Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 10:8
He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.
8. He coucheth in ambush in the villages:
In the secret places doth he murder the innocent,
His eyes watch privily for the helpless.
The unwalled villages would be most exposed to the raids of marauders; and the country-folk, as Micah shews, suffered most from the oppression of the nobles.
Helpless (R.V.) or hapless (R.V. marg.) are good renderings of an obscure word peculiar to this psalm ( Psa 10:10 ; Psa 10:14).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
8 11. The wicked man’s crimes. He is described as a brigand, lying in wait to rob; as a lion lurking for its prey; as a hunter snaring his game. His victims are the innocent and defenceless poor.
The reference is probably to the bands of freebooters which, in the absence of a system of police, have always been common in the East. At no time was the country entirely free from them, and in periods of anarchy they would multiply rapidly. See Jdg 11:3; 1Sa 22:2 ; 2Sa 4:2; Hos 6:9; St Luk 10:30. The emphatic warning of the wise man to his disciple in Pro 1:10-18 (a passage which should be studied in illustration of this Psalm) shews that such a life was common, and had strong attractions for young men.
But in all probability the Psalmist has also in view the powerful nobles who plundered their poorer neighbours, and made their lives intolerable by oppressive exactions. They were no better than the professed brigands, and no doubt did not shrink from actual murder. See the prophets generally, and in particular Micah’s bitter invective, Psa 2:1-11; Psa 3:1-3. Cp. Sir 13:18-19 .
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages – As robbers do, who hide themselves in the vicinity of villages, that they make a sudden descent upon them in the silence of the night, or that they may seize and rob the inhabitants as they go forth in the morning to attend their flocks to the pastures, or to labor in the fields. The word rendered villages means properly an enclosure, as a court before a building; and then a village or hamlet, farm-buildings, or farm hamlets, usually erected around an open space; and it is then used to denote the encampment of nomadic tribes, who usually pitch their tents in a circle so as to form an enclosure, Gen 25:16; Isa 42:11. In the neighborhood of such places – in the thickets, bushes, or ravines, that might be near such encampments or enclosures – robbers would naturally secrete themselves, that they might fall upon them suddenly, or that they might seize anyone who left the village or encampment for ally purpose. So Frazer remarks in his Travels in Chorasan, i. 437: When the Turkomans design to fall upon a village, they take a position near it in the rear, until in the morning the unsuspecting inhabitants drive out their herds, or leave the villages for some other purpose, and then they suddenly fall upon them. DeWette, in loc.
In the secret places doth he murder the innocent – From these retreats he suddenly falls upon those who are unsuspicious, and who have done him no wrong. The word innocent here does not mean sinless in the absolute sense, but it means that they were innocent so far as the robber was concerned. They had done him no wrong; they had given him no occasion to make war upon them.
His eyes are privily set – Margin, hide themselves. The Hebrew word means to hide, to conceal; to lay up in private; to hoard; to keep back; to hold back, etc. Here it means to conceal, to lurk in ambush; and the idea is that his eyes will secretly watch, or keep a lookout for them; that is, that his eyes, or that he himself will be concealed, that he may observe the goings of those whom he intends to make his prey.
Against the poor – Or, the wretched, the afflicted, the defenseless. The meaning is, that instead of being a helper of the poor and wretched, he is disposed to take every advantage of them, and deprive them of all their rights and comforts.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 8. He sitteth in the lurking places] In this and the following verse there appears to be an allusion to espionage, or setting of spies on a man’s conduct; or to the conduct of an assassin or private murderer. He sitteth in lurking places-in secret places; his eyes-spies-are privily set; he lieth in wait secretly: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He is like a hunter that lays his traps and gins, digs his pits, sets his nets; and when the prey falls into them, he destroys its life.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
In the lurking places of the villages; not within the villages, which is not a fit place for lurking; but about them, in the ways bordering upon them, or leading to them, as robbers use to do.
In the secret places, that he may avoid the shame and punishment of men; which is the only thing that he fears.
Are privily set, Heb. are hid. The sense is either,
1. He winketh as men do when they shoot their arrows at a mark. Or rather,
2. He watcheth and looketh out of his lurking-place, to spy what passengers come that way. He alludes still to the practices of robbers.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8. eyes . . . privilyHewatches with half-closed eyes, appearing not to see.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages,…. Which were by the wayside, where thieves and robbers harboured, and out of which they came, and robbed passengers as they came by. The word f signifies “palaces” or “courts”: and so it is rendered by the Chaldee paraphrase and Syriac version; and so the allusion is not to mean thieves and robbers, but to persons of note and figure. Hence the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, render it, “he sitteth in lurking places with the rich”; and may be fitly applied to the pope and his cardinals. Antichrist sits in the temple of God, and by his emissaries gets into the villages, the particular churches and congregations of saints, where they lie in ambush to do mischief, to corrupt their faith, worship, and manners; and like thieves and robbers enter in to steal, kill, and destroy;
in secret places doth he murder the innocent; the harmless lambs and sheep of Christ; who, though they are not without sin in themselves, yet are innocent with respect to the cause and the things for which they suffer: these are the saints and prophets and martyrs of Jesus, whose blood is shed by antichrist; and the taking away of their lives is reckoned murder with God; and is so styled in the Scriptures, Re 9:21; though the antichristian party call it doing God good service, and impute it to zeal for the good of holy church; and yet this they choose to do in secret, by private massacres, or by the inquisition; which having condemned men to death, delivers them over to the secular power to execute the sentence on them: just as the Jews delivered Christ to the Roman governor, to shift off the sin and blame from themselves; murder being what no one cares to be known in, or chargeable with;
his eyes are privily set against the poor: the word , rendered “poor”, is used nowhere but in this psalm, in which it is used three times, here, and in Ps 10:1; and in the plural number in
Ps 10:10. It is translated “poor” both in the Chaldee paraphrase and Septuagint version, and in those that follow them. In the Arabic language it signifies “black” g, and may design such who are black by reason of persecution and affliction, who go mourning all the day long on account of sin, their own and others; and because of the distresses and calamities of the church and people of God. These the eyes of the wicked watch and observe, and are set against them to do them all the mischief they can; their eyes are full of envy and indignation at them, though it is all in a private and secret way. The allusion is to thieves and robbers, who hide themselves in some secret place, and from thence look out for them that pass by, and narrowly observe whether they are for their purpose, and when it will be proper to come out and seize upon them.
f , Symmachus in Drusius; “atriorum”, Munster; so Hammond, Ainsworth, & Michaelis. g “Chalae, valde niger fuit”, Golius, col. 646.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The ungodly is described as a lier in wait; and one is reminded by it of such a state of anarchy, as that described in Hos 6:9 for instance. The picture fixes upon one simple feature in which the meanness of the ungodly culminates; and it is possible that it is intended to be taken as emblematical rather than literally. (from to surround, cf. Arab. hdr , hsr , and especially hdr ) is a farm premises walled in (Arab. hadar , hadar , hadara ), then losing the special characteristic of being walled round it comes to mean generally a settled abode (with a house of clay or stone) in opposition to a roaming life in tents (cf. Lev 25:31; Gen 25:16). In such a place where men are more sure of falling into his hands than in the open plain, he lies in wait ( , like Arab. qd lh , subsedit = insidiatus est ei ), murders unobserved him who had never provoked his vengeance, and his eyes . to spie, Psa 37:32, might have been used instead of ; but also obtains the meaning, to lie in ambush (Psa 56:7; Pro 1:11, Pro 1:18) from the primary notion of restraining one’s self (Arab. dfn , fut. i. in Beduin Arabic: to keep still, to be immoveably lost in thought, vid., on Job 24:1), which takes a transitive turn in “to conceal.” , the dative of the object, is pointed just as though it came from : Thy host, i.e., Thy church, O Jahve. The pausal form accordingly is with Segol , in Psa 10:14, not with Sere as in incorrect editions. And the appeal against this interpretation, which is found in the plur. Psa 10:10, is set aside by the fact that this plural is taken as a double word: host ( = = as in Oba 1:20) of the troubled ones ( , not as Ben-Labrat supposes, for , but from weary, and mellow and decayed), as the Ker (which is followed by the Syriac version) and the Masora direct, and accordingly it is pointed with Sere . The punctuation therefore sets aside a word which was unintelligible to it, and cannot be binding on us. There is a verb , which, it is true, does not occur in the Old Testament, but in the Arabic, from the root Arab. hk , firmus fuit , firmum fecit (whence also Arab. hkl , intrans. to be firm, ferm , i.e., closed), it gains the signification in reference to colour: to be dark (cognate with , whence ) and is also transferred to the gloom and blackness of misfortune.
(Note: Cf. Samachschari’s Golden Necklaces, Proverb 67, which Fleischer translates: “Which is blacker: the plumage of the raven, which is black as coal, or thy life, O stranger among strangers?” The word “blacker” is here expressed by Arab. ahlaku , just as the verb Arab. halika , with its infinitives halak or hulkat and its derivatives is applied to sorrow and misery.)
From this an abstract is formed or (like ): blackness, misfortune, or also of a defective development of the senses: imbecility; and from this an adjective = , or also (cf. , Eze 31:15 = one in a condition of languishing, ) = , plur. , after the form , from , Ew. 189, g.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
8. He will sit in the ensnaring places of the villages. (217) I have purposely avoided changing the verbs of the future tense into another tense, because they imply a continued act, and also because this Hebrew idiom has extended even to other languages. David, therefore, describes what ungodly men are accustomed to do. And, in the first place, he compares them to highwaymen, who lie in wait at the narrow parts of roads, and choose for themselves hiding-places from which they may fall upon travelers when off their guard. He says also, that their eyes are bent or leering, (218) by a similitude borrowed from the practice of dart-shooters, who take their aim with leering, or half shut eyes, in order to hit the mark the surer. Nor does he here speak of the common sort of highwaymen who are in the woods; (219) but he directs his language against those great robbers who hide their wickedness under titles of honor, and pomp, and splendor. The word חצרים, chatserim, therefore, which we have rendered villages, is by some translated palaces; as if David had said, they have converted their royal mansions into places of robbery, where they may cut the throats of their unhappy victims. But granting the word to have this allusion, I consider that it refers principally to the practice of robbers, to which there is a reference in the whole verse, and I explain it thus: Like as robbers lie in wait at the egresses of villages, so these persons lay their snares wherever they are.
(217) Horsley renders the eighth verse thus:
“
He sitteth in ambush* in the villages in secret places; He murdereth the innocent; his eyes are ever watching for the helpless.”
And he has the following note: ” Symmachus and St Jerome certainly read thus ישכ מארב בחצרים, and they both render, ה, as a participle. ‘He sitteth prowling about the farm-houses.’ This I take to be the true reading and the true rendering. The image is that of a beast of prey of the lesser order, a fox or a wolf, lying upon the watch about the farm-yard in the evening.”
*Or, “he sitteth prowling about the farmyard.”
(218) Bishop Mant reads “peering eyes.” Concerning the word, says he, “which I have rendered peering, Parkhurst says that it is applied to winking or half closing the eyes in order to see more distinctly. The Septuagint and Vulgate translations, which mean look at, behold, give the general sense, but not the beautiful image expressed in the Hebrew.”
(219) “ Qui sont parmi les bois.” — Fr
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(8) In lurking places . . .i.e., in ambush.
Villages.Properly, enclosed spaces, but then, like our town (ton, an enclosure), for any collection of dwellings; and in Lev. 25:31, an unwalled place; applied also to a nomadic encampment (Gen. 25:16).
Privily set.Literally, hid: i.e., watched secretly.
The poor.The Hebrew word, occurring three times in this psalm (Psa. 10:10; Psa. 10:14), is peculiar to it. The root idea is darkness; hence here, by an easy transition, obscure, humble. Symmachus has feeble. But Mr. Burgess suggests that we may in all three places keep the root idea, darkness. Translate, his eyes hide (i.e., wait) for the darkness; and comp. Job. 24:15. The eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight.
The Arab robber lurks like a wolf among these sand-heaps, and often springs out suddenly upon the solitary traveller, robs him in a trice, and then plunges again into the wilderness of sandhills and reedy downs, where pursuit is fruitless. Our friends are careful not to allow us to straggle about or linger behind, and yet it seems absurd to fear a surprise hereKhaifa before our eyes, Acre in our rear, and travellers in sight on both sides. Robberies, however, do often occur just where we now are. Strange country; and it has always been so.Thomson, The Land and Book.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
8. In lurking places In ambush.
Villages Unwalled towns; hence more exposed to depredations.
Privily set The word may mean to hide, or to intently watch, like a scout or a spy.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 10:8. His eyes are privily set against the poor {Are watching / Lay wait} for the poor. It may be proper to observe, once for all, that the word poor in the Psalms is not applied to those only who are distressed in their outward circumstances, but also to the poor in spirit; to the humble and afflicted.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 10:8 He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.
Ver. 8. He sitteth in the lurking places, &c. ] A. description of a highway robber, saith Diodati, under which name are meant all violent and fraudulent men, and their actions.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the poor = a weak one. Hebrew. helkah.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
sitteth: 1Sa 22:18, 1Sa 23:23, 2Ki 21:16, Pro 1:11, Pro 1:12, Hab 3:14, Luk 8:1, Luk 10:1
his eyes: Psa 17:11, Pro 6:12, Pro 6:13, Jer 22:17
are privily set: Heb. hide themselves
Reciprocal: Exo 20:13 – General 2Ki 6:13 – spy where Job 24:14 – murderer Psa 11:2 – that Psa 37:32 – watcheth Psa 56:6 – hide Psa 64:4 – shoot Psa 119:95 – wicked Psa 119:110 – wicked Pro 24:15 – Lay Pro 30:14 – to devour Hos 6:8 – polluted with blood Hos 7:6 – they Mic 6:7 – pleased Zep 3:3 – princes Jam 2:6 – Do
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 10:8-9. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages Not within the villages, but in the ways bordering upon them, or leading to them, as robbers used to do. In the secret places That he may avoid the shame and punishment of men; which is the only thing that he fears. His eyes are privily set Hebrew, , jitzponu, delitescunt, lie hid; skulk, or lurk. He watches, and looks out of his lurking place, to spy what passengers come that way. The allusion is still to the practice of robbers. As a lion in his den Which lurks and waits for prey. He doth catch , jachtop, snatch, or seize upon; the poor Namely, with violence, and to devour or destroy him; when he draweth him Or rather, by drawing him, or, after he hath drawn him, as , bemashecho, properly signifies, into his net. He lays snares for him, and when he takes him he tears him in pieces.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
10:8 {d} He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.
(d) He shows that the wicked have many ways to hide their cruelty and therefore should be even more feared.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Using the figures of a predatory animal, like a lion, and a hunter, like a fisherman, David described how the wicked cunningly pursue and ensnare the righteous in their traps. The fact that God does not punish them more quickly encourages them to continue their destructive work.