalms 58:9

“Before your pots can feel the thorns. So sudden is the overthrow of the wicked, so great a failure is their life, that they never see joy. Their pot is put upon the hook to prepare a feast of joy, and the fuel is placed beneath, but before the thorns are lit, before any heat can be brought to bear upon the pot, yea, even as soon as the fuel has touched the cooking vessel, a storm comes and sweeps all away; the pot is overturned, the fuel is scattered far and wide.”

Psalms 58:10

“The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance. He will have no hand in meting out, neither will he rejoice in the spirit of revenge, but his righteous soul shall acquiesce in the judgments of God, and he shall rejoice to see justice triumphant. There is nothing in Scripture of that sympathy with God's enemies which modern traitors are so fond of parading as the finest species of benevolence. We shall at the last say, "Amen, "to the condemnation of the wicked, and feel no disposition to question the ways of God with the impenitent.”

Psalms 58:10

“Rejoice - For the blessed effects of it; the vindication of God's honour, and the deliverance of himself and of all good men. Wash - There shall be so great a slaughter of his enemies that he might, if he pleased, wash his feet in their blood.”

Psalms 58:10

“He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked; that is, there shall be abundance of bloodshed ( Ps. lxviii. 23 ), and it shall be as great a refreshment to the saints to see God glorified in the ruin of sinners as it is to a weary traveller to have his feet washed.”

Psalms 58:11

“But since there is a time when the righteous shall rejoice, and sinners shall meet the end foretold for them, we must with all reason fully acknowledge and declare that God is inspector and overseer of all that is done among men, and judges all who dwell upon earth. It is proper further to inquire whether the prophecy in hand, which quite corresponds and fits in with those preceding it, may describe the end.”

Psalms 58:11

“So that a man shall say. Every man however ignorant shall be compelled to say, Verily, in very deed, assuredly, there is a reward for the righteous. If nothing else be true this is. The godly are not after all forsaken and given over to their enemies; the wicked are not to have the best of it, truth and goodness are recompensed in the long run. Verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.”

Psalms 58:11

“He is a God (so we read it), not a weak man, not an angel, not a mere name, not (as the atheists suggest) a creature of men's fear and fancy, not a deified hero, not the sun and moon, as idolaters imagined, but a God, a self-existent perfect Being; he it is that judges the earth; his favour therefore let us seek, from whom every man's judgment proceeds, and to him let all judgment be referred.”