Psalms 58:3-5

David's Verdict On The Unrighteous (Psalms 58:3).

David's verdict on the unrighteous is that they are like this from birth. That there is within man that which causes them to go astray, a tendency to sin. They are like snakes who poison men, and never listen.

Psalms 58:3

‘The wicked are estranged from the womb,

They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.'

The unrighteous are like it even from birth. They are estranged from righteousness and justice, and therefore from God, from the womb. They are ‘alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts' (Ephesians 4:18). As soon as they are born they begin to use deceit to get their own way. Babes in arms soon discover how they can get attention for themselves by pretending that there is something wrong. And as they grow older such deceit becomes natural to them. It arises from what men are.

Psalms 58:4

‘Their poison is like the poison of a serpent,

They are like the deaf adder which stops her ear,

Which does not listen to the voice of charmers,

Charming never so wisely.'

As a consequence when they grow up they are like snakes who are filled with poison with which they harm others. And what is worse they are like the deadly poisonous deaf adders who will not listen to any attempt to make them hear. They go blindly on in their own way, without a thought of what they are doing. No matter how wisely God and good men speak to them, they are deaf to all attempts to reach them.

Snake charming was, and is, regularly practised in the east. By this means even snakes could be charmed into harmlessness. But not the deaf adder. It did not respond to any attempt to charm it, however subtle.

In the same ways David had made every effort to show Saul how wrong he was about him. But Saul even refused to listen to the pleas of his own son Jonathan. Whatever was said his ears were closed. All he could do was strike out with deadly poison.