Psalm 58 comments

 

Psalm 58:1 ¶  «To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David.» Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? 2  Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. 3  The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. 4  Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; 5  Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.

 

David is asking a question sarcastically it would seem. Do the people indeed just in a righteous manner? Are not their hearts filled with sin?

 

We’ve expressed this sentiment in our hearts about people who act like they were born bad. In fact, our modern culture almost uplifts and praises those who act that way.

 

Isaiah 48:8  Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.

 

I have read that the ancients, particularly the Romans, regarded a child’s personality as indicative of how they would turn out as an adult. If they were a bad child they most likely would be a rotten adult.

 

Ecclesiastes 10:11  Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better.

 

The wicked are like a serpent who will not listen to the snake-charmer. We can look at India today to see those men who seem to mesmerize a snake. But the people that David is referring to will not listen to the charmer.

 

The words of the wicked are likened to the bite of a venomous snake in several places.

 

Psalm 5:9  For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue.

 

Psalm 140:3  They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips. Selah.

 

Which the Holy Spirit through Paul quotes;

 

Romans 3:13  Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

 

In fact, the tongue itself is a dangerous thing for all of us.

 

James 3:8  But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

 

Could this perhaps be one of the attributes of the Beast of Revelation, popularly called the Antichrist?

 

Psalm 58:6 ¶  Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD. 7  Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. 8  As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. 9  Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath. 10  The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. 11  So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.

 

Consider some cross-references from Job as a similar sentiment here in verse 6. Saul is the old lion and his followers are the young lions, probably.

 

Job 4:10  The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 11  The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion’s whelps are scattered abroad.

 

Job 29:17  And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.

 

David calls on God to take away the ability of his enemies to hurt him. He wants them discouraged and destroyed, taken like a miscarriage or as a snail that has had salt applied to it making it die looking like it is melting.

 

For verse 9 see this verse in Ecclesiastes.

 

Ecclesiastes 7:6  For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.

 

Dry thorns would burn quickly but he wishes the wicked would be taken away faster than the pot can feel the heat of burning thorns. In their health and full strength David wishes them taken away.

 

David yearns to see the destruction of the wicked, those who oppress him, but wants God to make it happen.

 

We can imagine this prayer made by some of the followers of Christ in the Tribulation. We can imagine this prayer to have their persecutors destroyed by God. When we think of the Holocaust most people picture the Germans and their camps like Auschwitz. However, it was not just them. Ordinary people in every country in Europe murdered their Jewish neighbors or turned them over to be murdered. In shock, many of the Jews walked submissively to their deaths. It would not be hard to imagine praying for God to destroy these beasts Himself before they could do their will.