Psalm 58

Introduction

Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and our continuing series Tehillim Talks, our studies in the Psalms. And in this episode, we’ll be looking at a very strange, odd Psalm, Psalm 58. It’s only 11 verses long, but it’s one that translators, well, they pull their hair out trying to translate this Psalm.

And so we’re going to approach it in a very different way than I’ve done from any of the 57 Psalms preceding this one. Now, the attribution to this Psalm is to the Choir Master, according to Altashket, or Do Not Destroy. And this is the second in a series of Psalms that have this attribution, which we think must be a melody.

And, but you can look at Psalm 57 and my commentary there to know, to learn more about what this is. And it is also a Mictam, which means it’s a teaching Psalm, a teaching Psalm of David. Tongue-in-cheek, I call this Psalm the Song of the Sociopath, because in it, David is describing the mental status or stature of someone who just simply does not have a conscience.

And we know that in society that about one out of 20 people that you meet is a sociopath. They basically don’t have a conscience. So when they mistreat people or do bad things to people, that doesn’t bother them.

They never lay awake at night because they feel guilty about anything. And so this Psalm, these 11 verses, if I have this right, that it is describing a sociopath, which it certainly seems to be, then it only makes sense. It should be very convoluted, very complicated, almost impossible to grasp and to understand.

Now, there are a couple verses here, which are clear, but the rest of them are kind of up for grabs. And so what we’re going to do with this is that we’re going to take each verse and on the screen and the notes, and I really encourage you to go to our website, torahtodayministries.org, and print out the notes for each of these lessons. And everything I put on the screen will show up in those notes.

And if you have time and you’re not driving, you can have the notes in hand while you go through the teaching and you can see more clearly and make little notes for yourself as we go through here. It’ll make a lot more sense to you.

Robert Alter on the Hebrew

But Robert Alter, he’s one of the people whose translations I’m going to be using. Robert Alter just recently completed a massive project where he took the entire Hebrew scriptures, entire Old Testament scriptures, and translated them into English, verse by verse by verse. And he really is a master of the Hebrew language of biblical Hebrew. And this is the third of three volumes.

He did a volume of the five books of Torah. And then he did a volume on the Nevi’im, the prophets, and then this is his volume on the Ketuvim, the writings. And the first book of the writings is the Book of Psalms.

So he is one of the Hebrew scholars that I do lean on to help me crack some of the complications that arise in translating Hebrew. In fact, let me read what he says about this Psalm. He says, the English reader should be warned that the Hebrew text of this Psalm from this verse to the end, that’s from verse one to the end, with the sole exception of the ferocious verses, verses six and 10 in the English, is badly mangled.

Robert Alter is saying, the Hebrew of this Psalm is badly mangled. In other words, it is a ball of knotted string basically that’s almost impossible to untie. As a result, a good deal of the translation is necessarily conjectural or must rely on emendation. In other words, trying to figure out what word was intended. And you’ll see what I mean as we get into verse one.

Historical Background

So, one more thing. Tradition suggests that this Psalm is based on the events found in 1 Samuel, chapter 26, 1 Samuel 26. And this is where Abner was giving King Saul evil counsel. Evil counsel to pursue David, to chase him down, to kill him, to rid the earth of David’s presence.

And in 1 Samuel 26, we read about how God caused a very deep sleep to fall upon Saul and all of his camp. And while everyone was asleep, including Abner, who was Saul’s right hand man, David and one of his right hand men sneak into the camp right up to where Saul is sleeping on the ground, and they take Saul’s spear and they take his water jug, probably a leather water bottle, and they take these and they go out.

Then when the sun comes up, there’s David up on a hill looking down over the camp and he yells out for Saul. And he chews out Abner says, you weren’t protecting your king. Look, I’ve got the Saul spear and his water bottle and his king Saul looked down. Sure enough, they’re gone.

And he says, I could have killed you if I’d wanted to, but I’m not going to kill you. You’re my king. And Saul immediately repented and turned and left. He regretted what he had been doing.

But Abner was the one who kept egging Saul on to do this wickedness of trying to pursue and kill David. So anyways, that is the suggested background for Psalm 58.

Approach to the Psalm

So let’s just get right into the Psalm. So here’s what I’m doing. Again, something I’ve never done before in this series. I’m taking each verse and I’m going to give it to you in three different translations.

The first translation is going to be the ESV, the English Standard Version, which is a pretty good solid mass market English translation of the scriptures. It’s very popular today and it’s pretty solid. No translation of the Hebrew is ever going to be perfect. You simply can’t translate Hebrew and all of its facets and all of its depths into any other language. It just can’t be done.

But ESV will pretty much give you a fairly accurate surface translation of the Hebrew. The second will be a translation from Robert Alter whose book I just showed you. And then the third will be from the Art Scroll commentary on the Psalms.

And if you really want to do a deep dive into the Psalms, this is what I recommend. It’s the Tehillim by Art Scroll, the Tanakh series. And this is about 900 pages here, but it’s only the first volume. There are two volumes in all.

And this will give you insights from the rabbis going all the way back to Paul’s rabbi, some Gamaliel. And it gives you insights from rabbis from ancient times to more modern times. It digs into the Hebrew, but if you want the Jewish take and the traditional understanding of each of these Psalms and how they should be translated, that’s what I recommend.

So we have a Christian translation, the ESV. We have a translation by a leading biblical Hebrew scholar. And then we have a more traditional translation, the Arts Gold translation that is represents and reflects the rabbinic view of these verses. So between the three of them, you’ll begin to appreciate what a, well, how mangled this is to use Robert Alter’s word.

Verse 1

ESV: Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly?

Alter renders this verse: Do you, oh chieftains, indeed speak justice and rightness, judge humankind? I just noticed I misspelled rightness. I don’t know how that E snuck in there.

And then the Art Scroll translation: Is it true that you are silent? Justice should you speak? With fairness, should you judge people?

The traditional Jewish take is that this entire Psalm is chewing out the judges during this period of time who should have been judging Israel with fairness and righteousness, but they really dropped the ball. They were doing a miserable job of judging and leading the people.

Now in yellow highlight, I have the problem word. ESV translates the word Elim as “you gods,” Alter as “chieftains,” and ArtScroll as “silent.” Begin to appreciate the difficulty here.

So you’ve got this word spelled Aleph, Lamed, Mem. It can be Elame, or it can be Elam, or it might be something else. And if you translate it Elame, then it’s going to mean deaf or mute. Back in Psalm 56, the attribution was to the mute dove in faraway places. The dove that is Elame, it’s deaf, it’s mute.

But if you pronounce it Elam, it can mean gods or judges or chieftains. This comes from what does the word El or the word Elohim actually mean? And we tend to think that Elohim just simply means God. Well, most of the time, but not always. When we get to the last verse of this Psalm, we’ll wrestle with that word a bit more and I’ll show you the difficulties that are inherent in the word Elohim.

But this word Elame or Elam, we’re not sure which it should be. There are no vowels in the original Hebrew when it was handwritten on the scroll. And so we don’t know how to exactly how to pronounce these words. And the pronunciation is what determines to a great degree what word we’re actually dealing with.

So is it “you gods”? Is it like a mockery of the people who are behaving like gods as they try to rule over the nation of Israel? Or is it referring to the chieftains, the leaders of Israel? Or is it true that you are silent? You’re elame.

I tend to think it’s going to be one of these first two, because the Art Scroll’s translation of the word as silent is based more on tradition and suggestions from the Talmud, rather than primary biblical Hebrew scholarship. But who knows? We simply don’t know. So at least you begin to appreciate what this first verse can mean.

Verse 2

Know in your hearts you devise wrongs. Your hands deal out violence on earth.

Alter renders this: In your heart you work misdeeds on earth. Weigh a case without rage in your hands.

Art Scroll: Even in your heart you do wrongs. In the land you weigh out the violence of your hands.

This word, deal out or to weigh or to weigh out, is a word that refers to using a balance, to balance and to weigh out a fair balance. So if someone brings you something and you weigh it out to know exactly what it is worth, use just scales and you weigh these things out and you deal out things fairly.

And here the verse is saying that these leaders, these judges or these man-made gods, they’re weighing out with great precision, violence. And this word for violence that’s used is the word chamas, the exact same word that is the name of the terrorist organization that launched the horrible demonic attack on innocent Israelis in October of 23, chamas.

Verse 3

Now this one is pretty straightforward. All of these verses agree pretty much.

The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth. Speaking lies.

It’s on this verse primarily that I suggest a title for this psalm, which is the Song of the Sociopath. There’s a lot of controversy as to how does a person become a sociopath. It seems that some people are born that way, and even as little children, they display no conscience whatsoever.

On other hand, there seems to be evidence that a person can become sociopathic if they experience a truly horrifying traumatic event before they reach puberty. A horrifying event and they don’t have the support system and the love and the assistance to surround them to help them overcome that.

And if they don’t deal with that, then by the time they reach puberty, their consciences are dead. And the scriptures do refer to those who have a seared conscience. In other words, their conscience has no sensitivity whatsoever. If it was there, it now has no feeling left to it.

But this verse is talking about people who are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies.

Alter renders this: The wicked backslide from the very womb. The liemongers go astray from birth.

And Art Scroll: Estranged of the wicked from the womb, astray from birth go the speakers of falsehood.

I do believe that one way a person can become sociopathic, at least begin to walk down that path fairly briskly, is to get used to telling lies, to tell lies at all and cover them up and then not correct them, not repent of them. And eventually over time, those lies will sear your conscience. That’s my opinion.

Verses 4–5

They have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops its ear so that does not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter.

I like that image of the deaf adder, it’s already deaf, that stops its ear. In other words, it is deaf, but it’s still covering its ears, so to speak. It’s doubly deaf. It’s not just passively deaf, it is actively deaf.

Alter renders this: They have venom akin to the serpent’s venom, like the deaf viper that stops up its ears so it hears not the soothsayers’ voice, nor the cunning caster of spells.

And Art Scroll: They have venom like the venom of a snake, like a deaf viper that closes its ear so as not to hearken to the voice of charmers of the most cunning spellbinder.

One of the things I have noticed about people who tend to be a little sociopathic is not only do they not embrace the truth or practice the truth, they cannot tolerate even hearing the truth.

We find an example of this in John’s Gospel. When you read John chapter 8 — well, the whole chapter is amazing. And it’s a confrontation between Yeshua and some of the religious, hypocritical, sociopathic leaders of his day.

And this is what he says to them in verses 43 through 45. John chapter 8: Why do you not understand what I say? And then he answers his own question. It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You can’t bear to even hear it.

You are of your father, the devil. And who is the devil? That serpent. Revelation first to Satan is that serpent.

And your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

This reminds me also of Acts chapter 7, the trial of Stephen when Stephen stands and gives his testimony. And in his testimony where he refers to seeing the Lord in heaven, they rush at him to stone him to death and he becomes the first martyr of the Messianic community there in Acts.

But in verse 57 it says, but they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. So they could not bear to even hear the truth. And I think that this psalm foreshadows that kind of hatred towards truth.

Verse 6

Oh God, break the teeth in their mouth, tear out the fangs of the young lions, Oh Lord.

Now when you see, Oh Lord, there, Lord is all in caps, it is reflecting to the word of the name Yad He Vav He. Normally, when I translate it, I just put the word Adonai there, and I’ve explained that on many occasions.

But I’m taking this directly out of the translations. This is the ESV.

And then Alter says: God smashed their teeth in their mouth, the jaws of the lion shatter. So instead of fangs, Alter uses the word jaws. That’s how he renders that Hebrew word.

And then the Art Scroll: Oh God smashed their teeth in their mouth, the molars of the young lions shatter, HaShem.

Now instead of saying the Lord, in Orthodox Judaism, the word HaShem is used. HaShem simply means “the name.” So when you say HaShem, the name used here, it’s referring to the name Yud He Vav He, God’s four-letter tetragrammaton, His personal name.

Verse 7

Let them vanish like water that runs away. When He aims His arrows, let them be blunted.

Now notice here when it says, He aims His arrows, I have not capitalized He or His. I should say the ESV has not capitalized them, because it sees the enemy as being the one aiming the arrows, and it says, let them be blunted.

But Alter, look how he renders this: Let them melt away like water runoff, like let him pull back his arrows, so they be cut down.

He capitalizes Him and His, because here he sees God as being the one with the bow, aiming His arrows at the enemy. Whereas ESV wants the arrows to be blunted, Alter wants the arrows to cut down the enemies.

How does Art Scroll render it? Let them be despicable as if in water, let them wade, let Him aim His arrows — referring to God since they’ve capitalized Him and His. Let Him aim His arrows to cut him down, him being the enemy.

So, again, there’s no way of really knowing who’s using the bow and arrows. Is it the enemy aiming at us? Is it God aiming at the enemy?

A lot of times in these dilemmas where you can’t decide one or the other, then I think, well, why not do both? The enemy has a bow, he has arrows, and in Ephesians we’re told to don the whole armor of God and it talks about the shield of faith, which is able to quench the fiery arrows of the enemy.

So the enemy shooting arrows at us. But we also read about the Hebrews of old having bows, where they launched them at the enemy. And so anyways, it could be both, couldn’t it?

Verses 8–9

The ESV puts it this way: Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime. So the snail is there without a shell. And the sun comes up, gets hot, and the snail kind of just melts away into a pool of goop.

Like the stillborn child who never sees the sun. Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns, whether green or ablaze, may He sweep them away.

Now, you don’t boil pots of food or heat pots of food over a fire made of thorns, because thorns just don’t burn very long. They blaze up really quickly, then die out. They don’t stay hot long enough to boil water or to cook food.

So, in the yellow, stillborn child. In the green, I’ve highlighted the word pots.

Alter puts it this way: Like a snail that moves in its slime, a woman’s stillbirth that sees not the sun, before their thorns ripen and bramble, but still alive and in wrath rushed to ruin. So here, instead of pots boiling over thorns, he translates thorns ripen and to bramble. Very interesting.

But in Art Scroll: Like the snail that melts and slithers away, the stillbirth of a mole. Where in the world do they get the word mole? Well, what’s interesting is the word for a woman — it talks about a woman’s stillbirth — the word ish, it can be pronounced a couple different ways. And you pronounce it one way, it’s a mole.

And again, this is based a lot on Talmud and Jewish tradition. But what the rabbis say is a mole’s stillbirth. Now you talk about something that never sees the light. A mole spends its life underground and once in a while pops up. But it has very poor eyesight, very small eyes, because it lives underground.

So think of a mole’s stillbirth born in a tunnel. So not only is this mole’s offspring born dead, it couldn’t see the light anyway very well, even if it lived. But this is a mole’s stillbirth in a tunnel.

They’re saying this person is so blind, their hope of even seeing the light doesn’t even exist. So, like the snail that melts and slithers away, the stillbirth of a mole that never saw the sun before your tender briars develop into hardened thorns.

This word for thorns and translated pots in the ESV is very interesting. It’s the word seer, Samech Yod Resh. And the verb form seer means to surround with a protective barrier. And so seer can be translated “pot” because it surrounds the food or whatever’s inside the pot, it protects it.

It keeps it together, keeps it from spilling out, keeps things from getting in. So it’s a surrounding barrier to the contents of the pot.

We’ve also read about a hedge of thorns, because when a person would make a bed for himself in the wilderness, he’d often take thorn bushes and thorn branches, put them around him. Even a flock of sheep would be put in a hedge of thorns, because those thorns surround and protect.

So the word seer can be a pot. It can also be thorns in their protective purpose. Again, which is it? I don’t know. It could be both.

Verse 10

The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. That’s a pretty graphic verse, isn’t it?

Alter renders it: The just man rejoices when vengeance he sees. His feet he will bathe in the wicked one’s blood.

And Art Scroll: The righteous one shall rejoice when he sees vengeance. His feet shall he bathe in the blood of the wicked.

Now I think we can all understand about how the righteous person rejoices when vengeance comes. When you see lawlessness taking place, when you see the wicked persecuting the righteous, when finally judgment happens and things are put right and the wicked person gets what’s coming to them, there’s something that God has wired into our souls that says, yes, finally things are made right.

This is why we love to see a movie where the bad guys lose and the good guy wins. We want to see the bad guy get his comeuppance and we want to see the good guy rewarded for his courage and his uprightness, right? So, the first part of this verse, we get.

Well, what’s this business about bathing his feet in the blood of the wicked? Is that what a righteous person does? Like, oh, come over here, guys. I found a big pool of blood. Take your shoes and socks off and let’s soak our feet. That’s the image that comes to mind, doesn’t it, when you first read this?

But that is not at all what is being referred to. What is being referred to is this, and people in ancient times would have understood this and the poetic use of language here.

What it means is, is that when the battle is over and the field is covered with blood — and it just would be, there would be blood everywhere — it’s saying that the righteous are the ones who will still be upright and they’ll be the ones who are still walking, getting blood on their feet, whereas the wicked are going to be dead.

So it’s simply saying that at the end of the battle, the righteous will still be upright. They’ll be walking through the battlefield and going off to bathe their feet, but not in blood.

An interesting thing too here, if I may point it out, is that the word for feet is not the normal word. The word regel is the word that normally is used for foot, but that’s not the word that’s used here. It’s the word paim, which means feet and can mean times, which gives it a really interesting kind of a shadowing, a shading.

What does it mean that they will bathe their times in the blood of their enemies? It’s almost as if there’s a poetic reference to: you keep enduring, keep being righteous, keep being faithful, keep being strong, and in time, you’re gonna see the vengeance of the wicked. You’re gonna see God bringing judgment upon them and making things right.

And God’s gonna wash away all of the pain you had to endure. You’ll still be upright, and you’re gonna still be walking in a world that has experienced so much bloodshed. You’re going to survive the battle, and your times will be justified.

Yeshua said that wisdom is justified of her children. In other words, if you live a wise life, no matter how much people may mock you and call you a fool, the children that are produced, the fruit of your wisdom will be revealed. In other words, your wisdom is justified of its children. And if you are living a wise life, that wisdom will have good fruit that will prove that you are right and that you are wise.

So anyways, this is poetry, and as mangled as it may be, as Robert Alter says, it is poetry. And though we may not be able to analyze it and translate it as precisely as we would like, the imagery is still quite strong. And the imagery is something that can pierce our souls and can leave an impact in our minds.

Verse 11

And then we come to the last verse, verse 11. Mankind will say, and the word there is the word Adam. Mankind will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely there is a Elohim who judges on earth. And that is the word that’s used here, Elohim.

Alter renders it this way: And man will say, yes, there is fruit for the just. Yes, there are Elohim judging the earth.

And then the Art Scroll renders this: And mankind shall say, there is indeed a reward for the righteous. There is indeed a Elohim, a God judging the land.

Why is there any controversy at all over the word Elohim? Well, it comes down to this. Though most of the appearances of the word Elohim — overwhelming abundance of the appearance of the word Elohim in the Bible — is translated God, referring to God. You know, in the beginning, Elohim made the heavens and the earth, God made the heavens and the earth. Almost always, it’s going to be God.

But there are exceptions. We find places in the Bible where human judges are called Elohim. Let me see if I have an example for you here. Yes, in Exodus 22, verses 8 and 9 says: If the thief is not found, the owner of the house shall come near to the Elohim, to show whether or not he has put his hand to his neighbor’s property. For every neighbor’s property.

For every breach of trust, whether it is for an ox or donkey, for a sheep, for a cloak, or for any kind of lost thing, of which one says, this is it, the case of both parties shall come before the Elohim, and the one whom Elohim condemns shall pay double to his neighbor. This can’t be referring to God, because the whole context of this passage is judges judging cases among the people of Israel.

So why aren’t they just called judges? Why are they called Elohim? Here’s another interesting application of this word. In Exodus 4:16, God speaks to Moses, says: Aaron shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as Elohim to him.

In other words, you’re going to go before Pharaoh, Aaron’s going to act as your prophet, and you’re going to act as the God, as the Elohim. Is that what God means? Pharaoh doesn’t understand me, God is saying. He thinks people can be gods. So you’re going to play the part of the God who is in conflict with Pharaoh.

And as he has his magicians and his court counselors who speak for him, Aaron’s going to be your prophet, your spokesman. Well, here’s another one that’s interesting: Exodus 7:1. And Adonai said to Moses: See, I have made you Elohim to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.

But there are other examples. But how does this work out? How could this be? Well, the word El, which we translate as God or a god, in essence, it means a power. God is the all-powerful one. He is the Elohim, the God of God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.

But angels also are given power and are sometimes referred to as Elohim. People can be invested with authority and power, like the judges in Israel. So they are sometimes called Elohim.

But here’s one of the things that I want you to think of when you see this word. There’s one God, He is Elohim, but He invests authority in angelic beings, He is there to represent Him. And in turn, He also invests authority in human judges who are to speak for Him, to judge cases and apply His word to people who are under their authority.

So it’s His power that’s supposed to be seen in this chain of authority, all the way from top to bottom. And when the judges down here do not reflect Elohim up there, there is a disconnect and there is severe judgment.

So we can’t just simply translate Elohim “God” wherever we see it. But we must look at the context to understand. The word Elohim, in essence, is talking about power. Of course, God has all power, so most of the time Elohim is going to be translated as God. But He invests power and authority in angelic beings and also in human beings.

And He allows this word for powers, Elohim, to also be applied to them in certain cases. So if you don’t understand all that, just lay hold of this one thing. Elohim has more than just one meaning. Just let that settle with you for now. And hopefully over time you can look into this more. Maybe I’ll do a teaching just on the word Elohim and we’ll look at more scriptures and more examples so we can understand it.

Conclusion

But this Psalm, I talked more about the Hebrew of the Psalm than I did about what the Psalm is trying to impart. Rabbi Sampson Rafael Hirsch, his main thrust in the Psalm is that the judges of Israel are judging poorly and they’re really misapplying the authority that God has given them. And he says God has challenged them.

Why aren’t you doing the job I’ve given you to do? Why are you doing such a horrible job? Why are you deaf and venomous like a snake?

But most translators see this as simply being some kind of sociopath, someone who’s an enemy of God, like some of the enemies we’ve seen previously in Psalms 57 and 56 and 55. And we’re going to be seeing again as we get into Psalm 59.

And David is writing this psalm basically, what makes evil people tick? Why are they deaf? Why are they venomous? And he doesn’t even really give us an answer. He simply states, this is the case.

But — and this is the good news — all mankind shall say, there is indeed a reward for the righteous. So though you may be surrounded by people who are acting like sociopaths or even worse, psychopaths, don’t follow their lead, don’t give up, don’t lose hope. There is a reward for the righteous.

So keep living a righteous life. Be faithful, be strong, don’t give up hope. There is a day of judgment coming when everything is made right. And that’s a day we should be looking forward to. And it’s a day that the sociopath should be dreading.

So hopefully Psalm 59 will make a little bit more sense than this Psalm. But this is one of those confusing Psalms because David was in a confusing time in his life where he simply couldn’t understand why evil people are so evil. And that’s a question I often ask myself in these evil times.

So until next time, I wish you Shalom and God bless.