Psalm 58:7

The psalm opens by challenging those whose task is to judge rightly. “Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth,” David says to them (Psalm 58:2). They are “estranged from the womb” and go astray from birth, “speaking lies” (Psalm 58:3), and they are like a deaf adder that stops its ear against the voice of the charmer (Psalm 58:4–5). They may be corrupt judges, rulers who exploit their people, or powerful men who abuse their place, and in every case they carry on unchecked. In Israel the judge and the king stood in God’s place to uphold justice, so their corruption struck at the covenant itself.

When those who should give justice are the ones doing the harm, the oppressed have only God to turn to. Job describes the same wrong, the wicked going unpunished while the poor suffer (Job 24), and the prophets call God’s people to seek justice and plead for the fatherless and the widow (Isaiah 1:17). The psalm’s title calls it “Michtam of David” and sets it to “Altaschith”, which means “Destroy not”. After these verses the psalm ends with the righteous rejoicing at God’s vengeance and with people saying that there is a God who judges in the earth (Psalm 58:10–11). Verses 6 to 9 are the prayer that leads there.

Verse 6 turns from describing the wicked to asking God to act. Lions were Israel’s picture of strength that preys on the weak, and they stood for tyrants and dangerous enemies, as in the proverb, “As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people.” A lion seizes, tears and eats with its teeth, so a lion with broken teeth is harmless. David asks God to take from the wicked the very means by which they devour others.

“Break” is hâraç, to tear down, throw down or overthrow. “Teeth” is shên, the ordinary word for a tooth, from a root meaning to sharpen. In the second line “break out” is nâthats, to tear down or pull down, a word used for destroying a building by taking it apart. The “great teeth” are maltâʻâh, the large teeth or fangs, and the “young lions” are kᵉphîyr, young male lions, strong and fierce.

The two lines ask the same thing twice, and the second makes it plainer, as “their teeth” in the first become “the great teeth of the young lions” in the second. David calls on God by two names. The first is ʼĕlôhîym, God, plural in form and read as a plural of majesty when it names the true God. The second is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, God’s covenant name, the name of the God who is faithful to his people, hears them and acts for them.

Other psalms pray in the same way. One asks God to break the arm of the wicked (Psalm 10:15), another asks him to bring the wickedness of the wicked to an end and establish the just (Psalm 7:9), and another says that he will judge the world in righteousness (Psalm 9:8). God sees every wrong, and he can take away the power of those who do it.

In verse 7 David prays, “Let them melt away as waters which run continually.” The verb is mâʼaç, which usually means to spurn or reject, and which Strong’s also gives as to disappear, the sense here. The water that “run continually” is described with hâlak, akin to yâlak, the common verb for walking or going, here used of water that keeps going. Water poured on the ground runs off and soaks away, and once it is gone it is gone. David asks that the strength and influence of the wicked go the same way. Another psalm says that the wicked will soon wither like grass (Psalm 37:2).

The second half of the verse moves to the attacks of the wicked. The KJV supplies some words in italics to make the sense clear: “when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows”. The arrow is chêts, from châtsats, properly a “piercer”, and by extension a wound or the shaft of a spear. “Let them be as cut in pieces” uses mûwl, a word whose main use is to circumcise, and which Strong’s also gives as to cut short, to curtail, to blunt and, figuratively, to destroy. So David prays that just as the wicked draw the bow, their arrows will be cut short or blunted and fall harmless. The arrows stand for their plans and attacks, and the LORD is the one who frustrates the plans of the nations (Psalm 33:10).

Verse 8 gives two more pictures of the wicked passing away. The first is the snail, shablûwl, “which melteth”. The word for melting, temeç, means a melting away or wasting. A snail leaves a trail of slime behind it as it moves, and to those who watched it, it looked as though it were dissolving as it went. David asks that “every one of them” pass away like that, wasting until nothing is left.

The second picture is the hardest in the passage. The “untimely birth of a woman” is nephel, a miscarriage or stillborn child, a life that ends before it has seen the light. “That they may not see the sun” uses châzâh, to gaze at or behold, and to see the sun is to live in the world. It is a sorrowful image, and David uses it because it is the strongest he knows for a life that comes to nothing. He asks that the wicked be as though they had never been, leaving no mark behind them.

Scripture says the same of the wicked elsewhere. God will bring their own iniquity upon them and cut them off in their wickedness (Psalm 94:23), and when the whirlwind passes, the wicked is no more (Proverbs 10:25).

Verse 9 changes from prayer to promise: “he shall take them away”. The picture is a cooking fire. “Thorns” is ʾāṭāḏ, bramble or buckthorn, the dry brushwood that was common fuel in a land where timber was scarce, and that catches quickly. “Pots” is ṣîr, a pot or cauldron. A fire of thorns is lit under the pot, and before its heat reaches the pot, God sweeps the whole thing away. The pot stands for what the wicked hope to bring about, and the thorns for the means they use to do it. God’s judgment comes so fast that their schemes are gone before they can cook, and the wicked are left with nothing to enjoy from them.

“As with a whirlwind” translates sâʻar, a verb meaning to storm or rage like a tempest. In Scripture the storm wind often comes with God’s appearing and his judgment, as in Ezekiel’s vision of a whirlwind out of the north (Ezekiel 1:4). Here it is the force with which God removes the wicked, suddenly and completely.

People ask whether a Christian can pray these words when Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). David is handing his cause to God, and that is what Scripture tells us to do with the wrongs done to us. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19), and the law already says, “To me belongeth vengeance” (Deuteronomy 32:35). David asks God to act and leaves the outcome to his perfect righteousness and timing. That is an act of faith.

The enemies in this psalm are the corrupt powers who oppress the innocent, and the prayer is that God will stop them and protect those they harm. It is a prayer for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done, which includes the defeat of evil. The vivid, extreme pictures are the way Hebrew poetry speaks of the depth of that longing.

The love Jesus commands and the judgment God brings stand together in the New Testament. We love people and pray for their salvation, and we also hate evil and pray for its end. Jesus himself speaks of the day when he will judge the nations (Matthew 25:31–46), and Revelation shows him coming as a rider on a white horse to judge and make war in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16). Love for enemies sits beside the certainty that God will judge, and the psalm gives voice to the longing for that justice.

David prays against young lions, and Revelation names Jesus the Lion of the tribe of Judah who has prevailed (Revelation 5:5). The oppressors in this psalm are human, and Christ came to defeat the deeper powers behind all oppression. Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death, the devil, and set free those held in fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). At the cross, “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). There the whirlwind of God’s wrath against sin fell on Christ himself, and the teeth of sin, death and the devil were broken for all who believe.

His first coming was to save, since God sent his Son into the world so that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). He is also the one God has appointed to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:25–26). At his return the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20), the devil follows them (Revelation 20:10), and the dead are judged before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15). Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11).

David asked that the wicked “pass away”, and in the new creation God wipes away every tear, “for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4). He makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), and in that kingdom righteousness reigns for ever.

These verses show us a God who hears the cry of people crushed by those who should have protected them. He is the judge in the earth, and the power of the wicked is short-lived before him, like water soaking into the ground, a snail wasting in the sun, or a fire of thorns scattered by the wind. David’s anger is real, and he brings all of it to God in prayer. The psalm gives us the same freedom, to take our longing for justice to the one who will set every wrong right, and to leave vengeance with him. The God who answers this prayer is the God who sent his Son, the Lion of Judah, to break the power of evil for good.