ChristadelphianBooksOnline
George Booker
Psalms Studies - Book 2

Psalm 58

1. Structure

1,2.	To the wicked
3-5.		About the wicked
6.			To Jehovah
7,8.		About the wicked
9.	To the wicked
And, finally:
10,11.	All problems will be resolved.

2. Titles

For Michtam and Al-taschith (the subscription), see Psalm 56.

3. Imprecations

There is surely no psalm so fierce in its invocation of judgment as this (except for 109, which is in a category by itself). In general, see Introduction, Chapter 3.

The repeated “Let them... ” (vv. 7,8) is a translation of a Hebrew imperative which, in these cases, takes the same form as the future tense, and can therefore be read: “They shall melt away... they shall be as cut in pieces... etc.” Thus it expresses not so much a desire to see these judgments as a conviction that God will deal with the wicked in this way. Yet this leaves v. 6 untouched: “Break their teeth, O God” — however figurative this might be.

4. Figures of Speech

No other psalm has such a concentration of vivid metaphors in a few verses as does Psalm 58. “The imagery that the Psalmist uses is apt and highly descriptive. It is taken from nature mainly, from widely diverse creatures which we fear and dislike such as snakes, lions, and snails, and from the calamities of mankind such as the miscarrying womb, water in uncontrollable spate, and the savage vortex of the whirlwind” (N.P. Holt). These striking images call for separate comment.

2.	Ye weigh the violence of your hands, as though heaping handfuls of violence into a balance. There is a calculated deliberateness about this. They are the scales of injustice.
3.	The wicked are estranged from the womb. A new-born baby is the very picture of helpless innocence. But these, even as babies, show every sign of malevolent genius. And environment, treading hard on the heels of heredity, increases the pace of their tragic descent into bestiality.
4.	Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. It is part of their natural equipment, and they use it with a sudden irresistible efficiency.
4,5.	The deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers (cp. Jer. 8:17; Eccl. 10:11). These wicked show no vestige of response to any kind of placatory gestures. The wicked “harden” their ears (Isa. 6:10; Matt. 13:15; Acts 28:27), and turn them away (Prov. 21:13; 28:9).
6.	Break out the great teeth (cp. 57:4) of the young lions. This is a particularly graphic and horrifying figure for: ‘Reduce them to impotence’. But consider what those teeth would otherwise accomplish!
7.	Let them melt away as waters, like a stream running away into parched soil and being soaked up without a trace.
	When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. The picture is that of the wicked straining his bow to full stretch to pierce God’s servant with his arrow, and at the crucial moment the angel of the Lord with drawn sword slashes him to pieces.
8.	As a snail which melteth. The snail shell appears to adhere securely to the rock, yet when pried away there is only a dried-up deadness within.
	Like the untimely birth of a woman. This is difficult. Does it mean that, as a miscarriage terminates before it has reached full life, so may these wicked (who can never be anything but defective beings anyway) be terminated before their full capacity for evil matures?
9.	Before your pot can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind. The pot is set on to boil. Under it is a tangle of thorny stems, a very volatile tinder used in the desert; it has just been lit (Eccl. 7:6,7; cp. Isa. 33:12; 2 Sam. 23:6,7). But before the dried thorns can blaze sufficiently for cooking to begin, there comes a sudden blast of wind which scatters them and extinguishes their flame.
10.	The righteous (one) shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. After a long journey the washing of one’s feet is a marvelous relief. But this journey has been through a great battlefield, and the traveler — vanquishing all his enemies as he goes — wades through their blood (cp. the symbolism of the passages in Par. 7, v. 10).

5. Historical setting

Psalms 57 and 59 are both definitely about Saul’s persecution of David; this suggests the same for 58. Verses 4 and 5 suggest the “seed of the serpent” described in 52:1-4, another psalm about Saul and his lieutenant Doeg. And the same verses suggest the occasion when David’s soothing music failed to mollify the seething jealous soul of Saul (1 Sam. 18:10). It was true of the entire period which ensued that David, “charming never so wisely”, was unable to placate the “deaf adder” Saul (1 Sam. 24:9-15; 26:18-24).

But Al-taschith is the very phrase used by David in 1 Sam. 26:9 (very different in spirit from the imprecations in this psalm). Perhaps the psalm belongs to a later time when David looked back over the rugged experiences of his outlaw years.

6. Further historical details

1.	Congregation. This Hebrew word *elem* is a problem. RV has “in silence”. But RV mg. “ye mighty ones”, RSV “gods”, and NEB, NIV “rulers” (with different pointing) have much more to commend them (cp. Psa. 82:1,6). The plural refers easily not only to Saul but also to his henchmen, such as Doeg the Edomite and Abner.
2.	Wickedness. This plural (“wrongs”: RSV; “all kinds of wickedness”: NEB) is either an intensive plural, or it covers the long sequence of scheming against David.
3.	The wicked are estranged from the womb. Ingrained perversity from birth. “Thou... wast called a transgressor from the womb” (Isa. 48:8). The difference between the righteous David (Psa. 51:5) and the most wicked of men is, sadly, one of degree rather than of kind (cp. Rom. 3:9-20).
	They go astray, as soon as they be born, speaking lies. “Their earliest incoherent noises are black villainy” (Whittaker, Enjoying the Bible, p. 44).
4.	The deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. It appears to have been established that all snakes are deaf, and that snake charming is through the motion of the pipe and the piper rather than through any sound.
5.	Charming never so wisely. There is no humanly applied discipline that can cope with human sin.
9.	RV: The green and the burning alike. That is, whether open plots or secretly hostile ones.
10.	The righteous (one) shall rejoice. Not at the vengeance itself, but because the wicked are removed and his own cause (which is God’s cause) can prosper.
	He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. Judgment on the wicked is refreshing in that it proves that the righteous also will be rewarded (v. 11).
11.	Judgeth is a plural verb, implying the activity of angels.

7. Messianic reference

Whether verse 1 should be congregation or mighty ones, the whole of the psalm is highly appropriate to the Sanhedrin, which successively condemned Jesus and the apostles and Stephen and Paul. In fact, Saul/Paul may be seen on both sides of the fence. In dealing with Stephen, he was the fitting namesake of brutal king Saul; but later, in answer to Stephen’s prayer (Acts 7:60), he embarks upon a journey of transformation, becoming at last Paul the apostle, suffering along with his brethren.

At the trial of Stephen, “they (including Saul) cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears (cp. Psa. 58:4!), and run upon him (Stephen) with one accord” (Acts 7:57). Notice the other parallels between Psalm 58 and Acts 7:

	Psalm 58		Acts 7
2.	“The violence of your hands”	58.	The stoning of Stephen
3.	“The wicked are estranged from the womb”	51.	“As your fathers did, so do ye”
3.	“Speaking lies”	6:11-14.	The charges against Stephen
5.	“The voice of charmers charming never so wisely”	6:15; 7:55,56.	The inspired eloquence of Stephen
6.	“Break their teeth, O God”	54.	“They gnashed on him with their teeth”
7.	“Let them be as cut in pieces”	54.	“They were cut to the heart”
8.	“Like the untimely birth of a woman”		Saul: “as one born out of due time” (see notes, 58:8)

1.	Answer, ye rulers: are your judgments just? Do ye decide impartially between man and man? (NEB). The rhetorical questions clearly demand a negative answer; God’s estimate of these “rulers” of Israel is seen in the next four verses.
3.	Speaking lies, “from the beginning” (John 8:44).
7.	Let them melt away as waters which run continually. “The ice-chilled winter of man’s rule melting away before the spring and summer of the kingdom of God” (Holt). Or, “the wadi filled with the violence of raging storm waters after a flash flood... but in another hour only a trivial trickle remains” (Whittaker).
	Cut in pieces is not a translation so much as a guess! The words may mean either “circumcise themselves” or “express themselves in speech”, both of which are also quite difficult. The LXX evidently had a different Hebrew original, one which suggests quench, as in Eph. 6:16, where “to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” is a probable allusion to this passage.
8.	An untimely birth. In 1 Cor. 15:8 Paul applies this figure to himself, as though implying that at his first encounter with Jesus (cp., perhaps, 2 Cor. 5:16), during the ministry (Luke 20:16?) — when he should have come to a “new birth” — he instead was “stillborn”!
9.	Take them away as with a whirlwind. This happened to Christ’s enemies in A.D. 70.
10,11.	The blood of the wicked... a God that judgeth in the earth. The judgments in this psalm are yet to be fully accomplished. When they are, Christ (and the saints) will be directly and personally involved. Consider, along these lines, Psa. 149:5-9; Isa. 63:1-6; Mal. 4:3; Rev. 14:19,20; 18:20,24; 19:11.
11.	A reward (fruit: mg.) for the righteous. For the righteous there will be fruit now, in spiritual peace and contentment. And an unimaginable abundance of fruit in that future day, when the righteous are given the right to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God (Rev. 2:7; 22:1,2). That fruit will be received with yet greater joy, because it will be the final harvest of the “seed” of faith, sown in tears over long years by God’s children (Psa. 126:5,6).