Deeper Commentary

Psa 58:1

For the Chief Musician. To the tune of Do Not Destroy. A poem by David-
As discussed previously, "Do not destroy" may have been a popular song at the time which David particularly hummed to himself when contemplating the possibility of killing Saul. He rants and raves about Saul's wrongness but with that background noise- "Do not destroy".

This Psalm is a criticism of corrupt judges and leadership. Such criticism of Israel's judges is common in the prophets (Is. 1:16-25; Is. 10:1-4; Jer. 5:26-29; Mic. 3:9-12). So it could refer to the situation in Israel at the time of Saul or perhaps during Absalom's brief reign. But the Psalm may well have been reused regarding the corrupt leadership of Babylon over the exiles, or of the corrupt Jewish leadership within Babylon.

Do you indeed speak righteousness, silent ones? Do you judge blamelessly, you sons of men?-
The sin of keeping silence in the face of others' oppression is perhaps the most common sin of omission. So many who have struggled against abusive regimes have come to this conclusion- that the real abusers were all the good people who remained silent and thus empowered abusive regimes. "Do ye indeed in silence speak righteousness?" (Ps. 58:1 RV). Speaking and acting righteously whilst keeping silent about others' abuse is not righteousness. But "silent ones", Heb. elem, may be an intentional parody of elohim, mighty ones, a term also used for Israel's judges, who were intended to reflect the judgment of the elohim above.

Absalom had for years urged the men of Israel to oust David and appoint him as king, because he would judge rightly. Hence David's complaint that in fact Absalom and his group were not at all righteous judges. The offer of good judgment was the platform Absalom had developed in order to overthrow his father David. This clearly stuck in David's gullet; he concludes the Psalm with an appeal for Yahweh to be the judge (:11). Not Absalom and not even himself.

Psa 58:2

No, in your heart you plot injustice. You measure out the violence of your hands in the earth-
David again comes over as (overly?) confident of knowing the hearts of men. It could be argued that he believed that works reflect thoughts, as the Lord also taught, and therefore reasoned back from actions to thoughts. Instead of measuring out justice, they measured out violence. Quite possibly David on one hand knew Absalom's plots against him, but like the Lord loving and trusting Judas despite what He knew of him, David allowed him to go to Hebron, from where Absalom's long plotted putsch against David began.

Psa 58:3

The wicked go astray from the womb. They are wayward as soon as they are born, speaking lies-
This is not true in real time. But for timeless God, this is His perspective on them. Likewise in other cases He expresses His timelessness in ways which men can only understand as predestination. Or we could simply understand this as hyperbole, an exaggerated statement to the effect that the wicked go wrong from their youth. Or it could be that David is imputing too much sin to his enemies. See on :5.

He clearly refers here to a category of people, "the wicked", and not to all humanity. So it cannot be used as any proof that all human beings are like this from birth. We must remember that whatever we posit about human nature generally, we are saying about the Lord Jesus. For He shared our nature completely, and yet was holy, harmless and undefiled (Heb. 7:26). Quite possibly David has in view Absalom, who perhaps from a child was wayward and deceitful. In any case, David sees the epitomy of wickedness as being dishonest. Lying is the essence of sin, which is why the Lord Jesus and the way in Him is called "the truth". To live in sin, and in denial of your sinfulness, is to lie. It's not just that radical honesty is mandatory for the believer; we are to see all sin as having lying at its root. The sins of Adam and Eve were all about lying. And so in :6 David twice wishes that the teeth of his enemies would be broken: "Break their teeth, God, in their mouth". Several Ancient Near Eastern legal codes stipulate smashing the teeth as a punishment for dishonesty. Although we feel in this David's anger at Absalom for lying about going to Hebron, claiming he was going there to pay a vow to Yahweh when in fact he went there in order to start the putsch against David.

 

Psa 58:4

Their poison is like the poison of a snake; like a deaf cobra that stops its ear-
David presents these people as the seed of the serpent of Gen. 3:15, abusing the seed of the woman, the righteous. Solomon speaks of the wicked within Israel as stopping their ears at the cry of the poor (Prov. 21:13 s.w.). He is alluding to how David his father had complained that the judges of Israel were like cobras who stopped their ear to the voice of charmers, refusing the voice of God's word (Ps. 58:4 s.w.). Connecting the ideas, the cry of the poor is the cry of God's word to us; our response to them is our response to them.

Psa 58:5

which doesn’t listen to the voice of charmers, no matter how skilful the charmer may be-
Cobras are not actually deaf, but they can appear deaf to attempts to charm them with words and sounds. This provides some balance to the hyperbole of :3. The wicked are given the chance to respond to God's word, but refuse it- and so their biographies appear to be consistently wicked even from their youth. 'Not listening to the voice' is the phrase so often used of Israel's refusal to listen to God's voice (s.w. Ps. 81:11; 106:25; Jer. 3:13 etc.). Even those who are snakes can be charmed by God's word- if they unstop their ears.

Psa 58:6

Break their teeth, God, in their mouth. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, Yahweh-
Lions are symbolic of Israel's Gentile enemies, as well as of the leadership of Judah in Ez. 19:3-6. God's apostate people are often likened to Gentiles; hence the double symbolism of the lion, representing both them and also the Gentiles. See on :3. David's sons as the princes of Judah and future potential kings were the young lions. We think of the lion motifs around the throne of the kings of Judah, as well as Ez. 19:3-6. It was from them that Nathan had prophesied there would arise suffering for David. Instead of humbly accepting this, David rails against it and asks for Divine judgment against them. And yet he bitterly mourns Absalom's death when God does in fact respond to his prayers. Again we have an example of David's prayers being a transparent reflection to God of how he was feeling at the time. He doesn't put on a good face before God whilst feeling otherwise in his heart.

Psa 58:7

Let them vanish as water that flows away. When they draw the bow, let their arrows be made blunt-
This could be asking for the judgments of the corrupt judges and leadership to be somehow rendered powerless. But again we note with concern that instead of wishing their repentance and salvation, David seems quite obsessed with wishing their condemnation. Whereas God has no joy at all in the death of the wicked (Ez. 33:11). In the Hezekiah context we note that the only other usage of the phrase "vanish as water" is in Is. 8:6.

Psa 58:8

Let them be like the path of a snail which melts and passes away, like the stillborn child, who has not seen the sun-
The idea may be that the snail appears to be melting into nothing during its very path through life; and this was how it was with the wicked. This idea is developed in :9; judgment is in essence now.

Psa 58:9

Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike-
This suggests that David expected the time of judgment to come very soon. Divine judgment was to come as a whirlwind from the desert, suddenly sweeping away the kindling which desert travellers had made to heat their pots. He saw his enemies as kindling burning, some of it green and not good kindling; but before they could generate much heat, they were to be swept away in judgment. This implies that they were as it were on fire already; the essence of judgment is going on now. Cheyne offers: "Before your pots can feel the thorns, and while your flesh (i.e. the flesh in the pots, on which you are about to feast) is still raw, the hot wrath of Jehovah shall sweep it away".

Psa 58:10

The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked-
Again it seems that David's reveling in the blood of the condemned is out of step with the God who takes no pleasure [cp. 'rejoicing'] in the death of the wicked (Ez. 33:11). It was perhaps because of David's attitude to "blood" rather than simply his shedding of blood which disqualified him from building the temple; God was not pleased with this attitude (1 Chron. 22:8). David had these feelings, but he tried to rehearse them to God to the tune of "Do not destroy" (see title). Typical of all men, David on one hand wanted to show grace, on the other, he had feelings of hatred, anger and relishing in the prospect of judgment. But because he was commendably transparent before God, he shares these feelings with God- for there's no point trying to hide feelings from God. We are as we are before Him and we have to acceot that. And yet it is hard to think that the Lord didn't have this verse in mind when He taught that in fact God would take vengeance for His people: "Now will not the God execute the vengeance of his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? And will he delay over them? I am saying to you that he will execute their vengeance with speed” (Lk. 18:7,8).

Psa 58:11

so that men shall say, Most certainly there is a reward for the righteous. Most certainly there is a God who judges the earth-
David here looks ahead to the day of final judgment. But again as noted on :10, we wonder at his logic; he appears to think that rejoicing in the death of the wicked therefore implies there is a great reward for the righteous. Grace seems not to factor, neither the awareness that the righteous have done what the wicked have done, and are saved by grace through faith rather than their works. So often David rejoices in final judgment / justice. There is a longing in every human heart for justice, or a feeling that justice was not really "done" and indeed never really can be. Again, God has set eternity in our hearts. Man desires the right things, but looks for them in the wrong ways or forms. But those desires, and their lack of realization in our lives, are to hone us for the expectation and longing of realizing them in God's Kingdom.