Today’s Passage: Psalm 58
This psalm opens by putting a question to the men who hold power: do they really judge justly? The answer it gives is no. Then David does a startling thing. He asks God to shatter their teeth. Those hard closing lines belong to the psalm, and we will read the whole of it as it stands. We will not dress revenge up as holiness, and we will not sand away the blood.
As you read, hold this: O God, shatter their teeth. There is a God who judges the earth.
Context For the choirmaster. A Miktam of David
The line at the top, “To the tune of ‘Do Not Destroy,’” along with the word Miktam, is part of the psalm itself and not a later note pasted on. That same word Miktam stands over Psalms 16 and 56 through 60, and its meaning has never been fully settled. What is settled is who the psalm speaks to. It is not aimed at a foreign army. It is aimed at rulers, at the sons of men who were given the bench and told to judge uprightly.
Psalm 58:1-2 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A Miktam of David. ¹ Do you indeed speak justly, O rulers? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men? ² No, in your hearts you devise injustice; with your hands you mete out violence on the earth.
The psalm asks its question and then answers it plainly: no. The violence here is not a rumor whispered about them. It is in their own hands, and the earth is where they spend it.
Psalm 58:3-5 (BSB)
³ The wicked are estranged from the womb; the liars go astray from birth. ⁴ Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like a cobra that shuts its ears, ⁵ refusing to hear the tune of the charmer who skillfully weaves his spell.
This is not simple ignorance. It is a cobra that will not hear, an ear closed on purpose. Correction has already been offered to these men, and they have already shut the ear against it.
Psalm 58:6-9 (BSB)
⁶ O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O LORD, tear out the fangs of the lions. ⁷ May they vanish like water that runs off; when they draw the bow, may their arrows be blunted. ⁸ Like a slug that dissolves in its slime, like a woman’s stillborn child, may they never see the sun. ⁹ Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—whether green or dry—He will sweep them away.
Teeth and fangs, water that drains away into the ground, a slug melting in its own slime, a child that never draws breath, cooking pots swept off the fire before the thorns beneath them can even warm them. The images stay as ugly as they sound, and the psalm means them to.
Psalm 58:10-11 (BSB)
¹⁰ The righteous will rejoice when they see they are avenged; they will wash their feet in the blood of the wicked. ¹¹ Then men will say, “There is surely a reward for the righteous! There is surely a God who judges the earth!”
Then men will say there is surely a peri, pronounced peh-REE. Strong's H6529, fruit. The word means fruit, the thing a tree actually yields in its season. The verse does not say the righteous went out and seized a prize for themselves; it says men will look and see that there is fruit, and that there is a God who judges the earth. The fruit is that verdict, finally seen. for the righteous, a God who judges the earth.
Study notes Teach the last lines. Do not sand them.
There is no gentler reading of verses 6 through 10, and we should not invent one. Teeth and fangs, a stillborn child, feet washed in the blood of the wicked: the family that reads this psalm together has to hear what it actually says.
Even so, this is not a command to go out and do these things ourselves. Notice who is being spoken to. It is God, and God alone. Shatter their teeth. Tear out their fangs. Sweep them away. The doing is handed over to Him, and yet the wanting is left honest and undisguised.
The church has never agreed on a single way to pray lines like these. Some believers will not take them onto their own lips at all. Others will pray them the way a man hands a heavy file across the desk to the Judge and leaves it there. This house does not settle the question for you. But it will not cut the psalm short, and it will not baptize revenge.
"Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”" Romans 12:19 (BSB)
Paul does not pretend that injustice deserves no answer. What he will not do is let the beloved pick up the sword themselves. Leave room, he says. Vengeance is Mine. The psalm was already pointing down that very road, for every harsh cry in it is handed to God: O God, O LORD, the One who judges the earth.
O God, shatter their teeth. There is a God who judges the earth.