Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 58:2
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.
2. Yea ] Or, Nay, for the particle implies a negative answer, and an additional accusation. Far from judging equitably, you are yourselves the greatest offenders.
in heart ] Inwardly they are ever contriving some scheme of injustice, like the nobles against whom Micah inveighs (Psa 2:1), as “working evil upon their beds.”
ye weigh ] R.V., ye weigh out. There is a bitter irony in the use of a word strictly applicable to justice only. For the metaphor of the ‘scales of justice’ cp. Job 31:6.
in the earth ] Or, in the land; publicly and openly, carrying into execution the schemes they contrive in their hearts. Cp. Mic 2:1.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness – Whatever might be the outward appearances, whatever pretences they might make to just judgment, yet in fact their hearts were set on wickedness, and they were conscious of doing wrong.
Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth – It is difficult to attach any meaning to this language; the translators evidently felt that they could not express the meaning of the original; and they, therefore, gave what seems to be a literal translation of the Hebrew. The Septuagint renders it, In heart you work iniquity in the land; your hands weave together iniquity. The Latin Vulgate: In heart you work iniquity; in the land your hands prepare injustice. Luther: Yea, willingly do you work iniquity in the land, and go straight through to work evil with your hands. Professor Alexander: In the land, the violence of your hands ye weigh. Perhaps the true translation of the whole verse would be, Yea, in heart ye work iniquity in the land; ye weigh (weigh out) the violence of your hands; that is, the deeds of violence or wickedness which your hands commit. The idea of weighing them, or weighing them out, is derived from the administration of justice. In all lands people are accustomed to speak of weighing out justice; to symbolize its administration by scales and balances; and to express the doing of it as holding an even balance. Compare Job 31:6, note; Dan 5:27, note; Rev 6:5, note. Thus interpreted, this verse refers, as Psa 58:1, to the act of pronouncing judgment; and the idea is that instead of pronouncing a just judgment – of holding an equal balance – they determined in favor of violence – of acts of oppression and wrong to be committed by their own hands. That which they weighed out, or dispensed, was not a just sentence, but violence, wrong, injustice, crime.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 58:2
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness.
Sin in the heart
There once sailed from the city of Orleans a large and noble steamer, laden with cotton, and having a great number of passengers on board. While they were taking in the cargo, a portion of it became slightly moistened by a shower of rain that was falling. This circumstance, however, was not noticed; the cotton was stowed away in the hold, and the hatches fastened down. All went well at first, but one day an alarm of fire was made, and in a few moments the whole ship was enveloped in flames. The damp and closely packed bale of cotton had become heated, and it smouldered and got into a more dangerous state every day, until it burst forth into a large sheet of flame, and nothing could be done to quench it. Now, that heated cotton, smouldering in the hull of the vessel, is like sin in the heart. Do not let us think lightly of sin, speaking of little sins and big sins, white lies and black lies. Sin is sin in Gods sight, and God hates sin. (N. Jones.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 2. Yea, in heart ye work wickedness] With their tongues they had spoken maliciously, and given evil counsel. In their hearts they meditated nothing but wickedness. And though in their hands they held the scales of justice, yet in their use of them they were balances of injustice and violence. This is the fact to which the psalmist alludes, and the figure which he uses is that of justice with her scales or balances, which, though it might be the emblem of the court, yet it did not prevail in the practice of these magistrates and counsellors.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
In heart; or, with your heart; with free choice and consent, and not only by constraint, and out of compliance with Saul.
Ye weigh the violence of your hands; or, you weigh violence or injustice with your hands. The phrase of weighing hath respect to their office, which was to administer justice, which is usually expressed by a pair of balances. So he intimates that they did great wrong under the pretence and with the formalities of justice; and whilst they scented exactly to weigh and consider the true and fit proportion between the actions and the recompences allotted to them, they turned the scale; and partly to curry favour with Saul, and partly from their own malice against David, pronounced an unjust sentence against him. In the earth; or, in this land, where God is present, and where you have righteous laws to govern you, and you profess better things.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. This they did not design; but
weigh . . . violenceorgive decisions of violence. Weigh is a figure to express theacts of judges.
in the earthpublicly.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness,…. So far were they from speaking righteousness, and judging uprightly. The heart of man is wickedness itself; it is desperately wicked, and is the shop in which all wickedness is wrought; for sinful acts are committed there as well as by the tongue and hand, as follows. This phrase also denotes their sinning; not with precipitancy, and through surprise; but with premeditation and deliberation; and their doing it heartily, with good will, and with allowance, and their continuance and constant persisting in it;
ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth; they were guilty of acts of violence and oppression, which, of all men, judges should not be guilty of; whose business it is to plead the cause of the injured and oppressed, to right their wrongs, and to protect and defend them: these they pretended to weigh in the balance of justice and equity, and committed them under a show of righteousness; they decreed unrighteous decrees, and framed mischief by a law; and this they did openly, and everywhere, throughout the whole land.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
2. Yea, rather, in heart ye plot wickedness. In the former verse he complained of the gross shamelessness manifested in their conduct. Now he charges them both with entertaining wickedness in their thoughts, and practising it with their hands. I have accordingly translated the Hebrew article אף, aph, yea, rather — it being evident that David proceeds, after first repelling the calumnies of his enemies, to the further step of challenging them with the sins which they had themselves committed. The second clause of the verse may be rendered in two different ways, ye weigh violence with your hands, or, your hands weigh violence; and as the meaning is the same, it is immaterial which the reader may adopt. Some think that he uses the figurative expression, to weigh, in allusion to the pretense of equity under which he was persecuted, as if he were a disturber of the peace, and chargeable with treason and contumacy towards the king. In all probability, his enemies glossed over their oppression with plausible pretences, such as hypocrites are never slow to discover. But the Hebrew word פלס, phalas, admits of a wider signification, to frame or set in order; and nothing more may be meant than that they put into shape the sins which they had first conceived in their thoughts. It is added, upon the earth, to denote the unbridled license of their wickedness, which was done openly, and not in places where concealment might have been practiced.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(2) In heart . . . in the earth (or, better, in the land).These in the text are in antithesis. The mischief conceived in the heart is weighed out, instead of justice, by these unjust magistrates. The balance of justice is thus turned into a means of wrong-doing. But, perhaps, we should rather arrange as follows:
Nay! with your heart ye work wickedness in the land,
With your hands you weigh out violence.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. Yea, in heart Here is the seat of all iniquity. They sinned, not from ignorance, but from disposition and intention.
Ye weigh Ironically spoken. They professed to use equity and truth as weights in the scale of justice, but instead, they weighed violence. On “weigh” see note on Psa 78:50. The “violence of” their hands, is “violence” which they themselves have wrought out by using, in their administration, tricks and devices instead of the forms of justice.
In the earth In the land; that is, publicly in all the kingdom. What the “heart” secretly devised, the hands fabricated into plans and written decrees, which become public law.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 58:2. Ye work wickedness, &c. You work wickedness on the earth; your hands frame violence.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Observe the iniquity is here said to be of the heart.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 58:2 Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.
Ver. 2. Yea, in heart ye work wickedness ] These the devil worketh it as in a forge; ye are always plotting and ploughing mischief, and that not so much for fear of Saul, or to please him, as out of the naughtiness of your own hearts; and all this you know in your consciences to be true. Kimchi saith, that the word Aph, or yea, importeth, that their hearts were made for a better purpose; and therefore their sin was the greater. Corruptio optimi pessima.
Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
wickedness. Hebrew. ‘avval. Compare App-44.
Ye weigh = Ye weigh out, or, dispense.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
in heart: Psa 21:11, Ecc 3:16, Isa 59:4-6, Jer 22:16, Jer 22:17, Eze 22:12, Eze 22:27, Mic 3:1-3, Mic 3:9-12, Joh 11:47-53
weigh: Psa 94:20, Isa 10:1, Isa 26:7
Reciprocal: Deu 25:1 – General Psa 5:9 – inward Psa 82:2 – judge Psa 119:85 – which Pro 31:9 – General Isa 32:6 – and his heart Isa 59:6 – their works Isa 59:8 – judgment Jer 19:15 – that they Dan 11:27 – shall be to Hab 1:4 – for Mar 7:21 – out Joh 7:24 – General Joh 8:15 – judge Joh 19:13 – and sat Act 16:37 – They have Act 21:35 – for Act 23:3 – for Act 24:25 – righteousness
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 58:2. Yea, in heart ye work wickedness Or, with your heart, that is, with free choice and consent; with premeditation and design, and with a strong inclination to it, and resolution in it, and not merely by constraint, and out of compliance with Saul, or through surprise and inadvertence. The more there is of the heart in any act of wickedness, the worse it is. Ye weigh the violence of your hands Or, you weigh violence, or injustice, with your hands. The phrase of weighing hath respect to their office, which was to administer justice, which is usually expressed by a pair of balances. So he intimates that they did great wrong under the pretence and with the formalities of justice; and while they seemed exactly to weigh the true proportion between mens actions and the recompenses allotted to them, they turned the scale, and pronounced an unjust sentence. In the earth Or, in this land, where God is present, and where you have righteous laws to govern you, and you profess better things.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
58:2 Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of {b} your hands in the earth.
(b) You are not ashamed to execute that cruelty publicly, which you have imagined in your hearts.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
David proceeded to answer his own questions. Instead of practicing justice, these rulers planned injustice and violence (cf. Mic 3:1-3; Mic 3:9-11; Mic 6:12). They spoke lies and did not respond to the warnings of others. Furthermore, they had a long history of destructive behavior.