Psalms 58:8

Let them be like a snail which melts away and is gone:

Like the untimely births of women, that have not seen the sun.

Two more figures for the destruction of the wicked: let them melt away; nay, vanish as though they had never existed.

The word shablûlpuzzled the ancient translators. The LXX render it -wax" (doubtless to suit the verb -melt"), Jerome -worm"; but later Hebrew attests the meaning snail. But what is the point of comparison? Is it that the snail seems to melt away as it goes along, leaving a slimy track behind it, or perhaps was popularly supposed to do so? or is it not rather an allusion to the way in which snails dry up and perish in drought? There are to be found in all parts of Palestine "myriads of snail shells in fissures, still adhering by the calcareous exudation round their orifice to the surface of the rock, but the animal of which is utterly shrivelled and wasted -melted away," according to the expression of the Psalmist." Tristram, Nat. Hist, of Bible, p. 296.

For the second figure cp. Job 3:16; Ecclesiastes 6:3-5. That they may not see the sun(A.V.) is an ungrammatical rendering.