Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Psalms 58:6-9
David Calls On God To Deal With The Unrighteous As They Deserve (Psalms 58:6).
In five more vivid illustrations David calls on God to deal with the unrighteous, followed by a sixth by which he assures the unrighteous that all their plans will come to nothing. In the first three he calls for them to be rendered harmless; to have their teeth broken, to be caused to disappear like dangerous, life threatening, fast flowing water, and to be robbed of their means of hurting people. In the next three he calls for them to have the life span of a snail, or the lifelessness of a still born child, and then assures them that they will lose their means of hurting people, because God will sweep them away. Note that along with the illustration about the snake there are seven illustrations in all, an indication of divine completeness.
‘Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth,
Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O YHWH.'
As well as being like snakes, his adversaries are like lions on the hunt. The breaking of the teeth was an ancient way of rendering a fierce animal harmless. So David calls on God to ‘break the teeth' of those who are arrayed against him, in other words to render them comparatively harmless. He describes them as young lions with large teeth. We have already seen his descriptions of his enemies as ‘lions' (Psalms 35:17; Psalms 22:13; Psalms 22:21; Psalms 57:4). And he wants them neutralised.
‘Let them melt away as water which runs apace,
When he aims his arrows, let them be as though they were cut off.'
His next illustration is of flood waters which suddenly arise, flow swiftly along the bed of the wadi sweeping all before it, and then as quickly disappear, leaving once more a dry river bed. Their life-threatening violence is replaced by calm. He calls on God to ensure this end for the unrighteous, no doubt with his own assailants in mind.
His third illustration is of an archer whose arrows have their points removed. When he lets loose his arrows, may they be rendered useless. In the same way, he prays, when unrighteous let loose their arrows, but let them be rendered harmless.
‘ Let them be as a snail which melts and passes away,
Like the untimely birth of a woman, which has not seen the sun.'
His illustrations now change from asking for the unrighteous to be rendered harmless, to praying for their untimely end. His next illustration is that of a snail which is short-lived, and melts and passes away. The snail clings to the rock, but the burning heat of the son causes it to shrivel and melt so that all that is left is the empty shell clinging to the rock. This can especially be seen if salt is put on it, a device possibly practised by the ancients. It may also have in mind the trail of slime that it leaves behind as it moves. He prays that the unrighteous, who are equally disgusting, might be equally short-lived.
His next illustration is that of the stillborn child which never lives to see the sun. In the same way he prays for a swift end for the unrighteous.
‘Before your pots can feel the thorns,
He will sweep them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike.'
He closes his list of illustrations by referring to habit of the traveller to gather desert scrub in order to light his fire by which to heat his cooking pot. Having made a fire with some of it, and having piled up beside the fire a heap from which he can feed the flames, he sits there contentedly anticipating the heating up of his prey. But suddenly a desert storm arises, and a whirlwind sweeps away both the burning scrub beneath his pot, and the green scrub which is his reserve. To his chagrin he no longer has any means of heating his pot and burning his victim.
In the same way the unrighteous, who have claimed their prey and are eagerly preparing to devour them, will suddenly discover that all their hopes are dashed by a storm from YHWH which sweeps away their means of doing harm.
The word for ‘burning' is a word regularly used of the burning of God's anger, often being translated as ‘fierce'. But in Jeremiah 25:38 the lion is driven out of his covert by burning instigated by oppressors. It thus illustrates the unrighteous ‘burning' their prey, and the rendering of them as unable to do so any more.