GLEANINGS IN THE PSALMS

(Psalm 58)

        Verses 1 to 5 – David accuses his ungodly tormentors before God.
        Verses 6 to 8 – he calls on the Lord to pass His judgments on them.
        Verses 9 to 11 – he looks to the certainty of that judgment passed.

Verse 1. “Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O Congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?” The enemies of David were a numerous and united band, and because they so unanimously condemned the persecuted one, they were apt to take it for granted that their verdict was a right one. “What everybody says must be true,” is a lying proverb based upon the presumptions which come of large combinations. Have we not all agreed to hound the man to the death, and who dare hint that so many great ones can be mistaken.

C. H. Spurgeon

Verse 2. “Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weight the violence of your hands in the earth.” The psalmist does not simply say that they had wickedness in their hearts, but that they did “work” it there. The heart is a shop within – an underground shop – and there they did closely contrive, forge, and hammer out their wicked purposes and fit them into actions. “Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth,” says David, and that is an allusion to merchants who buy and sell by weight, and weigh their commodity to the very ounce.

Joseph Caryl

Verse 3. “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” Of all sins, no sin can call Satan father like the sin of lying. All the corruption that is in us came from Satan, and yet, this sin of forging and lying is from the devil more than any other. Hence every man is a liar (Romans 3:4), and although each is a sinner in his own particular way, yet, in a special way every man is a liar. As we are in the body subject to all diseases, and yet, some more subject to one disease than another, so, in the soul, we are liable enough to all sins and some more so to one vice than another; yet, all are much inclined to lying. A liar then is as like the devil as ever he can look, and as unlike to God as ever he can be.

Richard Capel

Verses 4–5. “… they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.” “A Sermon For Preachers and Hearers.”

Hence the need of divine grace and of the gospel.

Hints to the Village Preacher

Verses 4–5. “… deaf adders …”. Those were deaf adders that our Lord spoke about when He said, “We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.” No matter what kind of a message it was they were determined that they were not for listening. Isaiah knew the same thing before our Lord had come to the earth: “Lord, who hath believed our report,” and every true preacher of the gospel has come to see the same spirit in action right up to the present day. There should be nothing like the deafness of a man's congregation to open his mouth in prayer unto the Lord that He will cause them to hear:

“They have heard the preacher's message,
Truth by him has now been shown,
But they need another Preacher
From the everlasting throne:
Application! Application!
Is the work of God alone.”

Verse 8. “As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away …” David here alludes to the idea of the snail wasting itself as it goes, and uses it to describe the end of the wicked. The snail carries its own fortress on its back and retreats into it for protection; so the ungodly shelter in their own devices. But the end of one is as certain as the other.

Biblical Museum

Verse 10. “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance…” He will have no hand in meting it out, neither, will he rejoice in the spirit of revenge, but his righteous soul shall acquiesce in the judgements of God … there is nothing in Scripture of that sympathy with God's enemies which modern traitors are so fond of parading as the finest species of benevolence. We shall at the last say, “Amen” to the condemnation of the wicked, and feel no disposition to question the ways of God with the impenitent.

C.H. Spurgeon