BackgroundAn indictment of corrupt rulers and judges, likely composed during a period when Saul's court was administering injustice against David and his allies.
Psalm 58: When Judges Forget Justice
For the choirmaster. To the tune of "Do Not Destroy." A Miktam of David.
By Bea Zalel
Psalm 58
For the choirmaster. To the tune of "Do Not Destroy." A Miktam of David.
- Do you indeed speak justly, O rulers? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men?
- No, in your hearts you devise injustice; with your hands you mete out violence on the earth.
- The wicked are estranged from the womb; the liars go astray from birth.
- Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like a cobra that shuts its ears,
- refusing to hear the tune of the charmer who skillfully weaves his spell.
- O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O LORD, tear out the fangs of the lions.
- May they vanish like water that runs off; when they draw the bow, may their arrows be blunted.
- Like a slug that dissolves in its slime, like a woman’s stillborn child, may they never see the sun.
- Before your pots can feel the burning thorns— whether green or dry— He will sweep them away.
- The righteous will rejoice when they see they are avenged; they will wash their feet in the blood of the wicked.
- Then men will say, “There is surely a reward for the righteous! There is surely a God who judges the earth!”
Theme
Psalm 58 opens with a line that has puzzled translators for centuries: "Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly?" The Hebrew word here, "elim," can mean "gods," "mighty ones," or by extension, human rulers and judges who exercise god-like authority over the lives of others. David is not addressing a pantheon. He is summoning the human magistrates of his society into a divine courtroom and accusing them of failing the very office they hold. This was a serious charge in ancient Israel, where judges were understood to stand in for God himself when rendering verdicts (Exod 22:8-9 calls them "elohim" in that judicial role).
The middle of the psalm piles on harsh images: poison like a cobra, ears stopped to the snake-charmer, broken teeth, lions' fangs ground down, melting snails, stillborn children. Modern readers often recoil. But these are courtroom curses, drawn from the legal and folk imagery of the ancient Near East. To pray that a corrupt judge's teeth be broken is to pray that he lose the very weapon of his office, his bite, his power to rip the poor in pieces. The snake-charmer image is particularly pointed: a deaf cobra cannot be controlled, and David is saying these rulers have grown too venomous and too deaf to be reformed by ordinary means.
Imprecatory psalms (those calling down judgment on the wicked) make many modern Christians uncomfortable. They should be read with care. Three things help. First, David is not taking personal revenge; he is refusing to take it, and is handing the case over to the divine Judge (Rom 12:19 echoes this logic). Second, the targets are not personal enemies in private quarrels but those whose injustice destroys the vulnerable. Third, the prayer presupposes a real moral order in which evil is not merely tragic but accountable. The cry "surely there is a God who judges on earth" is the engine of the whole psalm.
The closing image is unsettling but precise: "the righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked." This is battlefield language, an ancient image of a victorious general walking through the aftermath of a routed enemy. It is not a private fantasy but a public verdict. For Israelites who had watched corrupt courts let predators walk free, the day God himself overturned the verdict was not bloodlust but vindication. Christians today, taught by Jesus to love enemies (Matt 5:44), still need this psalm. It teaches us where to send the rage we cannot carry, namely to the Judge of all the earth (Gen 18:25).
Discussion questions
- What does the Hebrew "elim" suggest about David's view of human judges, and how does Exodus 22:8-9 inform that view?
- How would the phrase "break their teeth in their mouths" have struck a Hebrew listener who had watched powerful men devour the poor through corrupt rulings?
- Why does the psalm linger so long on serpent imagery (cobra, viper, deaf adder)? What does the snake-charmer line add?
- How do imprecatory psalms square with Jesus's command to love our enemies in Matthew 5:44, and Paul's instruction in Romans 12:19?
- Where in your own civic life do you see the kind of structural injustice that this psalm names, and what is the Christian response to it?
- Is there a difference between handing your rage over to God in prayer and acting on it yourself? How does the psalm help us distinguish those two?
- The closing line about "bathing the feet in the blood of the wicked" echoes ancient battlefield imagery. How does that genre context change the meaning?
- What does the closing affirmation "surely there is a God who judges on earth" do for someone who has lost faith in the courts?
- How does this psalm help us pray honestly without becoming consumed by bitterness?
- If you were teaching this psalm to a teenager who had been wronged at school, what would you want them to take from it and what would you want them to leave?
Read this psalm in another translation
The inline text above is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB). Open in a new tab to compare with a modern licensed translation: