Psalms 58:9

Before your pots can feel the thorns,.... Which is soon done; for as dry thorns make a great blaze, so they give a quick heat; the pots soon feel them, or the water in them soon receives heat from them. From imprecations the psalmist proceeds to prophesy, and foretells the sudden destruction of wicked men, which would be before a pot could be heated with a blaze of thorns. The Targum is,

"before the wicked become tender, they harden as the thorn:''

that is, they never become tender, or have any tender consciences, but are hardened in sin from their infancy. Some render the words, "before your thorns grow up to a brier" or "bramble" i; little thorns become great ones, tender thorns hard ones, as Jarchi; that is, as he interprets it, before the children of the wicked are grown up, they are destroyed; those sons of Belial, who are like to thorns thrust away,

2 Samuel 23:6. Others, as Aben Ezra, "before they understand"; that is, wise and knowing men; "that your thorns are a bramble"; or from lesser ones are become greater; and so denotes, as before, the suddenness and quickness of their destruction, as follows:

he, that is, God,

shall take them away as with a whirlwind: not to himself, as Enoch; nor to heaven, whither Elijah went up by a whirlwind; but out of the land of the living, and as with a tempest, to hell, where snares, fire, and brimstone, are rained upon them; see Job 27:20;

both living, and in [his] wrath: when in health and full strength, and so go quick to hell; as Korah and his company alive into the earth; and all in wrath and sore displeasure: for the righteous are also taken away; but then it is from the evil to come, and to everlasting happiness; and through many tempestuous providences, which are in love, and for their good, do they enter the kingdom: and those that are alive at Christ's coming will be caught up to meet him in the air; but the wicked are taken away as in a whirlwind, alive, and in wrath.

i Tigurine version.