This psalm confronts corrupt rulers whose silence and speech alike are bent toward injustice, exposing them as people who devise violence from the heart and go astray in wickedness from the start. David compares their destructive words to serpent venom and then asks God to break their power completely, to make their schemes dissolve before they ripen, so that the righteous will finally rejoice when justice appears and all people will confess that there is indeed reward for the righteous and a God who judges on the earth.
Psalm 58 is an unflinching prayer against entrenched injustice. It teaches that social violence begins in corrupt hearts, that wicked authority can become deaf to all correction, and that the longing for God's judgment is bound up with the hope that moral order and public righteousness will finally be seen on the earth.
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F1or the choirmaster. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A Miktam of David. 2No, in your hearts you devise injustice; 3The wicked are estranged from the womb; 4Their venom is like the venom of a snake, 5refusing to hear the tune of the charmer
6O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; 7May they vanish 8Like a slug that dissolves in its slime, 9Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—
10The righteous will rejoice 11Then men will say,
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