Psa 58:6-9 | Clarke | STEP | Verse 6 Break their teeth - He still compares Saul, his captains, and his courtiers, to lions; and as a lion's power of doing mischief is greatly lessened if all his teeth be broken, so he prays that God may take away their power and means of pursuing their bloody purpose. But he may probably have the serpents in view of which he speaks in the preceding verse; break their teeth - destroy the fangs of these serpents, in which their poison is contained. This will amount to the same meaning as above. Save me from the adders - the sly and poisonous slanderers: save me also from the lions

Psalms 58:6-9

Verse 6

Break their teeth - He still compares Saul, his captains, and his courtiers, to lions; and as a lion's power of doing mischief is greatly lessened if all his teeth be broken, so he prays that God may take away their power and means of pursuing their bloody purpose. But he may probably have the serpents in view of which he speaks in the preceding verse; break their teeth - destroy the fangs of these serpents, in which their poison is contained. This will amount to the same meaning as above. Save me from the adders - the sly and poisonous slanderers: save me also from the lions - the tyrannical and blood-thirsty men. Verse 7

Let them melt away as waters - Let them be minished away like the waters which sometimes run in the desert, but are soon evaporated by the sun, or absorbed by the sand.

When he bendeth his bow - When my adversaries aim their envenomed shafts against me, let their arrows not only fall short of the mark, but he broken to pieces in the flight. Some apply this to God. When he bends his bow against them, they shall all be exterminated. Verse 8

As a snail which melteth - The Chaldee reads the verse thus: "They shall melt away in their sins as water flows off; as the creeping snail that smears its track; as the untimely birth and the blind mole, which do not see the sun."

The original word שבלול shablul, a snail, is either from שביל shebil, a path, because it leaves a shining path after it by emitting a portion of slime, and thus glaring the ground; and therefore might be emphatically called the pathmaker; or from ישב yashab to dwell, ב be, in, לול lul, a winding or spiral shell, which is well known to be its house, and which it always inhabits; for when it is not coiled up within this shell, it carries it with it wheresoever it goes. See Bochart. These figures need no farther explanation. Verse 9

Before your pots can feel the thorns - Ye shall be destroyed with a sudden destruction. From the time that the fire of God's wrath is kindled about you, it will be but as a moment before ye be entirely consumed by it: so very short will be the time, that it may be likened to the heat of the first blaze of dry thorns under a pot, that has not as yet been able to penetrate the metal, and warm what is contained in it.

A whirlwind - Or the suffocating simoon that destroys life in an instant, without previous warning: so, without pining sickness - while ye are living - lively and active, the whirlwind of God's wrath shall sweep you away.