Psalm LVIII

To the chief Musician, Al-taschith. Michtam of David.

1 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.

* The Targum curiously paraphrases this clause; ‘• Who ordered the spider that wrought the web on my account at the month of the cave;” applying a later historical fact, which, however, may have had its prototype in David’s history.

PSALM LVIIT.-^THE UNGODLY REASONFD WITH. 177

.S The wicked are estranged from the womb;

Thoy go astray as soon as they be born, speaking Ilea •1 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,
fi Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth:

Break out the 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 eveiy 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 virrath.

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

Tholuck supposes that David was led to write this on occasion of Joab murdering Abner. At any rate, it might suit that event. The Righteous One reasons with the ungodly in prospect of their doom. It is another “Al~taschith” and “Mich- The title. tarn,” as to its musical accompaniments.

A difficulty meets us in verse 1, some rendering the Hebrew by a change in one letter, (viz., D vNJ foi chii;,) “Ye mighty ones, do ye speak righteousness?” others retaining DyU as a verb, •’Is justice then silent?” (Deut. i. 16), or, “Are ye, then, indeed dumb, so that ye will not speak what is right?” Horsley puts it thus,” Are ye in earnest reflection when ye talk of righteousness T’

It is addressed to “the sons of Tnen” (ver. 1), not to rulers The contcus. only, though to rulers also, as being among the sons of men. (See Psalm lxxxii. 6.)

“The ioicked are alienated (from God.) from the womb; The speakers of falsehood have gone astray as soon as they are born.” (Ver. 3.)

They are of the “seed of the serpent;” and, like the adder, they hide their ears in the dust, in order not to be charmed, let the charmer chant however sweet and long. Men bury their conscience in the things of earth, and shut out the allur-Ming sound of the tidings of love to the guilty. Hence, judgment comes. “Woe to thee, Chorazin” — Woe to thee, O earth, that hast heard the offers of love as well as the demands of law. In verses 6-9 the wrath is shewn under which the mighty melt away “as a snail,“” suggesting (it has been thought) the idea of the filthy trail or mark which their beastly pollutions used to leave behind them. Their glory is no more than “an abortion.” It is at the coming of the Son of man that it overtakes them. They are devising much and planning great schemes, but “ere their pots can feel the blazing thorn,” ere their designs of ambition are reached, “he carries them away with a tempest,” — the green and the dry, the sodden and the raw (liirr-iQD ^rT-i(2p), their finished and their unfinished works, and themselves, too, with all their gratified and all their as yet ungratified desires. There are seven similitudes: the lion’s teeth broken; the torrents running off; the bow snapping asunder; the snail wasting away; the abortion that scarcely can oe said to have had existence; the pots that aever get time to feel the heat; the whirlwind that makes them its victim.

No doubt, at the sight of Sodom, Gomorrha Admah, and Zeboim, destroyed, angels saw cause to rejoice and sing, “Hallelujah.” Wickedness was swept away; earth was lightened of a burden; justice, the justice of God, was highly exalted; love to his other creatures was displayed in freeing them from the neighbourhood of such hellish contaminations. On the same principles, (entering, however, yet deeper into the mind of the Father, and sympathizing to the full in his justice,) the Lord Jesus himself and each one of his members shall cry “Hallelujah” over Antichrist’s ruined hosts. (Rev. xix. 3). “TJie righteous sJmll rejoice when He seeth the vengeance, He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.” (Ver. 10.)

He shall be refreshed at the end of his journey (John xiii. 5; Luke vii. 44; Gen. xviii, 4), He shall wipe off all the dust of the way, and end its weariness by entering into that strange, that divine joy over sin destroyed, justice honoured, the law magnified, vengeance taken for the insult done to Godhead, the triumph of the Holy One over the unholy. It is not merely the time when that joy begins, — it is also the occasion and cause of that day’s rapturous delight.

But what follows now? It is said, verse 11, D^^l “IpN^’l, “And man shall say.” Is not this the effect upon the world at large in turning them to know their God, his law, his justice, his hatred of sin, his love to his own? Now shall John xvii. 23 be fulfilled. Seeing Christ and his bride, the Church, triumphant and glorified, “The world shall know that the Father sent him, and that the Father loved them as he loved Christ.” As they gaze on his and their enthroned glory, they shall confess, “Verily there is a reward for the righteous!” and shall bend their knee and say of Him who sitteth on the throne of his glory, with his princes who truly decree justice (Isa. xxxii. 1), “Verily, God judgeth the earth!” Its government has come into the hands of the Just One and his saints; there is a God, there is a God who judges!

O that the sons of men would hear in this their day! 0 that every ear were opened to these words of The Righteous One reasoning with the ungodly in prospect of the day of vengeance.