Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 58:1

"Do ye indeed in silence speak righteousness? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?" — Psalms 58:1 (ASV)

Congregation. —This rendering comes from a mistaken derivation of the Hebrew word êlem, which presents some difficulty. As pointed, it must mean silence (compare Psalm 56 (title), the only other place it occurs); and some, regardless of sense, would render, “Do ye truly in silence speak righteousness?”

Among the many conjectures on the passage, we may choose between reading elim (short for elîm, meaning gods, and in this context, as in Exodus 21:6, Exodus 22:8, and Psalm 82:6, applied to judges) and ulam (with the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic, in the sense of but). To speak righteousness is, of course, to pronounce a just judgment. If we prefer the former of these options (with most modern scholars), it is best to take sons of men in the accusative rather than the vocative: do ye judge with equity the sons of men.