Psalms 58: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm opens by challenging those who hold power and judge others, saying they plan wrong in their hearts and deal out violence instead of justice. It describes the wicked as poisonous and deaf as snakes, then asks God in a series of images to break their power and make them vanish. It closes by saying the righteous will be glad when they see the wicked punished, and people will conclude that doing right is rewarded and that God judges the earth.

Claim by Claim

1. 58:1
   • A question is asked whether the ones addressed truly speak what is right.
   • The ones addressed are named by a term the King James renders "congregation"; the underlying word is ambiguous and can be read as silence or as gods, mighty ones, or rulers.
   • A question is asked whether they judge uprightly.
   • They are addressed as sons of men.
2. 58:2
   • The answer given is that in their heart they work wickedness.
   • They deal out the violence of their hands in the land.
3. 58:3
   • The wicked are estranged from the womb.
   • They go astray from birth.
   • They speak lies.
4. 58:4
   • Their venom is like the venom of a serpent.
   • They are like a deaf cobra that stops its ear.
5. 58:5
   • The deaf cobra does not listen to the voice of charmers.
   • It does not listen though the one casting spells does so skillfully.
6. 58:6
   • God is asked to break the teeth in their mouth.
   • The LORD is asked to break out the fangs of the young lions.
7. 58:7
   • A wish is spoken that they drain away like waters that run off.
   • A wish is spoken that when he aims his arrows, the arrows be as though cut off or blunted.
8. 58:8
   • A wish is spoken that each of them pass away like a snail that dissolves as it goes.
   • A wish is spoken that they be like a woman's stillborn child.
   • A wish is spoken that they never see the sun.
9. 58:9
   • Before the pots can feel the thorns beneath them, he will sweep them away.
   • The sweeping away is described with a term meaning both raw or living and a term meaning both burning and wrath, and the verse is obscure in what these describe.
10. 58:10
    • The righteous will rejoice when he sees vengeance.
    • He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
11. 58:11
    • A man will say that there is surely a reward for the righteous.
    • A man will say that there is surely a God who judges in the earth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

58:1

The word behind "congregation" (KJV) and "rulers" (modern versions) is a single obscure Hebrew word that scribes read in different ways: as "in silence," as "gods" or "mighty ones," or as "rulers." The psalm is addressed to whoever holds the power to give verdicts, human judges, or the unseen powers thought to stand behind them. "Sons of men" is a standard Hebrew way of saying "human beings," and here it presses the point that these judges are only mortal.

58:2

"Weigh" is a merchant's or a judge's word: to measure something out on a balance scale. The insult is that men whose job is to weigh evidence carefully instead measure out violence with the same deliberate care.

58:3

"Estranged from the womb" and "as soon as they be born" are the language of accusation, not biology. Hebrew poetry uses birth as the far edge of the past to say that something goes back as far as anyone can trace, the way we might say someone has been trouble from day one.

58:4

The "adder" or cobra was believed in the ancient world to be able to shut its ears against a charmer's music. Here deafness is willful, the snake is not injured, it refuses to hear.

58:5

Snake charming was a familiar trade across Egypt and the Near East: a handler used music, chanting and movement to control a venomous snake. "Charming never so wisely" is old English for "however skillfully he casts his spell." The point of comparison is that the charmer's skill is wasted.

58:6

Breaking the teeth of a predator was a standard image for disarming a violent enemy, taking away the weapon without killing the animal. "Young lions" means lions in their prime and full strength, not cubs.

58:7

Two images of things that simply cease. Water in a desert wadi runs hard after rain and then drains into the ground and is gone. The second line is uncertain in the Hebrew; it can mean the arrows are blunted, or that they are cut off, or that the archer's shot falls harmless.

58:8

A snail leaving a slime trail behind it was thought in the ancient world to be dissolving as it moved, wearing itself away to nothing. "Untimely birth" is old English for a stillborn child or a miscarriage, a life that ends before it ever sees daylight.

58:9

This verse is one of the most obscure in the Psalms and no translation is certain. The picture is of a cooking fire lit under a pot with dry thorn branches for fuel: thorns catch fast and blaze, but the pot has barely begun to warm before they are spent. The final phrase can be read as "green wood and burning wood alike," or "whether raw or cooked," or "both living, and in his wrath" as the King James takes it. The sense in every reading is speed: it is over before the meal is started.

58:10

Wading through a battlefield until one's feet were red was a conventional image of total victory in ancient Near Eastern poetry, not a description of a ritual. The same picture appears in Psalm 68:23. The Hebrew word behind "vengeance" covers the redress a court or a ruler owes to someone wronged, closer to "the wrong put right" than to private revenge.

58:11

"Verily" is old English for "truly" or "it is so after all", the speakers are conceding a point they had doubted. "Judges the earth" carries the wider Hebrew sense of judging: not only handing down verdicts but governing and setting things right, answering the failed human judges of verse 1.