Psalm 58--God Who Judges the Earth

Psalm 58
English Standard Version

God Who Judges the Earth
To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam of David.
58 Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
    Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
2 No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
    your hands deal out violence on earth.

3 The wicked are estranged from the womb;
    they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
4 They have venom like the venom of a serpent,
    like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
5 so that it does not hear the voice of charmers
    or of the cunning enchanter.

6 O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
    tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!
7 Let them vanish like water that runs away;
    when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.
8 Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
    like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.
9 Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
    whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!

​10 The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
    he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
    surely there is a God who judges on earth.”

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The "gods" that the pagans worshiped were not righteous judges--they allowed the people to do wicked things (even encouraged it) and they were as wicked or many times even more wicked than the people.  The idea was that if the people worshiped gods who could not control their passions and lusts and did evil and wicked things (even if they were "good" gods), then certainly they as only men couldn't be held responsible for giving into their lusts and desires and being wicked.  After all, even "a god" could not resist such temptation, so how could they resist as a mere man or woman?

David then makes the case for what we call Original Sin and the Depravity of Man.  People are born bad--but it's worse than that.  David says they are bad while they are still in the womb, before they are born.  From the moment of conception, the sin nature of the father is passed onto the child and the child is conceived as a sinful, fallen creature.  This is true, yet God also sees them as innocent (not deserving of death by the hand of men, for these are not high-handed sins of rebellion when they commit sin in the womb).  David says that from a young age the wicked have venomous words to destroy and tear down and lying tongues to try and charm and enchant.  The LORD is immune to our verbal attacks and our lies--he is neither wounded nor charmed by us.

On the contrary, the LORD is the one that is strong enough to break the teeth (the sharp words) of the wicked), destroy their "fangs" that inject their venom, and rip out their lying tongues that.  David says the wicked will be like water that evaporates never to be seen again.  Their aim will be off so that their attacks will not hit their mark and their arrows will be blunted so that they will do no damage if they do hit their mark (I think David is referring to us being dressed in the full armor of God that Paul will talk about in Ephesians).  David says they will be like the snail or slug that never makes it to where they are trying to go, because the heat of the sun (the LORD's judgment) stops them dead in their tracks.  The LORD will destroy them, and people will say of them "They died too young" like they say of a stillborn child, yet their death will come as a result of the LORD not allowing the wicked to go unpunished.

The righteous (those He has made righteous through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus) will rejoice when the day of judgment comes for the wicked.  In that day the righteous and especially The Righteous One will be victorious.  There will be so much blood that day when He makes war with His enemies that it will be deep enough to bathe in (Revelation says the river of blood will flow as high as a horse's bridle).  In that day there will be no one that doubts that "The Lord is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him," that is "the righteous," and that He is the judge of the living and the dead.  "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the Lord.