Devotional Short Note to Psalm 58: This
Psalm of David has the same header as Psalm 57. In Psalm 56 David was saying:
just you unrighteous wait until (az) the Bookkeeper or Accountant of heaven
open the books in court and my Advocate God stands up for me (56:9-10). In
Psalm 58 David begins asking God: “Will You speak righteous unto them (elm),
the steadfast/faithful (haumenam)?” (58:2a). Christ our Righteousness in Heaven
speaks righteous “on behalf of the saints” (see the role of the Son of Man in
Daniel 7:22 “judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Most High”) an
ongoing process since 1844 right now. “Will You judge the sons of men from uprightness?”
(58:2b). Christ cannot be better as He was the most perfect of all. Spotless
and qualified to be our Representative in the heavenly court. As we speak. But
notice that David is maybe addressing Satan or Lucifer here. He does not speak
righteous [doing] to the faithful but wrongdoing. He will not judge with
fairness humanity since he cries out conspiracy ever since his Rebellion in
Heaven. David used a special form of the verb in verses 2 and 3 (3x) which is
the addition of a nun-paragogicum or –n at the end of the verb. The role of
this extra addition is to function a role in contrastivity (Hoftijzer) defined
as “exceptions to normal practice, contradictions, deviations from normal
expectation …” David used it with the words: will You speak? (righteous)Will You
do? (evil) Will You weigh? (violence). In stark contrast to Christ the Victor
is Satan the Looser “thus [aph] in heart you will work/do/commit evil things”
(58:3). Satan “will weigh out in the earth the violence of your hands” (58:3b).
It is not God or anyone from His side. One of the last signs of the times at
the End-Time is predicted by the prophet Habakkuk that in Lebanon or Syria of
Old [did Lebanon stretch to Aleppo in Isaiah’s days?] there will be according
to Habakkuk 2:17 “violence” and secondly that it relates to the blood of man
and violence of the land, city and inhabitants. See Habakkuk 2:3 where Habakkuk
also talks, like Daniel, of an “appointed time” and in Daniel appointed times
are 1798 as the end of 1260 years, 1844 as the end of 2300 years. The power
after this time of 1798 says Habakkuk (2:5) will be characterized as: “betrayal,
not restful, gathered unto himself nations and collected them from many
nations, just as the poem of Emma at the Statue of Liberty is boasting. This
power of Habakkuk gets into trouble later as the verse proceeds and as
Levi-Strauss’s philosophy of the gospel of democracy abroad and over the globe
increased, the phenomenon of the anger of nations increased. The violence in
Lebanon is ironically a backlash against objectives of this power by other nations
to proof that polarity must be substituted for multi-polarity with the cost of
thousands of innocent lives in Aleppo and elsewhere in ancient Lebanon or
current Syria. Violence is the R&D of Satan and he uses earthlings as
proxies to carry out his wishes. In Habakkuk 2:12-13 it reads that when the
Lord of Hosts come fire will consume these peoples to nothingness and it means
that those who labor for violence shall be exchanged for nothingness from the
Lord. David says that “wicked ones are
estranged from the womb” (58:4a). In this verse David used a figurative speech
in Poetry that we call hyperboly. It is phrases with non-literal meanings
(Gerhard Hasel in Symposium 1974: 176). He is correct because David is not
designing a Theology of Human Nature here for systematic theology. He is not
saying that Peccatum Originale of Augustine’s later years or “Original Sin” is
the doctrine embedded in this verse. The biblical position is that Original Sin
or people born with sin is a myth. David is saying “the speakers of lies goes
astray from birth” (58:4b). Is this not Original Sin? No. Babies do not speak
and neither is their speaking so sensible that it is interpreted as “lies”. Ask
any mother. What David means is that the mother is wicked while the baby is
still unborn and when the baby is born the mother and father and the babies
relatives around him/her is liars. The wicked is like a snake [back to Eden’s
favorite instrument for Satan’s deception and lies] and they have venom (58:5).
They follow their own way and does not listen to the voice (58:6a). From 58:7-10 David is citing apparently
from common Ancient Near Eastern idioms or colloquial expressions. He used a
Hebrew particle related to Akkadian, “like” (kemo) five times in this section.
It means that he is figurative in his meanings and we should be non-literal in
our interpretations. He used a Phoenician negative particle in a very beautiful
idiom in 58:10. The wicked are like lions so David wants
God to break their teeth (58:7). God should let them melt as water runs away [he
used the hithpael form here to indicate a back and forth action very
inconsistent but repetitive] (58:8a). When the wicked aims their military
equipment, David wished that they should be immediately as one who is repeatedly
cut/rubbed (malal in hithpael form again) (58:8b). David wants them to be a snail that
melts in the passing (58:9a). As a young boy he has seen it often and when I
was a young boy on a big farm in South Africa, I also used salt on snails to
see them melting away. David wants the wicked to be like a woman not [bal which
is the Phoenician for ‘not’] seen in the sun (58:9b). Then David used a beautiful idiom. He
said “Before your pots will understand a thorn, like life, like faces [Late
Egyptian word ḥrw(n) for faces] He will burn us” [not them because –nu in
Imma-nu-el means ‘us’ and that is what it meant in the Amarna cuneiform glosses
and also here] (58:10). Life is degenerative and so is our faces. God gave the punishment
for Adam’s sin as death and deterioration towards to skeleton status. There
apparently was an idiom like this one saying that before a woman can cook and
the pot is almost not used or scratched by thorns, the pot is burnt or the
person dies. The last two verses is stongly connected
to the Eschaton. At the Second Coming David can see the righteous rejoice
(using the future form of the verb) and God is the one Who has the right to
revenge (58:11a). In 58:12a He brings His reward [fruit = peri] to the
righteous. Coming back to David’s question in verse
2 whether there is a judge with uprightness his answer is clear: “truly/verily
there is a God that judges in the earth” (58:12b).