1 Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O ye gods?
In uprightness do ye judge the sons of men?
2 Yea, in heart ye work iniquity;
In the earth ye weigh out the violence of your hands.
3 The wicked are estranged from the womb:
Gone astray from birth are the speakers of lies.
4 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent,
Like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
5 That will not hearken to the voice of the charmers,
The skilled weaver of spells.
6 O God, break their teeth in their mouth:
The grinders of the young lions wrench out, Jehovah.
7 Let them melt like waters [that] run themselves [dry]:
[When] he shoots his arrows, let them be as if pointless.
8 [Let them be] as a slug that dissolves as it crawls:
As the premature birth of a woman, [that] has not seen the sun.
9 Before your pots feel the thorns,
Whether it be green or burning, He shall whirl it away.
10 The righteous shall rejoice that he has beheld [the] vengeance:
His footsteps shall he bathe in the blood of the wicked.
11 And men shall say, Surely there is fruit for the righteous:
Surely there is a God judging in the earth.
This psalmist's fiery indignation against unjust judges and evil-doers
generally is not kindled by personal wrongs. The psalm comes hot
from a heart lacerated by the sight of widespread corruption, and
constrained to seek for patience in the thought of the swift sweeping
away of evil men before their plans are effected. Stern triumph in the
punitive manifestations of God's rule, and keen sense of the need of
such, are its keynotes. Vehement emotion stirs the poet's imagination
to heap together strong and, in part, obscure metaphors. Here
emphatically "Indignatio facit versus." The psalm is Dantesque in its
wealth of sombre imagination, which produces the most solemn effects
with the homeliest metaphors, and in its awed and yet satisfied
contemplation of the fate of evil-doers. It parts itself into three
portions,--a dark picture of abounding evil (vv. 1-5); it's punishment
prayed for (vv. 6-9); and the consequent joy of the righteous and
widespread recognition of the rule of a just God (vv. 10, 11).
The abrupt question of ver. 1 speaks of long pent-up indignation,
excited by protracted experience of injustice, and anticipates the
necessary negative answer which follows. The word rendered by the
A.V. and R.V. "in silence" or "dumb" can scarcely be twisted into
intelligibility, and the small alteration of reading required for
the rendering "gods" is recommended by the similar expressions in
the kindred Psalm lxxxii. Taken thus, the question is hurled at the
appointed depositaries of judicial power and supreme authority. There
is no need to suppose, with Hupfeld and others, whom Cheyne follows,
that these "gods" are supernatural beings intrusted with the government
of the world. The explanation of the name lies in the conception of
such power as bestowed by God, and in some sense a delegation of His
attribute; or, as our Lord explained the similar name in Psalm lxxxii.,
as given because "to them the word of God came." It sets in sinister
light the flagrant contradiction between the spirit in which these men
exercised their office and the source from which they derived it, and
thus sharpens the reproach of the question. The answer is introduced
by a particle conveying a strong opposition to the previous supposition
couched in the question. "Heart" and "hands" are so obviously
antithetical, that the alteration of "in heart" to "ye all" is not
acceptable, though it removes the incongruity of plans being wrought in
the heart, the seat of devices, not of actions. "Work" may be here used
anomalously, as we say "work out," implying the careful preparation of
a plan, and there may even be a hint that the true acts are the undone
acts of the heart. The unaccomplished purpose is a deed, though never
clothed in outward fact. Evil determined is, in a profound sense, done
before it is done; and, in another equally solemn, not done when "'tis
done," as Macbeth has taught us. The "act," as men call it, follows: "In
the earth"--not only in the heart--"ye weigh out the violence of your
hands." The scales of justice are untrue. Instead of dispensing equity,
as they were bound to do, they clash into the balance the weight of
their own violence.
It is to be noted that the psalm says no more about the sins of unjust
authorities, but passes on to describe the "wicked" generally. The
transition may suggest that under unjust rulers all wrongdoers find
impunity, and so multiply and worsen; or it may simply be that these
former are now merged in the class to which they belong. The type of
"wickedness" gibbeted is the familiar one of malicious calumniators
and persecutors. From birth onwards they have continuously been doers
of evil. The psalmist is not laying down theological propositions
about heredity, but describing the inveterate habit of sin which has
become a second nature, and makes amendment hopeless. The reference
to "lies" naturally suggests the image of the serpent's poison. An
envenomed tongue is worse than any snake's bite. And the mention of
the serpent stimulates the poet's imagination to yet another figure,
which puts most graphically that disregard of warnings, entreaties,
and every voice, human or Divine, that marks long-practised, customary
sinfulness. There can be no more striking symbol of determined
disregard to the calls of patient Love and the threats of outraged
Justice than that of the snake lying coiled, with its head in the
centre of its motionless folds, as if its ears were stopped by its
own bulk, while the enchanter plays his softest notes and speaks his
strongest spells in vain. There are such men, thinks this psalmist.
There are none whom the mightiest spell, that of God's love in Christ,
could not conquer and free from their poison; but there are such
as will close their ears to its plaintive sweetness. This is the
condemnation that light is come and men love darkness, and had rather
lie coiled in their holes than have their fangs extracted.
The general drift of the second part (vv. 6-9) is to call down Divine
retribution on these obstinate, irreclaimable evil-doers. Figure is
heaped on figure in a fashion suggestive of intense emotion. The
transiency of insolent evil, the completeness of its destruction,
are the thoughts common to them all. There are difficulties in
translation, and, in ver. 9, probable textual corruption; but these
should not hide the tremendous power of gloomy imagination, which can
lay hold of vulgar and in part loathsome things, and, by sheer force
of its own solemn insight, can free them from all low or grotesque
associations, and turn them into awful symbols. The intense desire
for the sweeping away of evil-doers has met us in many previous
psalms, and it is needless to repeat former observations on it. But
it is nowhere expressed with such a wealth of metaphor as here. The
first of these, that of crushing the jaws and breaking the teeth of a
beast of prey, occurs also in Psalm iii. 7. It is less terrible than
the subsequent imprecations, since it only contemplates the wickeds'
deprivation of power to do harm. In ver. 7 _a_ their destruction is
sought, while, in the second clause of the same verse, the defeat
of their attempts is desired. Ver. 8 then expands the former wish,
and ver. 9 the latter. This plain symmetrical arrangement makes the
proposals to resort to transposition unnecessary. Mountain torrents
quickly run themselves dry; and the more furious their rush, the
swifter their exhaustion. They leave a chaos of whitened stones, that
lie bleaching in the fierce sun when the wild spate is past. So stormy
and so short will be the career of evil-doers. So could a good man of
old wish it to be; and so may we be sure of and desire the cessation
of oppression and man's inhumanity to man. Ver. 7 _b_ is obscure. All
these figures are struck out with such parsimony of words that they
are difficult. They remind one of some of the stern, unfinished work
of Michael Angelo, where a blow or two of his chisel, or a dash or two
of his brush, has indicated rather than expressed his purpose, and
left a riddle, fascinating in its incompleteness, for smaller men to
spell out. In ver. 7 _b_ it may be asked, Who is the archer? If God,
then the whole is a presentation as if of an occurrence taking place
before our eyes. God shoots His arrow, and at once it lodges in the
heart of the enemies, and they are as though cut off. But it is better
to take the wicked as the subject of both verbs, the change from
singular to plural being by no means unusual in successive clauses
with the same subject. If so, this clause recurs to the thought of
ver. 6, and prays for the neutralising of the wicked man's attempts.
He fits his arrows, aims, and draws the bow. May they fall harmless,
as if barbless! An emendation has been proposed by which the clause
is made parallel with Psalm xxxvii. 2, "As grass let them be quickly
cut off," thus securing a complete parallel with _a_, and avoiding the
difficulty in the word rendered by us "pointless." But the existing
text gives a vigorous metaphor, the peculiarity of which makes it
preferable to the feebler image of withering grass.
The prayer for destruction is caught up again in ver. 8, in two daring
figures which tremble on the verge of lowering the key of the whole;
but by escaping that peril, produce the contrary effect, and heighten
it. A slug leaves a shining track of slime as it creeps, which exudes
from its soft body, and thus it seems to disintegrate itself by its
own motion. It is the same thought of the suicidal character of bad
men's efforts which was expressed by the stream foaming itself away
in the nullah. It is the eternal truth that opposition to God's
will destroys itself by its own activity. The unfulfilled life of a
premature birth, with eyes which never opened to the light for which
they were made, and possibilities which never unfolded, and which is
huddled away into a nameless grave, still more impressively symbolises
futility and transiency.
In ver. 9 the figure has given much trouble to commentators. Its
broad meaning is, however, undoubted. It is, as ver. 6 and ver. 7
_b_, symbolic of the Divine intervention which wrecks wicked men's
plans before they are wrought out. The picture before the psalmist
seems to be that of a company of travellers round their camp fire,
preparing their meal. They heap brushwood under the pot, and expect
to satisfy their hunger; but before the pot is warmed through, not
to say before the water boils or the meat is cooked, down comes a
whirlwind, which sweeps away fire, pot, and all. Every word of the
clause is doubtful, and, with the existing text, the best that can be
done is not wholly satisfactory. If emendation is resorted to, the
suggestion of Bickell, adopted by Cheyne, gives a good sense: "[And]
while your [flesh] is yet raw, the hot wrath [of Jehovah] shall sweep
it away." Baethgen makes a slighter alteration, and renders, "While
it is still raw, He sweeps it away in wrath." Retaining the existing
text (which is witnessed by the LXX. and other old versions), probably
the best rendering is, "Whether [it be] green or burning, He shall
whirl it away." This general understanding of the words is shared by
commentators who differ as to what is represented as swept away,--some
making it the thorn fire, the twigs of which may be either full of
sap or well alight; while others take the reference to be to the
meat in the pot, which may be either "living," _i.e._ raw, or well
on the way to being cooked. Neither application is quite free from
difficulty, especially in view of the fact that some pressure has to
be put on the word rendered "burning," which is not an adjective,
but a noun, and is usually employed to designate the fiery wrath of
God, as it is rendered in the amended text just mentioned. After all
attempts at clearing up the verse, one must be content to put a mark
of interrogation at any rendering. But the scope of the figure seems
discoverable through the obscurity. It is a homely and therefore
vigorous picture of half-accomplished plans suddenly reduced to utter
failure, and leaving their concocters hungry for the satisfaction
which seemed so near. The cookery may go on merrily and the thorns
crackle cheerily, but the simoom comes, topples over the tripod on
which the pot swung, and blows the fire away in a hundred directions.
Peter's gibbet was ready, and the morning of his execution was near;
but when day dawned, "there was no small stir what was become of him."
The wind had blown him away from the expectation of the people of the
Jews into safe quarters; and the fire was dispersed.
The closing part (vv. 10, 11) breathes a stern spirit of joy over
the destruction of the wicked. That is a terrible picture of the
righteous bathing his feet in the blood of the wicked (Psalm lxviii.
23). It expresses not only the dreadful abundance of blood, but also
the satisfaction of the "righteous" at its being shed. There is an
ignoble and there is a noble and Christian satisfaction in even
the destructive providences of God. It is not only permissible but
imperative on those who would live in sympathy with His righteous
dealings and with Himself, that they should see in these the
manifestation of eternal justice, and should consider that they
roll away burdens from earth and bring hope and rest to the victims
of oppression. It is no unworthy shout of personal vengeance, nor
of unfeeling triumph, that is lifted up from a relieved world when
Babylon falls. If it is right in God to destroy, it cannot be wrong
in His servants to rejoice that He does. Only they have to take heed
that their emotion is untarnished by selfish gratulation, and is not
untinged with solemn pity for those who were indeed doers of evil, but
were themselves the greatest sufferers from their evil. It is hard,
but not impossible, to take all that is expressed in the psalm, and
to soften it by some effluence from the spirit of Him who wept over
Jerusalem, and yet pronounced its doom.
The last issue of God's judgments contemplated by the psalm warrants
the joy of the righteous; for in these there is a demonstration to the
world that there is "fruit" to the righteous, and that notwithstanding
all bewilderments from the sight of prosperous wickedness and
oppressed righteousness "there is a God who judges in the earth."
The word "judging" is here in the plural, corresponding with "God"
(Elohim), which is also plural in form. Possibly the construction is
to be explained on the ground that the words describe the thoughts
of surrounding, polytheistic nations, who behold the exhibition
of God's righteousness. But more probably the plural is here used
for the sake of the contrast with the "gods" of ver. 1. Over these
unworthy representatives of Divine justice sits the true judge, in
the manifoldness of His attributes, exercising His righteous though
slow-footed judgments.