58

Psalm 58 · Book Two · David

For the choirmaster. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A Miktam of David.

The Hebrew title · Berean Standard Bible

Miktam · For the choirmaster

About this psalm

One of the hardest psalms to read aloud. It opens by asking the men in power whether they judge uprightly, answers its own question, and then asks God to break their teeth. It is a prayer about corrupt courts, made by someone with no appeal left. It ends by insisting there is a reward for the righteous and a God that judgeth in the earth.

Read it when justice has been bought and you can do nothing about it.

My psalms

One verse at a time, slowly

¹Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?²Yea, in heart ye work wickedness;ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.³The wicked are estranged from the womb:they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.⁴Their poison is like the poison of a serpent:they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;⁵Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.⁶Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth:break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.⁷Let them melt away as waters which run continually:when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.⁸As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away:like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.⁹Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.¹⁰The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance:he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.¹¹So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous:verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.

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Open Psalm 58 in XA Daily for the Hebrew, the cross-references and the other translations.